>The argument for the effects of American silver and the European price >revolution, in altering the balance of input and especially labour costs >between Europe and Asia is more compelling. The real catalyst of change >however was the mobilisation of fossil fuels, which also of course >explains why Britain and Belgian has an IR and the Dutch didn't. Belgium >and Britain had coal. Holland did not.(posted 8754 days ago)Cheap to float the coal downstream from Belgium into the Rhine delta-- but Dutch labor costs were too high for it to be profitable to use it in factories (which is another way of saying that Dutch workers had higher-productivity things to do).
But I should stop talking about Holland or else I will say something wrong and be very embarrassed when Jan de Vries returns from England...
(Responding to Ken Pomeranz):
> The question of promoting technological change (in part by encouraging >science) seems like the best case for a slowly maturing Western European >advantage -- Margaret Jacob's work on the culture of science in Britain, >for instance, makes a lot of sense to me. But even here, we are talking >about a post-1500 development, not a post- 1000 one.
I think you are probably right...
>Moreover, we should remember that >Europe was not ahead in all important areas, even as late as 1800 -- and >that which technological advantages turned out to be crucial and which >relatively unimportant depended on a lot of things. Thus, Europe remained >relatively backward in agricultural yields per acre even in 1800 (though >the potato was helping it close some of that gap) -- and that particular >bit of backwardness might have mattered a lot more had it not been for >[what Eric Jones called "ghost acreage."
I find myself wanting a *relatively* *detailed* technological balance sheet for Northwestern Europe vs. Yangtse Delta China in 1400, 1600, and 1800. My problem is that I'm not competent to construct the "China" side of it...
>By contrast, virtually all >of China's coal was hundreds of land- locked miles from the markets and >artisanal talents of the Lower Yangzi, Lingnan, and Southeast Coast. >Moreover, the problem in these mines was not water that needed to be >pumped out, but, on the contrary, such severe aridity that explosions were >happening all the time.
So you can't build a steam economy until you already have your railroads built...
>Finally, we get to exploiting other parts of the world, at which >Europeans clearly did excel. Clearly, this story cannot be reduced to >"Europeans were nastier, or better at being nasty,"
But they were pretty nasty. Is it an accident that the two greatest mass-murderers in human history--Hitler and Stalin--were born in Europe?
(Although Mao may ultimately win the prize, depending on how large the Great Leap Forward famine was and whether one regards it as genocide