Stump on Historical Beginnings: Appalachian Coal and the Coming of Industrial Capitalism

Nicholas Stump, West Virginia College of Law, has published Historical Beginnings: Appalachian Coal and the Coming of Industrial Capitalism.

This chapter provides an overview of the core historical events that shaped modern Appalachia. After a brief section detailing the essential geographic and natural resource profile of the region, the development of human communities in Appalachia is explored—commencing with Indigenous peoples and extending through the Euro-American conquest and colonization. The general character of preindustrial Appalachia then is covered, before this chapter turns to the late nineteenth-century period of rapid timber- and coal-based industrial growth. Indeed, the coming of industrialized coal and other industries—which occurred within the broader context of period liberal capitalism—would, in short order, create profoundly negative social, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions in Appalachia. This period’s developments also set the stage for the subsequent century and a half; that is, from the late 1800s onwards, the fossil fuel hegemony would form the cornerstone of the profoundly exploitative Appalachian ecological political economy.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.