Friday, March 29, 2013

Industrial revolution: Continental frontrunner Belgium


Belgium was the second country, after Britain, in which the industrial revolution took place and the first in continental Europe. Starting in the middle of the 1810s, and expanding rapidly  after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830, numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as iron works were built in the coal mining areas around Liège and Charleroi. Wallonia (French speaking southern Belgium) was the first region to follow the British model - pioneered from 1760 onward - successfully. The industrialization of Belgium precedes the generally accepted second industrial revolution, when this way of large scale production spread across Europe and Northern America from around 1860 onwards. The second industrial revolution  -according to most historians - started with the invention of steel production by Henry Bessemer in 1855. This Bessemer-process made mass production of steel possible. He also applied himself, unsuccessfully, to the mechanized large scale production of sheet glass.

The groundwork for this was laid by King William I, who had a keen eye for business en invested heavily in industrial activity in the south of his country (the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that encompassed the present day Benelux). He founded the Generale Maatschappij (later: Société Générale de Belgique) in 1822 and the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Dutch Trade Company) in 1824. He was very involved in improving existing canals, constructing locks and digging new shipping canals. Some like the Zuid-Willemsvaart still bare his name. King William I also supported William Cockerill in building the largest steam engine plant in Seraing near Liège in 1817. Cockerills company went on to build the first Belgian steamboat in 1820 and the first continental steam locomotive in 1835.
Industrialization had already started during the French occupation of the Low Countries during the first decades of the nineteenth century. These developments were isolated and involved mainly the mechanization of older industries such as cloth making, weaving, saw-milling and the production of cast iron and wrought iron. The locality not seldom the site  of earlier exploitation. In the Borinage region of Wallonia mining started early on (before 1700). The region even gets its name from this; borin or borain means miner in French. The equivalent in the local Picardian dialect is bohren.

The rapid development of extraction and production industries also meant a great demand for workers, supervisors, technical specialists, engineers, etcetera. More often than not the local population was not sufficient to meet demand, which lead to significant migration. The workers had to be provided with housing. Some early examples of this can be found in La Grand Hornu (1810) in Boussu near Mons and Bois du Luc (1838) in Houdeng-Aimeries near La Louvière.

The industry in the so-called Sillon Industriel  (the Industrial Valley) brought much wealth to Belgium, and it was the economic core of the young country. This continued until after World War II, when the importance of Belgian steel, coal and industry began to diminish. This Industrial Valley ran from Mons (Bergen) via Charleroi, Namur (Namen) and Liège (Luik) to Verviers and closely followed a large seam of coal. Beyond Verviers zinc mines were situated around Plombières, Kelmis and Moresnet. Another coal seam is to be found more to the north. This coalfield extends into Germany via the Netherlands and is known as the Mijnstreek. Even further north is the large German coalfield in the Ruhr-basin.



The coalfields in Belgium and The Netherlands are a part of a larger area with coal that runs from Pas-de-Calais (1) in the north of France via the Borinage and Carbonage Central (2), the Meuse basin at Liège (3), the Mijnstreek (4) and the Peel-basin (5) tot the Ruhr-basin (6). The Z signifies the location of several zinc mines.

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