In 1870, he notes, the United Kingdom was using 100 million
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
In 1870, he notes, the United Kingdom was using 100 million tons of coal, which was “equivalent to 800 million million Calories of energy, enough to feed a population of 850 million adult males for a year (actual population was then about 31 million).” Again, the capacity of Britain’s steam engines in 1870, some 4 million horsepower, was equivalent to the power which could be generated by 40 million men; but “this many men would have eaten some 320 million bushels of wheat a year—more than three times the annual output of the entire United Kingdom in 1867–71.”8 The use of inanimate sources of power allowed industrial man to transcend the limitations of biology and to create spectacular increases in production and wealth without succumbing to the weight of a fast-growing population. By contrast, Ashton soberly noted (as late as 1947): There are today on the plains of India and China men and women, plague-ridden and hungry, living lives little better, to outward appearance, than those of the cattle that toil with them by day and share their places of sleep by night.
chapter: Chapter 4 . Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815–1885