Andrea Pokludová and Petr Popelka From the “steel heart of Czechoslovakia” to post-industrial space: Boom, crisis and the cultural heritage of the Ostrava-Karviná mining district Outline of the economic development of the Ostrava-Karviná mining district before 1948 The Ostrava-Karviná mining district is the most significant black coal mining area in the Czech Republic that contains 90 percent of local deposits of black coal. This district is a part of the Upper-Silesian coal district, the majority of which is located in neighbouring Poland. The whole area covers approximately 7,000 square kilometres, of which about 1,550 are located in the Czech Repub- lic. The total area of the coal mine amounts to 320 square kilometres. Regular coal mining activity was launched in the mining district in the 1780s and 1790s, however, only to a very limited extent. Until the 1830s, coal mining grew very slowly and at an irregular pace with a maximum of 6,000 tonnes per year in the 1820s. In the 1830s, the region was still an agricultural area where coal mining played only a minor role. 1 The foundation of the Vítko- vice ironworks (Rudolfshütte) in 1828 was a primary incentive caused by the quickly growing demand for coal and was an impulse towards the development of the Ostrava-Karviná coal mining district. 2 In 1847, the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was extended from Ostrava to neighbouring Bohumín and thus brought a first-class transport connection to the Ostrava region. For the black coal from Ostrava, it also paved the way to distant markets in Vienna, Pest or in the Moravian sugar refinery regions. 3 1 Popelka, Petr, Renata Popelková, and Monika Mulková. 2016. Black or Green Land? Industri- alisation and Landscape Changes of the Ostrava-Karviná Mining District in the 19th and 20th Century. Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita, 32–33. 2 Myška, Milan. 1960. Založení a počátky vítkovických železáren 1828–1880 [Foundation and Beginnings of the Vítkovice Ironworks 1828–1880]. Ostrava: Krajské nakladatelství v Ostravě. 3 Popelka, Petr. 2015. “The Transport Revolution and Austrian Silesia 1742–1914.” In Creating an Interdisciplinary Paradigm Using the Example of Modernization in a Region (Austrian Silesia). Contributions for the XVII th World Economic History Congress in Kyoto, Japan from 1 to 7 Au- gust 2015, edited by Aleš Zářický, and Michaela Závodná, 79–95. Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita; https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110729948-012