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The World We Have Lost
Four or six draught animals were needed to pull a coach and they had to be changed every 6 to 12 miles, depending on the condition of the roads. In England it was calculated that one horse was needed for every mile of a journey on a well-maintained turnpike road. So, for the 185 miles from Manchester to London, 185 horses had to be kept stabled and fed to deal with the seventeen changes required by the stagecoaches which traveled the route. Those horses in turn required an army of coachmen, postillions, guards, grooms, ostlers and stable-boys to keep them running. As a coach could carry no more than ten passengers, fares were correspondingly high and out of reach of the mass of the population. A journey from Augsburg to Innsbruck by stagecoach, although little more than 60 miles as the crow flies, would have cost an unskilled laborer more than a month's wages just for the fare.
That is from new and excellent The Pursuit of Glory, Europe 1648-1815, by historian Tim Blanning. The best parts of this book -- which are very good indeed -- are the early sections on the economic history of transportation.
Here is a previous installment of The World We Have Lost.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 26, 2007 at 06:30 AM in History | Permalink
Comments
The World We Have Lost?
Sounds more like The World We Threw in the Trash, and rightly so.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jul 26, 2007 7:31:21 AM
think of all the jobs lost! we must regulate these newfangled "automobiles" before they cause even more unemployment!
Posted by: hans at Jul 26, 2007 8:10:44 AM
I love progress.
Posted by: Jacob at Jul 26, 2007 8:52:38 AM
"yeah capitalism!"
--austin powers
Posted by: shawn at Jul 26, 2007 9:07:33 AM
And the feet of manure in the street are also lost.
Posted by: JEAN at Jul 26, 2007 9:22:02 AM
Professor Cowen,
This abomination of a farm bill seems like the first issue where the entire economics blogosphere should be able to issue unanimous disapproval. Can we hear some outrage?
Posted by: at Jul 26, 2007 9:42:52 AM
In the US farmers had to allocate about 20% of their crop land to raising food for draft animals.
Posted by: spencer at Jul 26, 2007 9:58:28 AM
Irreversibility of time is really a disappointment. If I had a "Time Machine" I would have visited those Kingdoms and ancient cities many times;I would have visited people during the "Tulipmania" period,Emperor Vikramaditya's court and the prosperous Vijaya Nagar Empire.I would have seen Emperor Shahjahan and his loveliest Mumtaz Beegum.
Posted by: GVV at Jul 26, 2007 11:13:12 AM
Irreversibility of time is really a disappointment. If I had a "Time Machine" I would have visited those Kingdoms and ancient cities many times;I would have visited people during the "Tulipmania" period,Emperor Vikramaditya's court and the prosperous Vijaya Nagar Empire.I would have seen Emperor Shahjahan and his loveliest Mumtaz Beegum.
Posted by: GVV at Jul 26, 2007 11:14:42 AM
Related and amazing:
http://www.energyadvocate.com/fw7.htm
“In the mid-1800s, U.S. citizens who had the money to travel did so by using trains, but most people simply stayed home. Electricity was not available. Lighting was by tallow candles or whale-oil lamps. Homes were heated by wood, primarily.
Let us ignore the energy expended by horses, mules, and oxen, and ignore the wind energy that drove the ships at sea (often whaling vessels), and ignore the energy from farm windmills and small hydro-powered grist mills and factories. Then the annual per-capita energy used by U.S. citizens of the era amounted to 110 gigajoules. On a year-round average, this amounts to 3400 joules per second, or 3.4 kilowatts.
[Note: the watt is a measure of power --- energy divided by time --- whether that power be electrical or not.]
In the late 1990s, the picture is much different. We scurry around in automobiles, reheat our coffee in microwave ovens, live in centrally heated homes, and have air-conditioned homes, offices, and cars. We fly around the country in jet planes, sitting next to passengers using lap-top computers. We send merchandise all around the country in trucks. Our present per-capita consumption of energy is 360 gigajoules per year, amounting to an around-the-year average consumption of 11,400 joules per second, of 11.4 kilowatts.
What's that? We only use 3.3 times as much energy per capita per year as our forbears of the 1800s?
That is correct. “
Posted by: Floccina at Jul 26, 2007 11:24:05 AM
But what about poor Jo? In Bleak House, Jo swept the streets at the street corners so all those wealthy people could cross without getting their pant legs dirty...he's so poor and ignorant, there's no other job he can do! If we let these cars keep coming through, Jo's going to be even worse off than he is now.
Posted by: shawn at Jul 26, 2007 1:24:03 PM
But what about poor Jo? In Bleak House, Jo swept the streets at the street corners so all those wealthy people could cross without getting their pant legs dirty...he's so poor and ignorant, there's no other job he can do! If we let these cars keep coming through, Jo's going to be even worse off than he is now.
Posted by: shawn at Jul 26, 2007 1:25:47 PM
Because of the railways and automobiles, all those coachmen, postillions, guards, grooms, ostlers and stable-boys were about to lose their jobs.
Paging Dr. Rodrik!
Posted by: PJ at Jul 26, 2007 1:46:13 PM
@ Floccina: In the nineteenth century, most forests in the US were felled, and the wood burned afterwards. As a result, fuel was cheap and energy use enormous. Your figures don't show that current energy use is relatively close to normal, but that nineteenth century US energy use was already extreme.
In fact, 110 Gigajoule/person/year is similar to the current day use of countries like Venezuela, Iran or Hungary. Europe and Japan average something like 170, China is only 50 or so.
Your post mentions jets vs. ox carts, and electricity vs. whale-oil lamps. But those are all pretty irrelevant. 19th century people used by far most of their energy to heat their houses, and you hardly need advanced technology for that, just loads of fuel.
Posted by: Marius at Jul 27, 2007 7:35:36 AM
GVV- but you would come back to our time for your medical care, especially the dental work, wouldn't you?
Posted by: Assistant Village Idiot at Jul 31, 2007 2:07:30 PM
GVV- but you would come back to our time for your medical care, especially the dental work, wouldn't you?
Posted by: Assistant Village Idiot at Jul 31, 2007 2:07:43 PM
GVV- but you would come back to our time for your medical care, especially the dental work, wouldn't you?
Posted by: Assistant Village Idiot at Jul 31, 2007 2:07:47 PM
I come from asia, injoy 室內設計,work in a 搬家公司
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Posted by: ochen at Oct 30, 2008 4:42:56 AM
