Spirits of Extraction

Spirits of extraction reexamines the entangled histories of racism, Christianity, and humanitarian biopolitics in the long nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective on the intersection of extractive industries, evangelical revivalism, and the violent civilisational metaphysics of race. Moving across eighteenth-century industrialising Bristol, the Cornish mining diaspora of the expanding British Empire, and the contested lands of Anishinaabewaki/Upper Canada/Ontario, this book traces how evangelical Christianity helped shape the colonial world through processes of extraction - of resources, bodies, and souls. Blending historical narrative with critical theory, the book makes two key interventions. Firstly, it repositions colonial religion and educational/cultural racism as central to the biopolitical project, analysing the wounding effects of 'truly Christian' education and exorcism in evangelical subject formation. Secondly, it extends thinking on the 'geology of race' by highlighting the extractive industries as the affective scene through which modern evangelical Christianity came to life. By showing how mining and missionary practices co-constituted racial hierarchies and modes of sovereignty, Spirits of extraction offers a major contribution to thinking about the politics of life and resource extraction. Evangelical experiences of salvation, exorcism, and the transformative power of faith, the book argues, resonate through geological consciousness and the logics of extraction, sustaining a quasi-divine force that continues to structure lives and landscapes today.