Abstract
The Witbank district became South Africa’s biggest coal supplier during the early decades of the twentieth-century and it is still the largest contributor to the country’s coal output. To date, numerous studies have detailed the development of the district’s mining industry, but there has been no historical explanation for how the district came to assume such a position in the country’s mining economy. This thesis provides a historical explanation for the district’s rise to biggest coal producer by investigating the role of labour, science and technology in the growth of its mining industry. It uses a historical perspective to explore the role of cartographic and geological knowledge, mining engineering, railways, and labour in the development of the Witbank Labour District. The study uses a combination of archival sources and draws on relevant literature from environmental history and the history of science and technology as well as the history of mining to demonstrate the role of scientific institutions and experts in the making of the Witbank Coalfield. It seeks to illustrate that the district’s rise to prominence was enabled by the cartographic representation of farms in ways that explicitly related their surface environments to the coal deposits that lay beneath them. It argues that the creation of the Witbank Labour District was enabled by the interaction between cartographic and geological knowledge, mining methods and machines, railway construction and expansion, and the availability of labour.
M.A. (Historical Studies)