Week 3 Work Flashcards
(8 cards)
What does the world ecology approach do with humans and nature
It places and human systems inside nature, developing world ecologies which organise life, environments and cultures.
The Industrial Revolution in Anthropocene debates
James Watt’s steam engine as key moment, narrated as inevitable product of human progress and ingenuity, fuelled by coal, several brilliant inventions appeared, “The mastery of fire by our ancestors… put us firmly on the long path towards the Anthropocene, an expression of the earths prophetic tendencies (Clark 2012, 269) ?
Why did the initial revolution happen in Britain
Controlling fire - Many other cultures were setting fire to stuff.
Controlling people - Egalitarian societies Ann exemption worldwide.
Ingenious machines - Netherlands, France, China, Japan, India…
A well fed urban population - narrows it down to Western Europe - “ghost acres”.
Coal - Britain had an edge
But the industrial revolution didn’t start with coal
Agricultural productivity and population
1500-1800 Productivity grows in Netherlands and England, by around 90 percent. Driven in England by land enclosure, market in tenancies, national market.
“Improvement” management into profit. Crop and animal breeding, crop rotation, restoring soil fertility.
35% ore land brought into production in England.
By 1800, less than half the population working in agriculture.
Urban population in England grows 3 times faster than on the NL.
Overall population of British isles grows from 3 million to 9 million.
How does Malachy Postlethwayt describe the British empire in 1745
“a magnificent superstructure of American commerce and naval power on an African foundation”
Plantation economies and slavery
Late C18, slave traders making up to 50% profit. these profits = 40% GB commercial and industrial investment post 1750.
Cotton and textile industry
Raw material from americas, 45k tonnes 1815, 120k tonnes by 1830.
Yarn and cloth re - exported to captive colonial markets.
Output increasing by 10% annually.
Unequal ecological exchange
By exchanging 1k of textiles for 1k of raw US cotton GB gained 46% in embodies labour and 6000% in embodies hectares.
Hornborg (2006): “time-space appropriation”.
Whats one reason why water wasn’t always super red;iable in the factories to workers.
Although steam was more costly than water it could be turned on and off to time exactly with the presence of the workers” (Lewis and Maslin 2018,198)
