Coal is the key to understanding the C20th

 

A thing that seems more obvious than anything is that the work a country does depends primarily on its access to energy. It's nothing to do with politics are economics or nonsense like this, its just how much there is for the economy to "eat". If one looks at the spread of bacteria the limiting factors are resources, and primarily energy. This has to be the first thing we look at with people too.

Now look at coal production in Asia in the C20th. Coal being the energy that began and fuelled the industrial revolution. That is UK way out on top for the whole century.

I've definitely heard it said that the real reason UK was able to create that global empire lay in its coal fields.

It all adds an extra dimension to Thatcher's War with miners in the 80s. These communities are actually what made the British Empire possible. Nothing to do with Capitalism or the British Elite system.

Instead I venture (after Veblen and other economists) that Capitalism is why only the wealthy elites really benefitted from the British Empire and this coal.

Its probably the biggest myth in the West that our prosperity is due to the defeat of Fascism or Communism and the success of the West in the Wars and the rise of Capitalism and global banking is the reason for the success.

Property system is also much heralded. Niall Ferguson argues that this is the reason that the US prospered while South America didn't. But he neglects to note the obvious facts that the North had the slave trade and incredibly cheap labour, and the near total genocide of natives to clear the land for industrial scale agriculture. He also neglects to mention US access to coal in the C20th.

If an army marches on its stomach, an economy produces on its energy source.

Its amazing how in the desperate attempt to justify the evils of the entirely avoidable world wars and the British and American expansion of their Empires the simplest truths can be perverted.