A forthcoming three-part essay series I'm working on about the history of mining. As it stands, there are many specialist studies on the history of mining and a lot of generalizations about mining history as an introduction or component of investigations of other subjects, but there is a striking lack of clearly delineated overviews of this field of human activity. This series aims to fix this by providing a look at the 'global' history of mining.

Once the series is completed (hopefully in the next six months or so), I'll post the entire run as a single essay, with proper citations, as well as an introduction and conclusion.

Between the end of World War I and the collapse of the Prusso-German monarchy in 1918 and the stabilization of the Republic in 1923, the Ruhr region underwent some of the most serious political whiplash of anywhere in the Reich. As Germany's preeminent industrial region, expectations were high for sweeping social transformations after war ended, nowhere more-so than in the region's coalmines. Always politically maverick, the Ruhr's coalminers took an increasingly revolutionary stance, spearheaded by the anarcho-syndicalist "Free Mineworkers' Union." The Ruhr's miners attempted to realize their prewar and wartime aspirations for a more democratic and egalitarian government, eventually culminating in a direct armed confrontation with the Republican government in March and April 1920. The failure of this uprising and of their broader movement did as much as any other single situation to undermine the new government of Germany among its core working-class supporters.

This forthcoming series of essays takes the subject matter of my dissertation and presents it in a more popularly oriented format. As with the essays on mining, a final version will be posted as a revised PDF, with proper citations. Expect these to be posted within the next year.