ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the energy patterns which accompanied industrial change from England to Eastern Europe, demonstrates the distortions fostered by the single-source mentality and places in historical perspective the biases fueling our "illusion of progress". Growing urban centers not only escalated the demand for energy, but catalyzed development of a new power source, coal-fueled electricity. Energy sources were hardly uniform from West to East, nor was there a linear sequence of adoption. The configuration of energy-market interdependence which emerged in the 20th century reinforced as it reflected the steadily rising demand for coal. Like South America and the Middle East, Eastern Europe served as a foreign-controlled resource provider to fuel Western industrialization. Foreign capital, especially in Poland, Romania and Russia, dominated development and explains why by 1913 Eastern Europe and Russia ranked just the United States as the world's most important suppliers.
