really, the history of the Cornish mining industry doesn't make much sense outside the wider history of the 18th and 19th centuries.
the great copper mines were based on the demand for brass which resulted from the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, they are as much a part of that as Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale.
The expansion of the South Wales coalfields made it possible to construct and power the pumping and winding engines, and smelt the ore; the highly specific geography of the Cornish peninsula and Bristol Channel made it possible to transport the material in bulk with the transport systems of the day ( basically by short, downhill overland haulage and then by sea ).
the fortuitous discovery of tin below the copper, allied to the great expansion of the use of pewter for various applications ( such as tableware ) in the first half of the 19th century, resulted in a resurgence of operations in those areas placed to exploit it. This was sustained by the almost universal adoption of tin-plate for storage of materials of almost every description in the later 19th and early 20th century.
This lead to the refinement of the Cornish techniques of total extraction of narrow-lode, hard-rock orebodies which in turn produced the great diaspora of the 19th century to places such as South Africa, the US and South America. These techniques weren't new, being associated with the lead-mining industries of Derbyshire and Cleveland, the silver-mining industry in the Harz mountains, and lother areas; but the Cornish industry became world leaders, for a while.
History of the world, right there.
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.