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Adam Smith called those worlds that Europe was occupying "wastelands"

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their potential was latent

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to turn them into productive assets it would take:

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colonization

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settlement

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privatization

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the transformation of wastelands into fertile, arable lands

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a kind of ecological windfall

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in the same way silver had been a windfall in an earlier cycle of European expansion

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created radically new opportunities to

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improve diet

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shape everyday life in Europe

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the backdrop to the industrial revolution

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industrial revolution

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was neither particularly industrial or revolutionary except at the end of the process

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had much to do with agriculture

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was nothing that happened in a given year as the word revolution often refers to in the 19th and 20th centuries

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transformation

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not just in manufacturing

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transportation

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agriculture

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services

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taking place in all sectors of the European and neo-European economies

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energy harvesting

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in a sense began with the windmill around the year 1200

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culminated with James Watt's steam engine in the 1770s

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energy from wind to coal

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the cumulative switch from the humble windmill

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the switch from renewable to non-renewable energy sources was a powerful one

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a movement away from the reliance of plants and animals for an energy source

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ultimately animals relied on plants for an energy source to keep themselves going

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mining stores of energy in minerals

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two breakthroughs

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previously all outputs are drawn from the system that require equivalent inputs

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horses require energy that they consume by eating in the field

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there was a fundamental limitation to the amount of energy you could get from the environment

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you had to put plants back into the ground for the horses to eat to get energy again

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the inorganic world would free humans from the necessity of this basic balance

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taking coal from the ground was a way of breaking the natural balance that had to be observed

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improvements in production methods in this new inorganic world

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speeds could be controlled once you harnessed energy

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variables were easier to manipulate

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result was a massive upturn in productivity growth rates

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clearest in the production of cotton textiles

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1770-1790 output increased ten-fold while the price decreased by 90%

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one of the hallmarks of this age is that machines could be produced which could augment the productivity of a single man, in a factory

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combine this new use of energy with this new technology intensifying the internal division of labor

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the industrial revolution could be called a "productivity revolution"

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coal and eventually oil had to be gotten from far away

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you now have a whole sector of the economy devoted to finding energy

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the basic goods that went into producing new products often came from the colonies, e.g. cotton from the American South, Brazil or Egypt

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out of Europe would emerge, as a result of this revolution, inexpensive cotton goods

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these could be exported

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Europe used to rely on exporting precious medals to Asia in return for prized commodities, but now they could export inexpensively produced products

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had to find markets to sell cotton textiles

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began to compete with local producers of textiles

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an early example of globalization

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countries and regions in Europe began to specialize in the product of manufactured goods, and the colonies specialized in basic goods