History
The Jiu Valley is Romania’s principal coal mining region. Two other areas in Romania have some surface mining, while the Jiu Valley contains deep shaft underground mines. While providing only 12% of the Romania’s supply of coal, the Jiu Valley is the only region in Romania both completely urbanized and reliant on a single industry. Coal mining has been long been the heart and economic lifeline for the Jiu Valley. The development of coal mining started in the Jiu Valley about 150 years ago around the middle of the 19th century when Polish, Czech and German workers were brought from all parts of the Habsburg Empire to work in the coal mines. The mines were privately owned until 1948, when all private companies were nationalized by the Communist government. As part of Romania’s reparations to the Soviet Union for its wartime alliance with Germany, the Romanian coal mines were also nationalized and converted into joint Soviet-Romanian companies (SovRoms). These Sovroms continued for about ten years.
Read more about this topic: Jiu Valley
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)