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.

Contents: Introduction, Stefan Berger; So many cases but so little comparison: problems of comparing mineworkers, Andrew Taylor; Two faces of King Coal: the impact of historiographical traditions on comparative history in the Ruhr and South Wales, Stefan Berger and Neil Evans; The myth of the radical miner, Dick Geary; Cameras in the coalfields: photographs as evidence for comparative coalfield history, Janet Wells Greene; A mining film without a disaster is like a Western without a shoot-out: representations of coal mining communities in feature films, Bert Hogenkamp; Modernity or 'slaves of the lamp'? Independence and control in two state coal mining communities in Victoria, Australia, Meredith Fletcher; A comparison between the Richmond coal basin and Pennsylvania's anthracite fields: slave labour, free labour and the political economy, Sean Patrick Adams; Nigerian coal miners, protest and gender, 1914-49: the Iva Valley mining community, Carolyn A. Brown; Everyone black? Ethnic, class and gender identities at street level in a Belgian mining town, 1930-50, Leen Beyers; Outsiders: trade union responses to Polish and Italian coal miners in two British coalfields, Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart; The struggle for Polish autonomy and the question of integration in the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1914, Brian McCook; Networking among Welsh coal miners in 19th-century America, Ronald L. Lewis; Gender and ethnicity in Japan's Chikuho coalfield, W. Donald Smith; Coal mining, foreign workers and mine safety: steps towards European integration, 1946-85, René Leboutte; A moral economy, an isolated mass and paternalized migrants: Transvaal colliery strikes, 1925-49, Peter Alexander; Trade union development in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890-1914, Leighton James; Coalfield leaders, trade unionism and communist politics: exploring Arthur Horner and Abe Moffat, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell; Index.