Coal mining lasted a short time in Texas, while Coahuila’s coal mines have endured far longer, stimulating the industrialization of northern Mexico. However, during the 1880–1930 period coal mining in the two states not only coexisted but was closely connected. The goal of this book is to unite histories usually rent asunder by the compartmentalization of scholarship into U.S. or Mexican, indeed North American or Latin American categories. Roberto Calderón succeeds convincingly in that endeavor.
The major consumer of coal was railroads coursing through Texas and northern Mexico. (Coahuila coal was also good metallurgical coal while some Texas lignite deposits were used as heating fuel.) Because U.S. investors with Mexican allies developed these railroads and smelters, business networks were heavily interwoven across the international boundary. The mining engineers and their techniques were likewise much the same. Calderón thus offers a unified binational business...
