Britain without coal

[TinCow]

But would they have developed coal-based technologies without any coal under home soil? I don't think they'd've mined and shipped tons of the black stuff simply to see if it was any use.

Science doesn't fail to advance simply because there aren't large quantities of the substance around for industrial use. The existence and combustibility of coal was well-known throughout the world even in ancient times. It didn't become a big deal until the industrial era because the need for large-scale heat production, of the kind enabled by coal, simply did not exist before the invention of the steam engine. It was the steam engine itself that made coal important, not vice versa. Early steam engines actually ran off of wood, not coal, so a coal shortage would not have stifled its invention. Once production of steam engines ramped up, the need for large quantities of fuel for them was inevitable, and the search for that fuel was also inevitable. As coal was well-known throughout the world, it was an obvious resource to turn to. Britain would have noted their need for the substance and started importing it. It's really no different than any other resource Britain traded in. Textile production was a major part of the British economy, but Britain was not capable of producing much cotton. As a result, they produced it in their colonies (first the US, then India) and imported it to keep the mills running. Similarly, Britain did not have enough old-growth timber to support its own shipbuilding industry. As a result, they bought their wood from the Baltic and, later, their North American colonies. So, Britain already had a history of reliance upon imports of resources to sustain its own economy and military long before coal even entered the picture.

Importing really is not all that difficult, and I think you err when you assume that lack of availability of a local resource would impact the course of industrial development. There are very, very few situations in which that kind of scenario occurs. An example is helium. Helium's properties were well-known to the world, but it was a very scarce resource and basically only the United States was capable of producing it prior to WW2. The US monopoly on that resource was actually enforced at a legislative level, where the government banned all foreign sales of helium for military reasons. As a result, Germany was unable to obtain enough helium for its zeppelin fleet and we all know what happened as a result of their substitution of hydrogen. However, that is a scenario in which basically all of the world's supply of helium (at that point) was controlled by a single nation that refused to export it. The same was never true of coal, particularly not for Britain which controlled some of the world's largest reserves in her colonies, even if her own domestic supply somehow vanished.

[Makrell]

IT mightve gone different, but Water was the defining power here, Germany was divided and could probably catch up faster, but not that much.
France mightve ran ahead though, and belgium would probably have been dominated more by its neighbours, if britian culd get the belgian coal they mightve made it anyhow.

[Brandy Blue]

@ Tin Cow

Perhaps cars and the gasoline are a similar example, at least to some extent? AFAIK the first car that ran on gasoline was made in Austria, which doesn't have any oil refineries that I have ever heard of. Later America became a superpower, which certainly has oil, but depends heavily on imported oil.

The parallel is not exact, of course. The US does not possess a lot of handy colonies with plenty of oil, and the oil trade is much more tightly regulated by the producing nations than coal ever was.

[Catiline]

Early steam engines actually ran off of wood, not coal, so a coal shortage would not have stifled its invention.

THat's the case in the US, but it's not in the UK, steam engines ran mainly on coal right from the start. Smeaton, and Boulton and Watts engines all ran on coal.

[TinCow]

THat's the case in the US, but it's not in the UK, steam engines ran mainly on coal right from the start. Smeaton, and Boulton and Watts engines all ran on coal.

I was not talking about on an actual production level but rather on an invention/prototype level. My point was that the lack of coal would not have prevented the invention of the steam engine. Certainly its use as an industrial product required coal, but at that point the need for large quantities of coal would have been known and the coal would have been procured from imports if it could not have been procured domestically.

[El Barto]

Very probably so. I'd forgotten about the Lancashire mills and their imports of cotton from al over the (English-dominated) world.

[Catiline]

Smeaton and Baulton Watts were the prototypes.

You're probably right that the technology would have been invented separately, but a big driver for the development of early steam was the need to drain mines so it's all a bit chicken and egg.

[Greyblades]

As others have pointed out, it's unlikely that the lack of local coal would have been a particular detriment to Great Britain technologically or otherwise.
I believe that history would have carried on as it did up until the great wars, in both cases Britain's ability to import was hampered by both iterations of Germany's navy. The absence of local coal on top of all the other material shortages could have been enough to affect it's performances, if not in the first, certainly it would have made the second world war a much more close affair perhaps even spelling defeat for the still somewhat coal reliant Royal navy.

[El Barto]

I've belatedly realised that one must also wonder what'd've happened to Thatcher's government if she hadn't had any coal miners on home soil to rail against.