More-than-class Struggle. Mines, Miners, Mineowners in Northern Bohemia in 19th and 20th century

"The history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles." With these words begins one of the most important political texts, the Communist Manifesto. The social conflict between the holders of the means of production and the workers was one of the key processes of the long 19th and 20th centuries, alongside national conflicts. Mining, which was at the source of the development of industrial society (coal), also occupied a specific position within the working class. Because of the difficulty of mining work, but also the dangers that came with it, it was often placed on the front line of class conflict and is often considered the most radical component of the labour movement. This radicalism, however, cannot be explained solely by the miners' position in capitalist production, but the everyday environmental aspect of their lives must also be examined.

Miners spent much of their lives underground in direct contact with coal and rock. Although engineers created the mine plans, it was the miners who ultimately shaped the form of the underground by their own power, who bit off more and more parts of the rock or soil and thus shaped the form of the landscape and so-called inanimate nature. But it was not a one-sided relationship. The miners had to learn how to move properly underground, their bodies changed, their way of speaking, acting and thinking. Coal dust settled on and in their bodies. Mines and the underground became a frequent topic of conversation over a beer, entering into dreams, keeping miners and family members awake, warning them of mining disasters, and becoming an integral part of a collectively shared mining culture.

The mining catastrophe, lasting a few seconds, was the result of the clash of two temporalities: the long geological time of coal formation, and the accelerated time of capitalist production, seeking to extract the mineral resources as quickly as possible. The mining catastrophe left behind hundreds of dead, orphans and widows. The mining catastrophe represented a key event in the class conflict and significantly affected its shape. Not only did it determine the key theme of the conflict (labour safety), but it also represented one of the sides of the conflict. The mining disaster also challenged existing relations, coalitions and hostilities. It made the two antagonistic parties (miners and coal miners) allies for a few hours in rescuing injured people and property, only to lead to even greater hostility between them. However, she herself shaped another side of the conflict while investigating who was to blame for the disaster. Could the capitalist logic of production have been to blame for the disaster, as the miners claimed? Or was it the fault of untamed and wild nature, as the coal miners claimed? With these questions, too, mines and mining disasters entered into a form of class conflict, where a single catastrophe could profoundly transform who was the one in control or the one in resistance in the complex relationship between miners, coal miners and the underground.

The history of mining is the history of class conflict. But it is also a complex history of inter-species conflict, resistance and alliance. We cannot fully understand this history unless we examine the role played by rocks, mines, coal dust, methane or pickaxe. Thus, they also pose a challenge to the interconnection of classical social histories of labour, environmental history and more-than-human anthropology.