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Technology, Energy, and Civilization: Some Historical Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Charles Issawi
Charles Issawi
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Studies Princeton University
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Abstract

The degree of development (or, if you prefer, material civilization) of any society is set by the size of its surplus (the total amount it produces minus the amount needed for the bare subsistence of the population) and the uses to which the surplus is put. In Emerson's wise words, “The question of history is what each generation has done with its surplus produce. One bought crusades, one churches, one villas, one horses and one railroads.” The size of the surplus is, in turn, determined by four factors: the amount of energy available to the society, the society's technology, the mix of its economy, and the size of its population. Until comparatively recently, energy was, with the important exception of sailing ships, provided exclusively by human or animal power.1 Two important steps forward were the invention of the watermill and that of the windmill; their development will be discussed later. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that until the Industrial Revolution, some 80–85 percent of total energy was provided by plants, animals, and people.2 This means that the basic factors determining the amount of energy available to a society were the amount of land (arable, pasture, and woodland) it had at its disposal and the land's productivity. Land “was not simply the principal source of food for the population [the other being the seas and rivers] but also virtually the sole source of the raw materials used in industrial production”—fibers, hides, hair, wood, and so forth; almost all industrial workers were engaged in processing agricultural materials.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , August 1991 , pp. 281 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 In Europe the working rates were: a man, 0.1 horsepower; a donkey, 0.25; a mule, 0.5; and an ox, 0.66; for a camel the figure is 2. See Ubbelohde, A. R., Man and Energy (London, 1963), pp. 50–52.Google Scholar

2 Cipolla, Carlo, The Economic History of World Population (London, 1964), p. 46.Google Scholar

3 See Wrigley, E. A., Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar and passim.

4 For an extensive discussion, see Watson, Andrew M., Agricultural Innovations in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar, passim.

5 Ashtor, E., A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), p. 50Google Scholar; Bolshakov, O. G., Srednevekovyi gorod Blizhnego Vostoka (Moscow, 1984), pp. 234–35, 265.Google Scholar For European yields, see Bath, B. H. Slicher Van, Yield Ratios, 810–1820 (Wageningen, 1963)Google Scholar, passim. For Middle East ratios, see Issawi, Charles, Economic History of Turkey (Chicago, 1980), pp. 214–15Google Scholar; Issawi, Charles, The Fertile Crescent (New York, 1988), p. 273Google Scholar; and Issawi, Charles, The Economic History of the Middle East (Chicago, 1966), p. 377.Google Scholar

6 See figures in Issawi, Charles, “Economic Change and Urbanization in the Middle East,” in Lapidus, Ira, ed., Middle Eastern Cities (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969)Google Scholar, reproduced in Issawi, Charles, The Arab Legacy (Princeton, N.J., 1981), pp. 289–307.Google Scholar

7 Op cit.

8 White, Lynn, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; “The Expansion of Technology,” in Cipolla, Carlo, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe (London, 1972), vol. I, p. 144Google Scholar; Lefebvre des Noëttes, La force motrice animate à travers les âges (Paris, 1924).Google Scholar

9 Bath, Van, Yield Ratios, pp. 16ff.Google Scholar

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13 Forbes, , “Power,” pp. 608–14.Google Scholar For a more detailed account of watermills in medieval Syria, see Yusuf, Muhsin D., Economic Survey of Syria during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Berlin, 1985), pp. 74–77.Google Scholar Yusuf found no evidence of windmills.

14 Islamoğlu-Inan, Huri, “State and Peasants in the Ottoman Empire,” in Islamoğlu-Inan, Huri, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 151–52.Google Scholar

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17 Hütteroth, and Abdulfattah, , Historical Geography, p. 43.Google Scholar

18 I owe this information to Bernard Lewis, who kindly went with me through a defter covering the nahiyes of Jira, Tibnin, Shaqif, and ʿAkka; we counted 78 mills, many with two or four stones.

19 Yinanç, Refet and Elibüyük, Mesut, Kanuni Devri Malatya Tahrir Defteri, 1560 (Ankara, 1983), p. xiii.Google Scholar

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27 Mumford, Lewis, Technics and Civilization (London, 1934).Google Scholar

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29 In Egypt in 1947, less than 1 percent of women in the age group 45–49 had never been married and only 20 percent in the age group 20–24 (see United Arab Republic National Planning Committee, Memorandum 448, cited in Issawi, Charles, Egypt in Revolution [London, 1963], p. 78).Google Scholar

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34 The aggregate horsepower of all licensed machines was 1,038,000; of these, 336,000 were in irrigation and drainage. This figure does not seem to include railways. There were 655 locomotives in the state railways which, assuming an average of 1,000 horsepower, represents 655,000 horsepower; and 184 locomotives in the light railways which, assuming an average of 500 horsepower, represents 92,000 horsepower. Allowing another 200,000 horsepower for street cars, motor vehicles (which may not be included in the total), and other machinery gives a total of about 1,900,000 horsepower. Egypt's population was about 17,000,000, and its labor force, in male equivalents, may be put at about 7,700,000. This means that every worker had 0.25 horsepower at his disposal, or 2.5 “mechanical slaves” (see Egypt, Ministry of Finance, al-lḥṣāʾ al-Sanawi, 1941/42, pp. 304–9, 716). Calculations for 1930 show almost identical results, and for 1920, when the aggregate power of licensed machines was 614,000, the results are much lower; see ibid., 1921/22, 1929/30.