The history of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today. Due to coal's strong contribution to global warming and environmental issues, coal is generally seen as a high impact fossil fuel. However, global demand consistently grows.
Compared to wood fuels, coal yields a higher amount of energy per unit mass (sometimes known as specific energy or massic energy) and can often be obtained in areas where wood is not readily available. Though it was used historically as a domestic fuel, coal is now used mostly in industry, especially in smelting and alloy production, as well as electricity generation. Large-scale coal mining developed during the Industrial Revolution, and coal provided the main source of primary energy for industry and transportation in industrial areas from the 18th century to the 1950s. Coal remains an important energy source.(stating that, "[c]oal consumption doubled every decade between 1850 and 1890" and that by turn of the century, "coal was the unrivaled foundation of U.S. Power," providing "71 percent of the nation's energy." Coal is also mined today on a large scale by open pit methods wherever the coal strata strike the surface or are relatively shallow. Britain developed the main techniques of underground coal mining from the late 18th century onward, with further progress being driven by 19th-century and early 20th-century progress. However, oil and gas were increasingly used as alternatives from the 1860s onward.
By the late 20th century, coal was, for the most part, replaced in domestic as well as industrial and transportation usage by oil, natural gas or electricity produced from oil, gas, nuclear power or renewable energy sources. By 2010, coal produced over a fourth of the world's energy.
Since 1890, coal mining has also been a political and social issue. Coal miners' labour and trade unions became powerful in many countries in the 20th century, and often, the miners were leaders of the Left or Socialist movements (as in Britain, Germany, Poland, Japan, Chile, Canada and the U.S.)Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (2002); Frederic Meyers, European Coal Mining Unions: structure and function (1961) p. 86; Kazuo and Gordon (1997) p 48; Hajo Holborn, History of Modern Germany (1959) p. 521; David Frank, J. B. McLachlan: A Biography: The Story of a Legendary Labour Leader and the Cape Breton Coal Miners, (1999) p, 69; David Montgomery, The fall of the house of labor: the workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865–1925 (1991) p. 343. Since 1970, environmental issues have been increasingly important, including the health of miners, destruction of the landscape from strip mines and mountaintop removal, air pollution, and coal combustion's contribution to global warming.
Early history Prehistoric times
Early coal extraction was small-scale, the coal lying either on the surface, or very close to it. Typical methods of extraction included drift mining and bell pits. As well as drift mines, small scale shaft mining was used. This took the form of a bell pit, the extraction working outward from a central shaft, or a technique called room and pillar, in which "rooms" of coal were extracted with pillars left to support the roofs. Both of these techniques however left a considerable amount of usable coal behind.
The oldest intentional use of black coal was documented in Petřkovice (Ostrava) in the Czech Republic, in a settlement from the older Stone Age on the top of Landek Hill. According to radiocarbon dating, the site falls within the period 25,000–23,000 years BCE.
Additionally, the 2019 Les Canalettes rockshelter Middle Paleolithic excavation high on the French Larzac plateau had evidence of brown (lignite) coal use by Neanderthals as a speculated supplement to extend wood use approximately 70,000 years ago. The coal source came from 10 to 15 km (6 to 10 miles) away and was found most abundant in the layered hearths at times when warm-loving tree species grew locally. Adding 500 g (1.1 lbs) of lignite will dramatically extend a fire's embers' life.Rebecca Wragg Sykes; Kindred Neanderthal Life, pp 182
Archeological evidence in China indicates surface mining of coal and household usage after approximately 3490 BCE.
The earliest reference to the use of coal in metalworking is found in the geological treatise On stones (Lap. 16) by the Greek scientist Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BCE):
The earliest known use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs who used coal for fuel and jet (a type of lignite) for ornaments. 1st to 13th centuries CE In Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting all major coalfields (save those of north Staffordshire and south Staffordshire) by the late 2nd century CE.Smith, A. H. V. (1997): "Provenance of Coals from Roman Sites in England and Wales", Britannia, Vol. 28, pp. 297–324 [322–324]. While much of its use remained local, a lively trade developed along the North Sea coast supplying coal to Yorkshire and London. This also extended to the continental Rhineland, where bituminous coal was already used for the smelting of iron ore. It was used in hypocausts to heat public baths, the baths in military forts, and the villas of wealthy individuals. Excavation has revealed coal stores at many forts along Hadrian's Wall as well as the remains of a smelting industry at forts such as Longovicium nearby.
After the Romans left Britain in 410 CE, there are few records of coal being used in the country until the end of the 12th century. One that does occur is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 852, when a rent including 12 loads of coal is mentioned in Lincolnshire.Giles, J. A. (trans) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, London, G Bell & Sons 1914. "At this time Ceolred, abbat of Medeshamstede [Peterborough] and the monks let to Wulfred the land of Sempringham, ... and each year [he] should deliver into the minster sixty loads of wood, and twelve of coal and six of faggots, and two tuns full of pure ale, and two beasts fit for slaughter, and six hundred loaves, and ten measures of Welsh ale, and each year a horse, and thirty shillings, and one day's entertainment." In 1183 a smith was given land for his work, and was required to "raise his own coal" Shortly after the granting of the Magna Carta, in 1215, coal began to be traded in areas of Scotland and north-east England, where the carboniferous strata were exposed on the seashore, and thus became known as "sea coal". This commodity, however, was not suitable for use in the type of domestic hearths then in use and was mainly used by artisans for lime burning, metal working and smelting. Slowly, coal-burning fireplaces and chimneys evolved in England. As early as 1228, sea coal from the north-east was being taken to London.Galloway (1882).
During the 13th century, the trading of coal increased across Britain and by the end of the century most of the coalfields in England, Scotland and Wales were being worked on a small scale. As the use of coal amongst the artisans became more widespread, it became clear that coal smoke was detrimental to health, and the increasing pollution in London led to much unrest and agitation. As a result of this, a royal proclamation was issued in 1306 prohibiting artificers of London from using sea coal in their furnaces and commanding them to return to the traditional fuels of wood and charcoal.
Marco Polo wrote about the widespread use of coal in Yuan dynasty China in the late 13th century in The Travels of Marco Polo, remarking that coal was the primary fuel of the land and that it helped support heated baths for the citizenry beyond what wood would be able to do.
14th to 17th centuries During the first half of the 14th century coal began to be used for domestic heating in coal producing areas of Britain, as improvements were made in the design of domestic hearths. Edward III was the first king to take an interest in the coal trade of the north east, issuing a number of writs to regulate the trade and allowing the export of coal to Calais. The demand for coal steadily increased in Britain during the 15th century, but it was still mainly being used in the mining districts, in coastal towns or being exported to continental Europe. However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.
In 1575, Sir George Bruce of Carnock of Culross, Scotland, opened the first coal mine to extract coal from a "moat pit" under the sea in the Firth of Forth. He constructed an artificial loading island into which he sank a 40 ft (12 metre) shaft that connected to another two shafts for drainage and improved ventilation. The technology was far in advance of any coal mining method in the late medieval period, and was considered one of the industrial wonders of the age..
During the 17th century a number of advances in mining techniques were made, such as the use of test boring to find suitable deposits and chain pumps, driven by water wheels, to drain the collieries.
People who sold wood, and those who preferred the smell of wood smoke to coal smoke, opposed the transition in England from wood to coal. One name these opponents gave to the new fuel was "the devil's excrement". If the coal had a high sulfur content, such a description was quite apt.Shellenberger, Michael, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2020, p. 123.
North American coal deposits were first discovered by French explorers and fur traders along the shores of Grand Lake in central New Brunswick, Canada in the 1600s. Coal seams were exposed where rivers flowed into the lake, and were dug by hand off the surface and from tunnels dug into the seam. About 1631 the French made their fur trading post at the mouth of the Saint John River their main post in Acadia and started construction of a new fort. The main residence at the fort was designed with two 11-foot-wide (3.4 metres) fireplaces which were stocked with wood and coal from upriver. As early as 1643, the French were shipping coal to Boston, the capital of the English Massachusetts Bay Colony. Coal Association of Canada, "Coal Kit, Coal Evolution module, Digging up the Past" http://www.coal.ca/coal-kit Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (monument in Minto, NB for earliest export of coal) http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=1012John Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649, Harvard University / Massachusetts Historical Society, 1996, p. 474 (Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor's description of their August 1643 receipt of a ship load of coal from 20 leagues up the Saint John River) M.A. MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, The Civil War in Acadia, Toronto, 1983 / Halifax, 2000, Chapter 8 (description of the 1640 use of "coal from up river" in the main residence of the French fort at the mouth of the Saint John River)
Industrial Revolution