ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the economic development of the Scots coalfields after 1870: to demonstrate their chronologically and spatially uneven exploitation, their differing market positions and the varying scale of their productive units. It considers the other key actors within the industry. Although coal had been mined in Scotland since at least the medieval period, the first phase of modern mining began in the eighteenth century to fuel Scotland's growing industrialisation, particularly the iron industry, as well as the domestic market created by an increasing urban population. The second phase was marked by the application of the 'hot blast' smelting process after 1828, which permitted the coal-fired smelting of the rich deposits of blackband ironstone in north-east Lanarkshire. The third phase of the industry's development extended from the early 1870s to the First World War: both the tonnage mined and the numbers employed in the Scottish coal industry roughly doubled in this period.
