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I guess this is often true, but not always. For example, the Netherlands is essentially one big river-delta at the end of two of the major rivers of Europe. Th

I guess this is often true, but not always. For example, the Netherlands is essentially one big river-delta at the end of two of the major rivers of Europe. This makes it flat and windy. Ideal for windpower (in fact, we had an early lead on the UK in terms of industrialization with our windmills, but then they figured out how to use coalpower and took over). Also, being a river delta, the Netherlands contained extremely fertile soil that lends itself very well to agriculture (the flat landscape doesn't hurt either). Hence we're also one of the most densely populated countries in the world. And even in the Netherlands, where windmills are part of the national culture, you got tons of NIMBYs

sradman 6y ago
Waterwheels were more than competitive before coal powered steam engines took over. Still, it is a fascinating question: why wasn’t the Netherlands a fast-follower in the Industrial Revolution?
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  > Waterwheels were more than competitive before coal powered steam engines took over. True for most of Europe, but this essentially requires height differences, something in fairly short supply in the Netherlands ;) (see also the two articles I linked in the other comment)
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    I had thought coal would be in fairly short supply as well, but apparently there are corners of the country more than a few meters above sea level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Limburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Limburg > "The demand for coal had grown explosively as a result of increased industrialization and urban expansion, but the national governments regarded any form of interference in the extraction and sale of this fuel as unnecessary. Thus it came about that the first concessions for the extraction of coal in South Limburg were granted without hesitation to foreign firms, although most of the coal consumed in the Netherlands was imported from Germany, and Dutch investors preferred to invest their capital in foreign countries, such as in Russian government loans, American railways, and Hungarian waterworks."
    - iguy 6y ago
      If mining in a big way didn't happen until the 1870s, maybe that implied it was difficult, for the tools of earlier times? Too deep?
  - sradman 6y ago
    I was specifically responding to the following claim that the Netherlands: > ...had an early lead on the UK in terms of industrialization with our windmills, but then they figured out how to use coalpower and took over The point, that I was unsuccessful in making clearly, was that the difference between Dutch windmills and English waterwheels was a wash (no pun intended) at the critical early part of the First Industrial Revolution. The first link you mention supports this view. In my opinion, the ecosystem built around global industrialized cotton was the key factor driving England's Industrial Revolution, but I understand that many attribute the success to the coal powered steam engine.
    - iguy 6y ago
      > the difference between Dutch windmills and English waterwheels was a wash (no pun intended) at the critical early part of the First Industrial Revolution Would be interesting to see numbers on this. I would have guessed there was substantially more total power from water in England (just before steam) than the wind in NL, but could be wrong. It may depend a lot on what year you pick for the comparison. And whether you include all the isolated windmills pumping water to keep farmland dry, or only the ones doing work that was also done by water-mills. Coal and steam weren't the first chapter, but are hard to overestimate once they did arrive, IMO.
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      Ah, thank you for clarifying! Yes, I see your point now. At the same time, the second link references the claim that it has been argued that the Zaanstreek was the first industrialized region in the world, starting a few decades before the period that we usually consider the First Industrial Revolution (which is also what I quoted in the other comment). I'm no expert though, and I doubt it's a universally accepted view.
iguy 6y ago
I thought the most important fuel of the Dutch golden age was peat, not wind. The first really fossil-fuelled economy. (You can see evidence of it flying over, marshy areas where this was strip-mined, I mean strips the size you could load onto a barge & deliver to town.) Edit -- I can't find a great source, but [1] has some figures, putting peat somewhere over 100x as much energy as wind, 17thC. But of course heat energy and mechanical energy were two separate categories then, before steam engines, so it's not easy to compare. He tries to estimate equivalent land areas required to either grow wood (for heat) or feed horses (mechanical) and seem to reach comparable figures. (Which together are a bit less than the figure for horse-area saved by sailing, instead of carts. For which NL was also ideal, of course.) I guess the more interesting, and harder, question is the degree to which each of these enabled economic progress. Sawing wood for ships, vs. baking pottery & bricks. Certainly the easy peat more or less ran out, about the same time that the UK got serious about coal. [1] https://www.peatandculture.org/documenten/Zeeuw.pdf https://www.peatandculture.org/documenten/Zeeuw.pdf
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  I know peat was used for heating in the house, but I don't know how useful it was to run steam engines. Anyway, my claim is based on two articles from Low Tech Magazine, each with their own sources: > So-called 'industrial water mills' had been used in Antiquity and were widely adopted in Europe by the fifteenth century, but 'industrial windmills' appeared only in the 1600s in the Netherlands, a country that took wind power to the extreme. The Dutch even applied wind power to reclaim land from the sea, and the whole country was kept dry by intermittently operating wind mills until 1850. > For example, the Dutch shipbuilding industry, which was centred around some 450 wind-powered saw mills, imported virtually all its naval stores from the Baltic: wood, tar, iron, hemp and flax > One of the most spectacular developments of industrial wind power technology occurred in the Zaan district, a region situated just above Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Although the area is surrounded by water, the potential of water power was limited because the land is as flat as it can be and so the flow of the rivers is low. The wind, on the other hand, is strong. Many of the applications of windmills described above appeared first (and sometimes only) in the Zaan district. > It is said that the region was the world’s first industrialized area. From 1600 to 1750, when the Netherlands became an important economical power, around 1,000 windmills were built and operated here (see the map on the left). Mills were given names, just like ships. Of course, that doesn't mean that coal (and peat) powered engines weren't used at the same time! Just that the Netherlands really doubled down on wind power very early on. [0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industria... [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-econo...
Yetanfou 6y ago
Yes, well, that is partly due to precisely the heritage you mention: when you think of the Netherlands you think of canal-interspersed fields with cows and a few traditional windmills here and there. That view would be ruined if a few 90m high wind turbines were to dominate the landscape. Also, being as flat as a pancake those turbines are visible until they disappear under the horizon, leading to a very large backyard full of NIMBYs.

sradman 6y ago

Waterwheels were more than competitive before coal powered steam engines took over. Still, it is a fascinating question: why wasn’t the Netherlands a fast-follower in the Industrial Revolution?

vanderZwan 6y ago
> Waterwheels were more than competitive before coal powered steam engines took over. True for most of Europe, but this essentially requires height differences, something in fairly short supply in the Netherlands ;) (see also the two articles I linked in the other comment)
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  I had thought coal would be in fairly short supply as well, but apparently there are corners of the country more than a few meters above sea level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Limburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Limburg > "The demand for coal had grown explosively as a result of increased industrialization and urban expansion, but the national governments regarded any form of interference in the extraction and sale of this fuel as unnecessary. Thus it came about that the first concessions for the extraction of coal in South Limburg were granted without hesitation to foreign firms, although most of the coal consumed in the Netherlands was imported from Germany, and Dutch investors preferred to invest their capital in foreign countries, such as in Russian government loans, American railways, and Hungarian waterworks."
  - iguy 6y ago
    If mining in a big way didn't happen until the 1870s, maybe that implied it was difficult, for the tools of earlier times? Too deep?
- sradman 6y ago
  I was specifically responding to the following claim that the Netherlands: > ...had an early lead on the UK in terms of industrialization with our windmills, but then they figured out how to use coalpower and took over The point, that I was unsuccessful in making clearly, was that the difference between Dutch windmills and English waterwheels was a wash (no pun intended) at the critical early part of the First Industrial Revolution. The first link you mention supports this view. In my opinion, the ecosystem built around global industrialized cotton was the key factor driving England's Industrial Revolution, but I understand that many attribute the success to the coal powered steam engine.
  - iguy 6y ago
    > the difference between Dutch windmills and English waterwheels was a wash (no pun intended) at the critical early part of the First Industrial Revolution Would be interesting to see numbers on this. I would have guessed there was substantially more total power from water in England (just before steam) than the wind in NL, but could be wrong. It may depend a lot on what year you pick for the comparison. And whether you include all the isolated windmills pumping water to keep farmland dry, or only the ones doing work that was also done by water-mills. Coal and steam weren't the first chapter, but are hard to overestimate once they did arrive, IMO.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    Ah, thank you for clarifying! Yes, I see your point now. At the same time, the second link references the claim that it has been argued that the Zaanstreek was the first industrialized region in the world, starting a few decades before the period that we usually consider the First Industrial Revolution (which is also what I quoted in the other comment). I'm no expert though, and I doubt it's a universally accepted view.

iguy 6y ago

I thought the most important fuel of the Dutch golden age was peat, not wind. The first really fossil-fuelled economy. (You can see evidence of it flying over, marshy areas where this was strip-mined, I mean strips the size you could load onto a barge & deliver to town.) Edit -- I can't find a great source, but [1] has some figures, putting peat somewhere over 100x as much energy as wind, 17thC. But of course heat energy and mechanical energy were two separate categories then, before steam engines, so it's not easy to compare. He tries to estimate equivalent land areas required to either grow wood (for heat) or feed horses (mechanical) and seem to reach comparable figures. (Which together are a bit less than the figure for horse-area saved by sailing, instead of carts. For which NL was also ideal, of course.) I guess the more interesting, and harder, question is the degree to which each of these enabled economic progress. Sawing wood for ships, vs. baking pottery & bricks. Certainly the easy peat more or less ran out, about the same time that the UK got serious about coal. [1] https://www.peatandculture.org/documenten/Zeeuw.pdf https://www.peatandculture.org/documenten/Zeeuw.pdf

vanderZwan 6y ago
I know peat was used for heating in the house, but I don't know how useful it was to run steam engines. Anyway, my claim is based on two articles from Low Tech Magazine, each with their own sources: > So-called 'industrial water mills' had been used in Antiquity and were widely adopted in Europe by the fifteenth century, but 'industrial windmills' appeared only in the 1600s in the Netherlands, a country that took wind power to the extreme. The Dutch even applied wind power to reclaim land from the sea, and the whole country was kept dry by intermittently operating wind mills until 1850. > For example, the Dutch shipbuilding industry, which was centred around some 450 wind-powered saw mills, imported virtually all its naval stores from the Baltic: wood, tar, iron, hemp and flax > One of the most spectacular developments of industrial wind power technology occurred in the Zaan district, a region situated just above Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Although the area is surrounded by water, the potential of water power was limited because the land is as flat as it can be and so the flow of the rivers is low. The wind, on the other hand, is strong. Many of the applications of windmills described above appeared first (and sometimes only) in the Zaan district. > It is said that the region was the world’s first industrialized area. From 1600 to 1750, when the Netherlands became an important economical power, around 1,000 windmills were built and operated here (see the map on the left). Mills were given names, just like ships. Of course, that doesn't mean that coal (and peat) powered engines weren't used at the same time! Just that the Netherlands really doubled down on wind power very early on. [0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industria... [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-econo...

Yetanfou 6y ago

Yes, well, that is partly due to precisely the heritage you mention: when you think of the Netherlands you think of canal-interspersed fields with cows and a few traditional windmills here and there. That view would be ruined if a few 90m high wind turbines were to dominate the landscape. Also, being as flat as a pancake those turbines are visible until they disappear under the horizon, leading to a very large backyard full of NIMBYs.