>I've envisaged the hewers
>hailing from the Durham coalfield
Jon,
My feeling is that, left to their own devices, a bunch of late 19th century
coal miners from Co. Durham wouldn't have any idea how to tackle an iron
deposit in Spain. Fair enough they could supply the muscle power but they
would need to be supervised by someone familiar with hard rock mining and
the peculiarities of the Spanish deposits. Maybe I'm wrong but the only
reason a British entrepreneur in Spain would choose to import his own
manpower would be similar to that today, when Brits. employ builders from
the UK to make a mess of their villas in the sun - they just couldn't
comprehend the local workforce.
Seriously though, there was significant British investment in some areas of
continental European mining, and the consequent employment of British
managers and engineers, from the mid 19th century onward but was there
really any value in employing British miners on British wages?
Peter
______________________________________________
Dr Peter Claughton,
Blaenpant Morfil, nr. Rosebush, Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 07831 427599
University of Exeter - School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
(Centre for South Western Historical Studies)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
_____________________________________________
|