HPS282S - HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING
Spring 1998
The Advanced Organic Economy
25 February 1998
I. The advanced organic and the mineral-based economy
A. Features evident in the names
1. Advanced organic economy: Dependence on the land and agriculture for more than just food and sustenance
a) Food
b) Transport
c) Clothing
d) Lodging
e) Firing
2. Mineral-based economy is not a land based economy
a) Relies on stocks rather than flows of energy
b) "Mines" rather than "cultivates"
3. Relative efficiences in mineral based and advanced organic agriculture in energy terms
a) 1 calorie in gives 10 calories out in agriculture (advanced organic) vs. 3 calories in gives 1 calorie out (mineral based). We are mining our food, as well as our fuel.
b) Advantage: it is not human muscle that is providing this energy and in absolute terms the production of food is considerably higher
B. Features of British agriculture in 18c [Wrigley]
1. Transformation of Agriculture
1. Social
a) Enclosure movement
b) Creation of a rural proletariat
2. Technical
a) New Tools
b) New Methods of Crop Rotation
c) Stockbreeding
3. Functional
a) Growth of a capitalist agriculture
2. "Agricultural Revolution" of 1600-1850
1. 1800 Only 40% of pop in agriculture
2. Output per capita doubles 1600-1800
a) In France, only 20% increase in the same period
3. Only Britain and Holland achieve this advanced organic economy
C. Features of British economy and society in 18c [Wrigley]
1. Population growth: fastest rate in Europe
2. Urbanization much more rapid than Continent
3. Improvement of transportation
4. Transformation of Industry
D. Did advanced organic economy help Britain escape from the Malthusian trap?
1. Thomas Robert Malthus (1776-1834)
A. Postulates
1) Food is necessary to the existence of man
2) The passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state
B. Conclusion: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". "Population, when unchecked, increases in geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetic ration." "... the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal".
2. Fragility of this escape: due to persistently high death rate and the lower birth rate of the British
A. The experience of Holland shows that the advanced organic economy not enough to sustain population growth and economic progress indefinitely
B. Mineral-based economy reduces pressure on the land and increases food
3. Yet it was possible to have a "modern" society without industrialization based on fossil fuels
A. Mumford's Eotechnic phase
E. Was it a springboard to Industrial Revolution?
1. Source of displaced labour?
2. Source of capital for nascent industry?
3. Not a sufficient condition for an industrial revolution, e.g. the case of Holland
II. The persistence of human and animal muscle
A. Early industrialism did not make work physically (let alone, mentally) easier. Many commentators at the time speak of intensification of labour
B. Another lesson: Coexistence of different types of energy regimes, indeed, sometimes this was a necessary coexistence.
