HISTORY 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Newcomen Atmospheric Engine, Spinning Jenny, Malthusian Trap
Document Summary
Malthusian cycle: human econ growth impossible b/c of limits of human productivity improvement -> pop increases -> reaches capacity of land to feed them. Surpluses collapse, pop declines; process starts over. Eng 1760-80, 10,000yo cycle came to an end - since then, econ of eur/planet has been increasing at cont, exponential rate that"s supposed to continue inevitably. Takeoff of ind rev - first escape from malth cycle that had trapped them in long term zero growth for entirety of history. Expectations collapse ~1800: polits of 3 estates -> polits of classes, coincidentally at the same time that frrev makes polit of estates redundant in another way. Soc changes never completed - don"t usher in the change to a new norm, but to the expectatn of further change. Creative destruction - notion that proper way to run a soc/econ is to keep tearing down what came before. Which is why this is the most impt event in world history.