However, by any quantifiable measure, including life-span, calories consumed, or child mortality, the lived experience of virtually all of humanity didn’t change much for millennia after the Agricultural (sometimes known as the Neolithic) Revolution spread around the globe. Aztec peasants, Babylonian sheperds, Athenian stonemasons, and Carolingian merchants spoke different languages, wore different clothing, and prayed to different deities, but they all ate the same food, lived the same number of years - travelled no further - or faster - from their homes, and buried just as many of their children. Because while they made a lot of children - worldwide population grew a hundredfold between 5000BCE and 1600CE, from 5 to 500 million - they didn’t make much of anything else. The best estimates for human productivity (a necessarily vague number) calculate annual per capita GDP, expressed in constant 1990 US dollars, fluctuating between $400 and $550 for seven thousand years.
- “The Most Powerful Idea in the World - A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention” - William Rosen.
It’s a hell of a read. It is the start of our story. It involves Edward Coke and John Locke (and some Froggies like Rousseau as villains who had this idea for a social contract to keep us all with our collective arses hanging-out) and some real heroes: men who hit metal with hammers to forge a future brighter than even they (and they were truly visionary) could imagine.
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Unfortunately for all the fogeys then, now and whenever it was, “builded here”. Rosen suggests where that poem comes from - the wreckage of the first ever steam powered flour mill in South London sauntering distance from Mr Blake’s gaff. Nobody knows exactly how it burnt down but the finger points at disgruntled millers. It did though “prove concept” and it took until the decadence (I use the word wisely) of this century for the idea that industrialisation was a “bad thing” to really take root. I would argue this is a function of time (and only capable via industrialisation of course). Almost nobody thinks where anything is made any more or how it is made because they just have it anyway. Perhaps I do better because just a short(ish) pleasant walk from where I grew-up is the cottage of a certain Mr George Stephenson (he’s on the fiver) and it makes a kid think…
That is just the start. Unshackle us and experience the next movement. I promise you it shall be magnificent.
To be continued…
was your quote from the bbc? BCE and CE? really, it’s beyond comprehension and gratuitously offensive.
The Beeb is indeed a bunch of twats John, but it is hardly incomprehensible is it?. It is done to supposedly not offend Muslims, when none were offended in the first place. I can hardly think there are many Muslims writing cheques dated 3rd October 1441, and hoping to get them cashed can you?
They have done it to Samoa too. Once upon a time it was a simple say as you read one syllable word. Now when watching the Rugby everybody is pronouncing it as a two syllable Saaa Moha. Nuts.
Can’t be arsed to get it right for Welsh though, if I had a quid for every time I’ve heard “Ribena” Cardiff…
If people are going to use the Islamic (or the Jewish or the …..) dating system that is fine.
But to use the Christian dating system whilst pretending it is not Christian is a lot of bullshit. People who do it deserve ridicule.
Still this is beside the point.
Nick wrote about the invention and (more importantly) the COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT of a lot of new methods of production - this is what we call the “industrial revolution”.
Was this a “good thing” or a “bad thing”.
It was a good thing.
And those people (such as the Greens) who say it was a bad thing are arseholes.
Very simple.
By the way, traditional Marxists (as opposed to some modern mutant varieties of Marxist) are good guys on this.
John, the quote is from exactly where it says. Now I don’t give a toss either way - astrofizz tends to be done on Julian dates
Oh, dear.
As the author of the piece in question, please accept my regrets. I’ve tweaked a fair number of people since the book was published (once, in a radio interview, I said that, in historical terms, global warming was actually a pretty high-class problem to have…like obesity, a secondary effect of affluence) but as far as I know, this is the first time anyone’s registered offense at my choice of dating nomenclature.
For my next book, I may revert to a pretty common 18th century usage: the Vulgaris Aerea, or Vulgar (as distinguished from regnal) Era…
William,
I don’t think the posting was concerned about your dating, and only one person objected anyway.
Besides, VA dating sounds good to me. Either that or AUC. That last appeals.
For what it’s worth, my tutor at university was absolutely convinced, AdamAnt even, that the “dark Satanic mills” referred to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A quick Google suggests he wasn’t alone in that opinion. Correct? I have no idea.