From the 'historical core' into the rest of the world
While gold has been mined for thousands of years, gold production really took off in the nineteenth century, with gold rushes in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, and South Africa. For much of the twentieth century, South Africa would dominate global gold production. Yet the 1980s proved a turning point.
While South African gold mining went into rapid decline, China emerged as the top consumer and top producer of newly mined gold. We also witnessed a revival of older gold mining destinations (Canada, the US, Australia, Russia), and a spectacular expansion of gold mining in the 'rest of the world'. Within the latter category, we find a geographically wide range of 'mid-tier' gold producers, such as Peru, Colombia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The global expansion of gold mining was facilitated by a number of factors, which include -but are not limited to- rising investor interest, the liberalization of mining laws, regulatory stimuli for the outward expansion of gold mining in Canada and (to a lesser extent) Australia, and technological innovations in mining and processing.
