Towards A Comparative History Of Coalfield Societies

by Croll,Andy; Berger,Stefan

• ISBN13: 9780754637776
• ISBN10: 0754637778
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume transcends over-arching national models to focus instead on local coal mining societies that can then be compared and contrasted to similar communities elsewhere. Adopting a regional approach that compares coalfield communities from five continents, this volume reflects coalfield experiences on a truly global scale. By looking at what made communities unique as well as what they shared in common, a much fuller understanding of the workplace, neighbourhood, family, identity and political organization is possible.

Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface	vii
List of Figures	viii
List of Tables	ix
Introduction	1	(163)
Stefan Berger
1 So Many Cases but So Little Comparison: Problems of Comparing Mineworkers	12	(17)
Andrew Taylor
2 Two Faces of King Coal: the Impact of Historiographical Traditions on Comparative History in the Ruhr and South Wales	29	(14)
Stefan Berger and Neil Evans
3 The Myth of the Radical Miner	43	(22)
Dick Geary
4 Cameras in the Coalfields: Photographs as Evidence for Comparative Coalfield History	65	(21)
Janet Wells Greene
5 A Mining Film without a Disaster is like a Western without a Shoot-out: Representations of Coal Mining Communities in Feature Films	86	(13)
Bert Hogenkamp
6 Modernity or 'Slaves of the Lamp'? Independence and Control in Two State Coal Mining Communities in Victoria, Australia	99	(14)
Meredith Fletcher
7 A Comparison between the Richmond Coal Basin and Pennsylvania's Anthracite Fields: Slave Labour, Free Labour and the Political Economy	113	(14)
Sean Patrick Adams
8 Nigerian Coal Miners, Protest and Gender, 1914-49: the Iva Valley Mining Community	127	(19)
Carolyn A. Brown
9 Everyone Black? Ethnic, Class and Gender Identities at Street Level in a Belgian Mining Town, 1930-50	146	(18)
Leen Beyers
10 Outsiders: Trade Union Responses to Polish and Italian Coal Miners in Two British Coalfields, 1945-54	164	(13)
Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart
11 The Struggle for Polish Autonomy and the Question of Integration in the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1914	177	(14)
Brian McCook
12 Networking among Welsh Coal Miners in Nineteenth-century America	191	(13)
Ronald L. Lewis
13 Gender and Ethnicity in Japan's Chikuho Coalfield	204	(15)
W. Donald Smith
14 Coal Mining, Foreign Workers and Mine Safety: Steps towards European Integration, 1946-85	219	(19)
René Leboutte
15 A Moral Economy, an Isolated Mass and Paternalized Migrants: Transvaal Colliery Strikes, 1925-49	238	(15)
Peter Alexander
16 Trade Union Development in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890-1914	253	(14)
Leighton James
17 Coalfield Leaders, Trade Unionism and Communist Politics: Exploring Arthur Homer and Abe Moffat	267	(17)
John McIlroy and Alan Campbell
Index	284