Criminally low view count..... This lecture planted a seed in my curiosity, that hasn't been quenched in 100 books... It led me to dig deeply into the medieval warming period... And it subsequent collapse in the 1300s. Starting with a great famine and then the black death.... Mongols, The plague of Justinian... Enlightenment... Renaissance.. scientific revolution... It all started with this series of lectures
amazingly good videos/ lectures thank you sooooo much for uploading and letting me have a chance to understand the history of eco[which is so important] better!!! thank you so much
My intuition tells me that a more productive (mind the pun) way of looking at things is not income per person but productivity per person. Are we really saying that heavy plows, crop rotation, the three field system, and so on didn't lead to marked increases in people's wellbeing? As a subsistence peasant you're not really making much of an income regardless. Most of the things you have are things you made or bartered for, or so I thought. This is kind of incoherent I'm sorry. Like, isn't one of the reasons for the proto-urbanization of the high middle ages a surplus of food production resulting from advances in agricultural productivity? Is that really nothing?
Britain from 1800 to 1900. 20,000 Waterwheels decreased in number. Windmills decreased in number. Englishman Thomas Newcomen's 1,500 Atmospheric Pumps disappeared. Scotsman James Watt's 500 Steam Engines increased in number to 10,000,000 !!! For every SINGLE Waterwheel in 1800 we now have an additional 500 Steam Engines in 1900 !!! That's an increase in Power Capacity and therefore Productive Capacity for the whole country of 500 times !!! In one human lifetime. And there's no need for flowing rivers of water for each one either, so they can be sited anywhere. This WAS the Industrial Revolution. It was a Power Revolution. And it was all due to only one single Invention, James Watt's Invention of the world's first PRACTICAL Steam Powered Engine. Spinning and Weaving boost had nothing to do with the Industrial Revolution , that was due to unfair trading practices.
Calling the "Glorious Revolution " a democratic revolution is neither give real meaning to the word democracy nor value the American Revolution itself. Spain by the time of the Glorious Revolution had a very afluent elite but had not political openness. And Russia , Germany, Japan and China got industrialized under severe authiritarian regimes....