unlikely that this aspect of the industrial "take off" must problematize much more than it commonly happens that he can not last lane to the world-historical perspective in a relatively short phase of industrial society in a broader historical context. For much more typical than the example of England and the discussion about Asian ways of proto-industrialization is an example of the Netherlands: in the late early modern highly urbanized, with a modern industry, a highly progressive financial sector and an intense involvement in world trade - but not place an industrial revolution. Rather, the development stopped in the 18th Century, relatively abruptly, so that the country of England surpassed only by England and the outgoing impulses 19th Century to be as wide as other industrialized parts of the continent.
Wrigley argues that the history of the Netherlands, the fundamental limits of an "organic economy" makes clear. In an "organic economy" companies obtain their energy from plant photosynthesis, ie from a relatively inefficient conversion of sunlight. The stored energy in plants consumed as food (for humans and animals) or heat (by burning wood or charcoal). Wind power in contrast, played only in the long distance at sea an important role hydropower remained completely marginal. Since every form of economic growth in the consumption of energy requires must, even if you just want to replace human labor by animal, additional energy (for example, is stored in oats) are provided. An organic economy needs a big part of the energy resources available to it to keep people and animals alive, until beyond this energy is supplied to you, real people, only after much more energy is available, they can Feeding the animals and to perform work use.
Under these conditions, the growth is restricted by the limitation of land. More animals in agriculture and transport use, you have to grow to a larger area of oats. This area is firstly not for cultivation of wood (for heating, glass blowing and iron smelting) or other types of grains (for people) are available, and they must, secondly, in turn, using are from energy harvested and crossed to bring the food to the user what usually results in the price of an energy source rose steeply with increasing distance, so that the transport of energy over long distances is not worthwhile.
Wrigley began by explaining that even under the conditions of an organic economy are feedback effects that induce a (modest) economic growth: population growth, high urbanization level, owing to the concentrated within narrow geographic areas demand the expansion of transport infrastructure (highways and most of all channels) promotes and performs the shift of employment from rural to urban areas to a rise in real wages. This in turn promotes the demand for industrial goods produced - but also the energy requirements, resulting in the development of a rule by a negative feedback loop to terminate. This happened in the Netherlands, where the decomposition of peat allowed only to meet the increasing energy demand in the short term from small areas.
Is well known in the English industrial revolution happened otherwise. The use of coal, which generated virtually no demand for land, allowed to set the rules of the organic economy (temporarily) suspended and that the negative feedback effect (temporarily) to avoid. The decisive factor was, Wrigley, that England quite early revealed a significant portion of its energy needs from coal. The transport from the Tyne to London region was relatively inexpensive and came to the construction of railways, because coal could be transported from point to point and not - like wood - had to be transported from surface to point.
These were a series of favorable coincidences. As coal began to be scarce, the invention of the steam pump allowed access to deeper reserves, without that it would have required more forage area for draft animals to power pumps. The finding that heat energy obtained from coal and metal smelting not only houses, but also drive transport was allowed, the ever more extensive waiver of draft animals for trade and commerce as well as the mechanization of increasing numbers of industrial production.
Wrigley says the fact that the energetic industrial revolution took place in 1800 just in England, so with the long history of British coal consumption, already in the early 19th Century, a lot of ready made of energy, which would have been generated only by a forest, which the size of the island exceeded considerably. Thus, the relatively easy access to coal within easy reach of London, which became Europe's largest city, centrally located. Although he dates the actual breakthrough of industrialization with the decades around 1800, relatively late, Wrigley argues thus with a long history: The key features of the English power supply began in the 17th Century to emerge. The long-term absence of the negative feedback effects with increasing energy consumption thus allowed Britain (but not the Netherlands), one to induce self-sustaining growth. The question of why similar developments in other parts of the world took place not easily accessible energy resources, Wrigley interested, however less - if any other marriage and reproductive patterns of the features of geography or cultural factors, an invention of the steam engine could be more or less likely to were crucial, therefore gets less intense in the eye.
Wrigley's central point is also different. The industrial revolution has opened a Pandora's box, which - picked up by the limits of an organic economy - unleashed growth and prosperity on an unprecedented scale. Ultimately, the outbreak of the organic economy is thus not quite work: the moment we live only by recourse to past photosynthesis, the Dutch problem is that the peat supply is sometime at the end was so spellbound by no means on a global scale. There is another problem: the consequences of industrialization, for example in the area of climate change are still impossible to assess. It could be that the opening of this Pandora's box - in a reversal of the legend - to the great hope but still attracts a rude awakening to itself, if it is not possible to develop alternative energy sources that a return to organic economy, the environment the fate of mankind certain delay further.
Hat einer lust meine HA zu machen? :D