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1/ Thread for the EH gang @NMaggor @Eli_B_Cook @Historian_Steve @AntonJaegermm @jobyclegg @CC_Rosenthal @_alice_evans @pseudoerasmus @chris_w_shaw @Robert_Suits @BAllanHansen
2/ I'm rereading Allen's Br. IR in Global Perspective. He argues that IR started in Britain b/c energy (coal) was cheap and wages were high (relatively), so there were incentives to substitute energy-intensive capital (machines) for labor.
3/ Where did the high-wage economy come from? It had its roots in early modern period, first European market integration and then transoceanic trade, which Britain did especially well in.
4/ So what about the Spanish? They had quite an empire. According to Allen, S. Amn silver "proved their undoing for it unleashed inflation that rendered their manufacturing and agriculture uncompetitive" (16) How exactly?
5/ Am I correct that this isn't Dutch Disease by way of a rising exchange rate? Rather, silver inflows raised domestic production costs costs via rising prices for nontrade goods like services. But... doesn't this mean, or couldn't it have meant, high wages?
6/ Spain had coal. In 1500 it was also more urbanized than Br. So was Spain's problem a sociopolitical one about the distribution of silver looted from S. Am? If it had distributed loot more evenly on the Iberian peninsula, would the IR, by Allen's logic, have begun in Spain?
7/ To clarify, I'm just working through Allen's facts and logic, not actually arguing this. If coal was the sina qua non of Br. IR, a big pretty contingent factor was the utilization of coal for home heating due to localized wood scarcities, which dramatically reduced coal costs
8/ Coal mining itself and industry gained from the spillover price reductions
