Coal: The Rise and Fall of King Coal in New Zealand

by Matthew Wright

Coal was the heroic fuel of New Zealand's 19th and early 20th centuries, the fuel on which the colony grew - the stuff that made possible the heating, cooking and lighting essential to family life, a lifestyle exalted during two World Wars and a depression. The hero fuel; pivotal, essential, exalted even as everybody grumbled about the mess it made. Then, suddenly, as the 20th century grew old and cynical, it wasn't. The fall from grace that was, at first, driven by convenience became, as the twentieth century turned into the twenty-first, a death spiral as coal was back in mind again, recognised - and demonised - as one of the most prolific generators of greenhouse gases around. Yet, as coal was vilified, NZ's production climbed steeply and the race was on to extract more and more to fuel exports to booming economies. Then demand fell sharply and Pike River reminded the nation that coal mining was as dangerous as ever it was in centuries past.

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2014

About the author

Matthew Wright has qualifications in music, history and anthropology, among other fields, holds postgraduate degrees in history, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. He published his first short story in 1976 and since the early 1980s has worked extensively as a writer, professional historian, reviewer and journalist. His work includes more than 500 articles, academic papers and reviews, and over 50 books on topics from travel guides to biography, engineering, earthquakes, transport, military and social history. He has a particular interest in the sciences.

Reviews

[TXGAL1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at the coal industry of New Zealand.

While coal was the White Knight of the settler era of New Zealand, spurring the growth of improved ways of life via fuel for cooking, heating, electricity, and transportation coal became the Darth Vader due to coal forming a separate society of people—miners who were vilified; health issues brought about by the coal dust; and worst of all, the gargantuan contributor to ecological change and global warming.

[Bevan Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its surprising that a general history of coal in New Zealand hasn't been written before, and given the tumultuous events of the past few years it is timely. From the incredible boom in production fuelled by the Chinese commodity hunger of the past two decades, to the Cave Creek tragedy, then now (not covered in the book) the state coal company going into receivership, now is a good time to look at the context of these events.
Matthew Wright is a good clear writer, and pulls together primary and secondary sources to look at coal from geological origins, through fuelling the industrial revolution to the mixed views of it today. I felt the book sometimes was a bit high level, and could have done with more specific narrative explaining how coal was worked. The political and social context was well described but sometimes it felt as though the details of the coal industry itself were a bit glossed over. It would have been good to have much more detailed descriptions of the process of coal extraction, more details of life in coal communities and a bit more detail about the process of nationalisation.
The book is well edited, the only annoyance being the gross overuse of the word dissonance!
These are minor quibbles - for the general reader this book provides a good overview of the importance of coal in developing New Zealand, in our politics and economy and hints of its uncertain future.