Introduction

In many ways, Vaclav Smil’s Energy in World History is indispensable for those wanting a better understanding of the changing relationship between human society and energy.  Yet, his account is not without its shortcomings.  For example, as I have addressed elsewhere, Smil neglects the role of international forces, such as imperialism, in fashioning energy use.  Nevertheless, this is not the only oversight in Energy in World History.  This article will briefly address how Smil also misrepresents the roles of urbanization and gender in a history on energy.

Urbanization

There is much work examining the causes and consequences of modern urbanization, and Smil does reference some of it (Bairoch 1991; Chandler 1987; Engels 1887; Kay 1832; Williamson 1982).  He also recognizes the dialectical character of urbanization.  On one hand, he highlights the negative ecological implications of this development.  Widespread environmental degradation, Smil writes, “stems from the extraction and conversion of both fossil fuels and nonfossil energies, industrial production, and rapid urbanization.  The cumulative effects of these changes can go beyond local and regional problems to cause destabilizing global biospheric change” (158).  In his view, pervasive, densely-populated human settlement depends on an enormous quantity of energy, a demand satisfied with energy-dense fossil fuels, not with biomass.  This makes modern urban living unsustainable.  On the other hand, the massive population shift away from rural to urban areas, characteristic of industrialization, resulted in an explosion of technological and energy-saving innovations in the city (209).  Nevertheless, from an energetic point of view, Smil’s evaluation is clear: “The infrastructural requirements of urban life increase average per capita energy consumption levels far above rural means even if the cities are not highly industrialized” (237). Continue Reading »