ABSTRACT
In the second half of the eighteenth century Britain was faced with a challenge much deeper than the energy crisis of the seventeenth century. An unprecedented population explosion intensified competing pressures on land use for timber, charcoal, pasture, crops, transport, manufacturing and urbanization. Could a small island depending mainly on the flow of solar energy avoid a Malthusian disaster? It was a matter of life and death for the organic-based economy. We shall first examine the long interlude of energy abundance which ended in the 1750s.
