| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2 | The History Cooperative

*When Coal Was King: Ladysmith and the Coal-Mining Industry on Vancouver Island.* By John R. Hinde. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003. viii + 277 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $85.00, cloth; $29.95, paper.)
John R. Hinde has written an engaged, subtle, and provocative account of coal miners on Vancouver Island. His study focuses on the years 1898–1913 and on the mines in the vicinity of Ladysmith, but it includes context that illuminates the history of the industry throughout the island. Hinde takes issue with the "alleged radicalism and militancy" of British Columbia miners and, drawing on historians John Belshaw and Ian McKay, fashions an analysis that focuses on class and community and portrays miners as independent artisans struggling to preserve their traditional position within a capitalist system against the encroachments of mine management and owners (p. 4).	1
The miners, Hinde argues, felt sufficient community of interest with mine management that in the 1890s they supported conservative, anti-union, mine-management candidates in the provincial legislature. As British Columbia's political system became more polarized after 1900, and as the state increasingly sided with the mine owners, miners shifted their support to moderate socialist candidates. But their support for socialism was at best lukewarm, and they remained reformers, not revolutionaries.	. . .

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