An event of international significance, the California gold rush created a more diverse, metropolitan society than the world had ever known. In Riches for All, leading scholars reexamine the gold rush, evaluating its trajectory and legacy within a global context of religion and race, economics, technology, law, and culture.

The opportunity for instant wealth directly influenced a dynamic range of peoples, including Mormon military veterans, California Indian workers, both slave and free African Americans, Chinese village farmers, skilled Mexican miners, and Chilean merchants. Riches for All gives attention to the varying motivations and experiences of these groups and to their struggles with both racial and religious bigotry. Emphasizing gold rush social history, some contributors examine the roles and influence of women, workers, law-breakers, and law-enforcers. Others consider the long-term impact of this episode on California and the American West and on subsequent gold rushes in Pacific Rim countries and the Klondike.

With lively and incisive strokes, these historians sketch the most broadly contextualized and nuanced portrait of the California gold rush to date.

Kenneth N. Owens is a professor emeritus of history and ethnic studies at California State University, Sacramento. He is the editor of The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai and John Sutter and a Wider West, both available in Bison Books editions.

“Riches for All should stand . . . on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the state-of-the-art of California history.”—Steven M. Fountain, H-Net Reviews

"A solid social history unblemished by academic 'pamphleteering'"—Richard H. Dillon, True West

"An excellent collection of essays by a diverse group of scholars. . . . This volume is a wonderful and sophisticated place for anyone interested in the California gold rush to begin."—Robert M. Senkewicz, The Journal of American History

“The Gold Rush in terms of race, class, religion, and gender [is] now front and center in the minds of a younger generation of historians. Riches for All constitutes a convincing anthology of this new sensibility. . . . The essays manage at once to keep the Gold Rush in mind as a comprehensive event while attacking it from various angles, like miners hoping to intercept a vein of gold in the Mother Lode. . . . No mere catalogue of these essays can suggest their richness and nuance.”—Kevin Starr, The Americas