COAL MINING

From the late Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, coal had been occasionally used as a fuel mainly for house heating in various places in Great Britain, the Low Countries, France, and Germany. Starting in the sixteenth century, coal mined around Newcastle and Durham was shipped to London and other towns. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century the First Industrial Revolution opened new markets for coal: the iron and steel industry using coke in blast furnaces, and steam engines associated with the development of textile and manufacturing industries. The Industrial Revolution provoked a spectacular development of coal mining not only in Great Britain but also in Belgium, Upper Silesia, and Rineland, Germany. According to E. A. Wrigley, the Industrial Revolution was a revolution in energy supply. Between 1770 and 1830 the European economy gradually shifted from an advanced organic economy based on natural, renewable energy resources (wind and water power) into an economy mainly based on mineral, nonrenewable energy resources—coal. For the first time in history, James Watt's steam engine managed to transform thermal power (steam produced by coal) into mechanical power. Coal rapidly became "the bread of industry." In the 1870s and 1880s the improvement in steel production (via the Bessemer, Siemens-Martin, and Thomas-Gilchrist converters) and the invention of the dynamo for producing electricity (1869) paved the way for the Second

Industrial Revolution, associated with a boom in coal output. The new electrical sector constituted a new market alongside the market of gas power stations. Increasing urbanization from 1870 to 1914 was also associated with improvements in domestic coal-based heating systems. Cheap coal stoves made coal heating affordable for even modest households.

For most of the nineteenth century Great Britain was the major coal producer in the world. According to B. R. Mitchell, British output skyrocketed from 13 million tons per year in the period from 1801 to 1805 to 67 million tons in 1856 to 287 million tons in 1913. Most of the British coal fueled domestic heating in London and other cities in 1800, but in the following decades, it was mainly used in manufacturing, iron and steel plants, and stationary and locomotive steam engines. Coal was not only used for British industries and transports (railways, steamers) but also shipped worldwide (see table 1). In 1910, two-thirds of the coal exported on the world market was mined in Britain. Coal production and export were stimulated by the development of railway networks and steamships in Europe from 1840 onward. The famous smokeless steam coal of South Wales—suitable for new steamers—gave birth to an important overseas market after 1840. Cardiff became the world harbor for steam coal trade.

During the late nineteenth century, Germany and the United States seriously challenged Britain's coal production supremacy (see table 2). By 1900 U.S. production had surpassed that of Britain.

Until the 1960s, coal mining remained a labor-intensive industry. Most of the underground work was performed by men using picks and shovels at the coal face. Therefore, coal miners constituted a key element of the working class. In 1908 Europe counted more than 1.8 million coal miners (966,000 in Britain, 591,000 in the German Empire, 191,000 in France, and 145,000 in Belgium).

One of the major problems of coal trade was the prohibitively high cost of inland transportation. This is why the first coalfields mined were situated alongside the seashore—in northeastern England—or rivers. Since the eighteenth century, ship canals made British coal relatively cheaper and more abundant. The challenge of coal transportation also gave birth to railways, which were primarily used to carry coal to harbors (starting with the Stockton & Darlington Railway, which began operating in 1825). Because of the high cost of haulage, industrial coal consumers, including iron and steel companies, manufacturers, and glassmakers, moved to the coalfields. A truly new landscape emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century: the industrial districts that were coalfields too.

"King Coal" was not present everywhere in continental Europe, however. Six major coalfields formed a "coal arc" between northern France and the eastern Ruhr. The oldest exploited fields were those alongside the Haine, Sambre, and Meuse Rivers in Wallonia (Belgium). The French Valenciennes basin extended from this so-called Belgian Borinage and has been mined since as early as the 1750s. Because of prohibitive transportation costs, however, Valenciennes coal was consumed locally until 1845 when it could be shipped by canal to Paris. From that time onward, new coal mines were opened in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, as well as in Lorraine. There were other coalfields in central France that have been associated with regional industrialization, including Le Creusot, Saint-Étienne, Decazeville, and Carmaux. Compared to Britain and Germany, France was disadvantaged not only in terms of coal location and quantities but above all in terms of coal quality. France lacked coal suitable for coke and had to import it from Britain and from the Ruhr. In the German Empire the main coalfields were located in the Saar district, the Ruhr, and Upper Silesia (now in Poland), the huge basins in the latter two

regions ruled by the Prussian government. The Ruhr was the most impressive industrial basin in nineteenth-century Europe. Industrialization started after 1815 when the Ruhr took advantage of the Prussian kingdom's industrial support and the establishment of the Zollverein monetary union. The high quality of coal seams and the discovery of a perfect coking coal near Essen dictated the location of the German iron and steel industry. In fact one of the main characteristics of industry in the Ruhr was the early integration of collieries and ironworks in single large firms during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Ruhr was also characterized by the formation of cartels such as the Rheinisch-westfälisches Kohlensyndikat (Rhineland-Westphalia Coal Syndicate), a coal-trading cartel created in 1893.

Productivity in coal mining mainly depended on geological factors. In the period from 1874 to 1878, for instance, the annual output in metric tons per worker varied from 135 tons in Belgium, to 154 in France, 209 in Germany, and 270 in the United Kingdom; Upper Silesia, meanwhile, enjoyed the highest productivity in Europe. If technological improvements contributed to increase output and productivity from the late eighteenth century onward, coal mining remained a labor-intensive sector. In order to improve productivity, new technologies were introduced. The "long-wall method" of laying out coal replaced the older pillar-and-stall techniques in the early nineteenth century. Coal shafts received special attention from engineers. New methods of sinking and consolidating shafts were introduced, while cages progressively replaced baskets for coal raising and for ferrying workers. Shafts usually reached 800 to 1,000 meters (2,600 to 3,280 feet) deep in the mid-nineteenth century. To reach such depths, increasingly powerful steam engines were introduced for pumping water from the bottom of the shaft, for ventilating underground galleries, and for haulage. Good ventilation of underground galleries and coal faces was necessary not only for the activity of workers and horses, but also for preventing the accumulation of gas and firedamp explosions. It was for this reason that safety lamps replaced candlesticks from the 1820s onward. The first safety lamp, invented by Sir Humphry Davy in 1815, was quickly adopted in British collieries as well as those in Belgium. Davy's safety lamp received major improvements by Mathieu Mueseler in Belgium and Jean-Baptiste Marsaut in France. As far as mechanical ventilating was concerned, various types of mechanical ventilator fans were introduced between the 1830s and 1850s, but the ventilator invented by the Belgian engineer Armand Guibal was largely adopted in Europe by the mid-nineteenth century. Horses progressively replaced pit boys (and girls) for underground haulage from the 1820s onward. Pneumatic boring machines were introduced in the late 1850s, and a new rock drill (the Dubois-François rock drill) debuted in the 1870s. Some attempts were also made in the 1860s to introduce coal-cutting machinery, but these efforts were not successful until the introduction of electricity in underground galleries. Electricity, the

last major technical improvement of the nineteenth century, was introduced in the 1880s for lighting, pumping, and underground haulage.

All these improvements and the development of coal mining itself were stimulated by public authorities. On the Continent, the French Revolution had abolished the ancien régime mining legislation. A law enacted on 28 July 1791 declared coal and ore mines to be at the disposal of the nation. Only the state could give a mining concession. The Conseil des mines de la République (Council of mines of the Republic) was placed in charge of inspecting and encouraging the adoption of new technologies. On April 1810 new legislation reinforced the fundamental principles of the previous one and became the model for mining legislation in Belgium, part of Germany, Italy, and Spain. The French legislation continues to be in force in the early twenty-first century.

See alsoIndustrial Revolution, First; Industrial Revolution, Second.

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RenÉ Leboutte