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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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