Vol I, 2022

Abstract. After the Great War the European coal mining had to manage many new, sometimes unexpected challenges. Each country settled them in its own way. France was a leading industrial power in Europe, but the inadequate state of coal reserves represented the weak and sensible point of the French economy. During the Great War, the German Empire considered that the lack of combustible in France could facilitate the military victory, so that the troops occupying Northern France worked out and accomplished a detailed plan to destroy all available coal mines and in this way the coal output dropped in this region from 18.663.526 metric tones in 1913 to only 581.396 metric tons in 1919. There were great damages in the french coal mines so that France intended to pretend at the Versailles peace conference great war indemnities from Germany, including huge amounts of coal compulsory deliveries that raised to 20 million metric tons annually in the first five years after the war. Besides, the coal rich Alsace-Lorraine province was rejoined to France and the even wealthier Saar region was connected for 15 years to the French customs area. But Germany was very reluctant to fulfill the compulsory deliveries and therefore the French and Belgian army occupied the coal-supplier Ruhr region in 1923 and distrained upon all coal-stocks and stopped the functioning of iron work. So Germany eventually was forced to restart the coal shipments and supplied as many as 100 million tons to France between 1920 and 1930. In this way, the coal provision of the French economy grew up sensibly after the war. In 1913 France produced 40.8 million tons of coal, exported 1.8 million tons and imported 23.7 million tons, so that domestic consumption represented 62.7 million tons. But the middle average of the 1925-1929 years raised the production to 55 million tons (with the great contribution of Alsace-Lorraine province), with 2.6 million tons exported coal, and average imports of 36.7 million tons (including war indemnities and supplies from Saar region), summarizing a total consumption of 89.1 million tons. In this way the personal coal consumption for a year went up in France from 1.63 tons to 2.31 tons between 1913-1929, coming as fourth in Europe. The quick growth of domestic coal output was enhanced by the forceful action of the French government and the employers associations who succeeded to apply emergency measures for the fast recovery of the devastated mines in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments. One created special offices as the Ministry of the Liberated Regions. Other boards were set up by the Ministry of Commerce. The reconstructed exploitments were outfit with up-to-date equipment produced by the industrial engineering of the highest level in the world. Electric power was used at all levels of extraction, preparing of coal and the supplementary services. Besides, the coal enterprises built up an ever growing number of electric power stations and produced an increasing amount of coal-gas and coke. So one can say that the chemical processing of stone coal was very thoroughly promoted releasing all sorts of derivative by-products.

Keywords: coal industry, coal mining, France, Germany, industral recovery, inter-war period