The central importance of overcoming the energy constraint which haunted all organic economies, and the links between the rise of the coal industry and improvement to transport facilities, have been touched on already. Both the character and the significance of these developments merit further attention. They represent a second area of the economy in which positive feedback brought sustained and increasing benefit.

In organic economies the bulk of the mechanical energy came from human and animal muscle, and wood was the dominant source of heat energy. The production of all types of material goods necessarily involved the expenditure of energy and the same was true of all forms of transport. In early modern Europe there was in general a close similarity between different countries in the scale of energy which could be secured for productive purposes measured per head of population. In northern areas, such as Sweden, the coldness of the winter caused a larger consumption of firewood than further south, but the collection of comparative data on a common basis for an increasing number of countries emphasises the extent of the features common to them all.

The history of energy consumption

The first results are now appearing of a collaborative venture to collect and publish energy consumption information on a common basis, involving scholars from a range of European countries.