History of Mining in Sardinia - The Savoy Era

The Savoy Era

In 1720 following the provisions of the Treaty of the Hague the island came under the rule of the House of Savoy, who acquired the title of Kings of Sardinia. The State of the Savoy boosted again the mining industry. Even under the Piedmontese mining was connected to the assignment of general concessions for the execution of research and mining operations on the whole territory of the island. The first who obtained this kind of concession, that lasted twenty years, were Pietro Nieddu and Stefano Durante.

In 1740 the general concession, lasting thirty years, was assigned to the British Charles Brander, to the baron Karl von Holtzendorf and to the Swedish consule in Cagliari Karl Gustav Mandel. According to the agreement, the concessionaries should pay to the King's Treasury 12% of the extracted galena and 2% of the silver for the first 4 years, 5% for the following 6 years and 10% for the remaining 20 years. The obligatory taxes had to be paid at the dispatch for exported commodities and within six months for those that had been sold into the island. The new company, boosted especially by Mandel, introduced some technological innovations, among which the use of the explosive during mining operations. Handwoks skilled in mining industry were brought to Sardinia especially from Germany. Mandel also built by Villacidro a large lead foundry. He was though accused by the Real Intendance of neglecting the exploration of new mines confining himself to exploit the existing ones. An enquiry was also opened for alleged fiscal illegalities that led in 1758 to the repeal of the concession of Mandel.

In 1762 the direction of Sardinian mines came into the hands of the Director of the mining district Pietro De Belly, who hampered private mining industry maintaining it was more profitable for the State to exploit directly the richness of Sardinian underground. Belly tried also to reintroduce forced work in mines and for this reason he merited in 1771 a criticism from Quintino Sella.

Among the shortcomings that should be ascribed to Belly there is also the lack of exploitation of the rich silver vein in Sarrabus, the potentiality of which Mandel had already guessed. Belly maintained it was too costly to mine in this field because of the inaccessible ground and the difficulties in communications in the area. Only within the following century the mineral value of south-eastern region was discovered again.

The last years of the 18th century were anyway important years for Sardinian mining industry; traces of iron were discovered near Arzana and of antimony in the vicinity of Ballao. At the beginning of the 19th century in Sardinia there were 59 mines, mainly of lead, iron, copper and silver. With the renewal of the fervour of mining, some Piedmontese adventurers and from some other European countries had their go too. Among them there was also the French novelist Honoré de Balzac who in 1838 started off a disastrous enterprise that had the purpose of exploiting ancient lead-bearing wastes of the Nurra.

In 1840 the new mining act was passed, which prescribed the separation of property of ground from that of the underground. According to the new act everyone could require the authorization to carry out mining prospecting: a permit written by the owner of the ground on which the research had to be done was required but, if the owner of the ground opposed to the request and the refusal was not considered adequately evidenced, the Police chief could acted officially to allow the permit. The only obligation due to the concessionary was to pay to the Treasury three per cent of the value of mined minerals and to pay the damages to the landowners for caused damage. This law was fully enacted in Sardinia only in 1848, after the "perfect fusion" between Sardinia and the countries on the continent under the rule of the House of Savoy had completed. The new act, that eased the achievement of mining concessions, called back onto the island many managers, particularly from Liguria and from Piedmont and the first Societies with the purpose of exploiting the promising Sardinian ore bodies were born.

In 1848 the Sardinian entrepreneur Giovanni Antonio Sanna became the owner of the Montevecchio Mine, localised in the South West of Sardinia, it was the main mining site in Italy. He started modern industrial mining activity in the area.

Among these there was also the "Società Nazionale per la coltivazione di miniere in Sardegna" of Genua that tried in vain to achieve general concession. This kind of concession was in fact formally forbidden by the new act, in order to prevent the establishment of monopolies in mining industry. The project of the National Society came to nothing. The opening of a great amount of companies was marked by the same protagonists of th project of the National Society, in order to hold anyway the majority of the highest possible number of permits. The majority of mining societies operating in Sardinia depended then on a non-Sardinian capital money. A remarkable exception was the Sardinian manager Giovanni Antonio Sanna, who achieved in 1848 a perpetual concession on about 1200 has located in the area of Montavecchio. Not all societies that were founded in this period had the techniques to launch themselves on the market, many of these went bankruptcy and some other got fused giving birth to greater and more reliable Societies.

In 1858 the exile Enrico Serpieri from the Romagna founded the foundry of Domusnovas for the exploitation of lead mineral in previously processed waste and not so much later of a second one in Fluminimaggiore. In 1862 the two foundries of Serpieri produced 56% of the whole Sardinian lead that had been excavated by previous waste.

Since 1850 limited groups of specialised workers from Styria, Austria, followed by German miners from Freiburg began to settled temporarly in the Iglesiente in particular in the mining areas of Monte Vecchio, Guspini and Ingurtosu . Some german influenced building and toponym is still visible in this area. The contemporaneous migration flow from the Italian peninsula towards the sardinian mining areas of Iglesiente was more considerable and more stable ; these miners came mostly from Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Romagna. According to a 1882 census realised by the french engineer Leon Goüine, in the south-western Sardinian mines worked 9.780 miners, 3.571 of which were of mainland italian origin; most of the them settled in Iglesias and frazioni .