In the Heart of Coal Country

Anzin is a commune in the Nord department of Hauts-de-France, long defined by its role as the earliest coal-extraction site in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin. The great miners' strike of 1884 — the movement that inspired Emile Zola's Germinal — unfolded here, ultimately contributing to the Waldeck-Rousseau law that legalized trade unions. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Anzin's coal pits and later metallurgical works made it one of the industrial engines of the Valenciennes region. Its mining landscape, terrils and workers' districts remain central to the identity of the commune. - AsNotedIn