Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 13:18:06 -0500 From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM> Subject: M-I: Gunder Frank, the ole Mississip' etc Mark: Malcolm Caldwell (sp?) wrote a book a couple of decades ago explaining (I think) the British Indusdtrial Revo on the basis of Britain's unique coal supplies. I have to confess that I think this theory, echoed by you and presumably Gunder Frank, reeks of environmental determinism. There is a lot of coal in a lot of countries. N. China. Japan. Russia. Etc.Why wasn't it used then in these places? so the argument shifts from coal resources to society and we're back where we started. We're also back in the ranks of the Weberians if we credit some super-rational Brit with having started the whole thing by thinking up how to replace charcoal with coal. I'll bet you that people knew how to do this much earlier, and not only in Britain (I'm speculating, as usual). And isn't there something in Needham's *Sci. & Civ. in China* about Newcomen's engine and its relationship to Chinese techmnology? I agree, hoever, that fossil fuels have an awful lot to do with the rise and fall of capitalism, and, were there no Persian Gulf, we would have had the revo by now. And probably you're right in arguing that the increasing scarcity of oil wil bring either socialist revo or barbnarism. En lucha Jim Blaut --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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