Briey
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
BASIN OF, a rich mineral district in Lorraine, close to the former frontier between France and Germany, on the railway that runs due west from Verdun to Metz. It is the greatest iron producing district in the world. In 1916 the mines of the Briey basin produced nearly 42,000,000 tons. At that time the district was in the hands of the German invaders. Had not the rush of the German armies in 1914 gained possession of the district, Germany would never have been able to prolong the war, for during the conflict it produced 80 per cent. of the steel for the German armament. Had Germany won, it was the announced purpose of her rulers to make the possession of the district one of the terms of peace. The Basin of Briey runs from the Belgium-Luxemburg frontier up the left bank of the Moselle at an average distance of 10 miles from the river. It has an area of 225 square miles, its greatest length being 35 miles and its greatest breadth 21 miles. The boundary line between France and Germany cut the district nearly in two. At the outbreak of the war, Germany was mining about 21,000,000 tons annually from her part of the Basin and France 15,000,- 000. All through the conflict Germany was adding the French production to her own, and in addition was mining about 6,000,000 tons from that part of the district that reached over into Luxemburg. It gave her an incalculable advantage in the struggle. The Treaty of Peace with Germany put the Briey district under the control of France.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the Briey basin was "the greatest iron producing district in the world" and had just been returned wholly to France by the Treaty of Versailles. The ore was the phosphoric "minette" of Lorraine, and it kept the region's mines and blast furnaces going for another half century before cheap, richer imported ore from Sweden, Brazil and Australia made it uncompetitive; pit after pit shut through the 1960s to 1980s, and the last iron mine in Lorraine closed in 1997. Briey today is a quiet administrative town in Meurthe-et-Moselle, since 2017 part of the merged commune of Val de Briey, better known to visitors for Le Corbusier's Unite d'habitation, built there in the early 1960s for a mining and steel workforce that has since vanished. The military argument in the entry outlived the industry: French historians spent decades on the "Briey scandal", the question of why the basin's furnaces feeding German armaments were never bombed.
Written for this edition, 2026.