Coal Mining And Rural Livelihoods In Shanxi (1920-1960)

In the traditional period,a diversified economy,which combines agriculture and non-agriculture elements,is formed in many rural areas of Shanxi.Shanxi is known as the "Home of Coal," and it is self-evident that coal,as the most advantageous resource of Shanxi,plays an important role in Shanxi’s social economy.Shanxi is a big coal province.The previous coal researches of Shanxi were mostly focused on such aspects as the history of coal mining,modern mining campaigns,and Japan’s enslavement of coal workers in Shanxi,and so on.However,it paid less attention to the relevant issues related to coal resource development and rural social economy.As a mountainous area of which the mountain land stands more than 80% in the whole area,there exists a large number of villages with poor agricultural production conditions but rich coal resources in Shanxi Province.Using the newly discovered archives and adopting the case study of Shicun County in Xiyang County,Shanxi Province,this paper mainly discusses the relationship between coal mining and household economy before and after the land reform,as well as the relationship between coal mining and village collectives after the advanced cooperative,whereby recognizing that coal mining has an important influence on the family economy of ordinary people before and after the land reform,as well as forms a traditional continuation.In the period of the land reform,the redistribution of land has a smaller impact on the family economy as such villages compared with the villages dominated by agriculture.Until entering the advanced cooperative,the impact of the coal mining industry upon individual villagers’ households gradually changes into the influence upon the village collectives.All of this has a prominent academic significance for deepening the researches of Shanxi coal history,rural social economic history and land reform researches.