Abstract

Miners’ meetings were a customary legal practice from California that was imported to British Columbia during the Fraser River gold rush (1858). To date, there has been limited recognition of this practice’s influence on the development of British Columbia. The historical works that do exist on the subject argue that the practice was not established in the colony owing to the Colonial Government’s allowance for Mining Boards, a representative institution, by The Gold Fields Act, 1859. To the contrary, this thesis looks at the different ways that miners’ meetings and miners’ customary law were expressed and adapted to conditions in British Columbia before and after the passing of The Gold Fields Act, 1859. It argues that miners’ meetings persisted as a political practice despite the existence of Mining Boards and that miners’ meetings and Mining Boards performed different functions in colonial society. Whereas in frontier regions miners’ meetings were used to organize frontier society and establish mining regulations—performing legislative, judicial, or executive functions in different circumstances—and in more developed regions miners’ meetings adapted and were used by mining communities to influence the decisions of the Government, Mining Boards were a representative institution that was mandated by election to fulfill a specific purpose. This thesis tracks the history of miners’ meetings and Mining Boards from 1858 to 1867—through such episodes as the Canyon War, McGowan’s War, Cariboo Gold Rush, and Grouse Creek War—and examines how the mining community was in constant dialogue—in turn, cordial and tense—with the Colonial Government on the subject of the formal colonial mining laws.