Page 221 - Changing Living Spaces

Agricultural Crises Due to Flood, Drought, and Lack of Sunshine

125.000

100.000

75.000

88.779
50.000

41.373
25.000 14.719 21.403
2.039 3.153 6.772
6.324 3.939
4.729 3.849 3.429 1.877 118
0
1560-9 1600-9 1650-9 1700-9 1750-9 1800-9 1850-9
Humans Livestock Firewood
Windpower Hydropower Coal

Figure 1 Annual Energy Consumption per Head in England and Wales (MJ)
Note Numerical values in figure 1 relate to coal and firewood.
Source Wrigley (2016, 34), table 3.2.

(Saito 2005, 42). This was Osamu Saito’s main argument for the crucial
difference between Japan and Europe in the early modern period in the
context of economic development. However, the process by which the
Industrial Revolution occurred was not a simple economic process, but
rather a combination of segmented processes that were particularly evi-
dent in the transformation of organic economies in a geographic context
(Wrigley 2016, 95–100).
Figure 1 shows that the increase in coal consumption had already be-
gun in the sixteenth century in the United Kingdom, which was the first
country to enter the Industrial Revolution. The turning point occurred

in the seventeenth century (Wrigley 2016, 30–44). In the Industrial
Revolution era, the amount of coal consumed actually increased rapid-
ly. The petroleum era came soon after. On the other hand, the United
Kingdom was freed from the shackles (Wrigley 2016, 204–5) of forest re-
sources, such as firewood, which were necessary for heat supply. The use
of coal marked the beginning of the move away from an organic economy,

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