Definition of "amalgamation"

amalgamation

/əˌmælɡəˈmeɪʃən/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural amalgamations
1. The process of amalgamating; a mixture, merger or consolidation.
  Quotations
  In 1908 Sheng obtained imperial approval for the amalgamation of the Hanyang Ironworks and the Ta-yeh and P'ing-hsiang mines to form the Han-Yeh-P'ing Coal and Iron Company Limited (Han-Yeh-P'ing mei-t'ieh ch'ang-k'uang yu-hsien kung-ssu).
  1958, Albert Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization‎, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, page 68
2. The result of amalgamating; a mixture or alloy.
  1. (specifically) The production of an alloy of mercury and another metal, especially used in antiquity to extract gold and silver from ores.
3. (obsolete) The intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races.
  Quotations
  All the circumstances of William, on the great house farm, show him to have occupied a different position from the other slaves, and, certainly, there is nothing in the supposed hostility of slaveholders to amalgamation, to forbid the supposition that William Wilks was the son of Edward Lloyd.
  1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter VII, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […]