Energy and the English Industrial Revolution

by E.A. Wrigley

The industrial revolution transformed the productive power of societies. It did so by vastly increasing the individual productivity, thus delivering whole populations from poverty. In this new account by one of the world's acknowledged authorities the central issue is not simply how the revolution began but still more why it did not quickly end. The answer lay in the use of a new source of energy. Pre-industrial societies had access only to very limited energy supplies. As long as mechanical energy came principally from human or animal muscle and heat energy from wood, the maximum attainable level of productivity was bound to be low. Exploitation of a new source of energy in the form of coal provided an escape route from the constraints of an organic economy but also brought novel dangers. Since this happened first in England, its experience has a special fascination, though other countries rapidly followed suit.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, British Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 19, 2010

Reviews

[Marius Ghincea]

A structuralist account of the English industrial revolution that focuses on coal and energy as the catalyst and causal factor that initiated and fueled the industrial revolution. Overall, overly-deterministic and structuralist, but the argumentative line is persuasive and supported by historical data.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to know the near-exact coal consumption in England as we sruggled out of organic economies and into the industrial age, this book is for you. The author charters the shift from energy produced and exerted by humans to the boom in coal consumption as the population and industry grew from the late modern period to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Very interesting, very detailed. Use as a reference book.

[Kevin]

I write about energy, so a good read for me to understand the expansion of coal and the industrial revolution.