The Birth of Europe: Colliding Continents and the Destiny of Nations
by Michael Alford Andrews
From the first use of materials to the discovery of uranium, the history of Europe has been the legacy of its geological foundations. Geology is not about static rocks – rocks move, sometimes violently and over vast distances. Such movements bring resources such as coal, metals and oil within the reach of mankind.
The location and availability of such resources has influenced the fate of peoples, industries and nations in Europe, as for example in the way the Vikings sailed to Sicily, Paris starved on the eve of the French Revolution and the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
The rise of technologies and societies is constantly linked to the effects of continental plates in collision or volcanic uplifts on metallic and fossil fuel resources. It’s a big picture book, but it also gives strong detail on the factors that transformed Europe’s material economy over time.
In the last two hundred years European society has been revolutionised, and at the heart of this dramatic change lies a single geological resource – coal. Industrialisation swept from Britain across the coalfields of Europe, bringing wealth and prosperity to the cities but also dreadful social problems. Meanwhile industrialisation allowed, and even encouraged, warfare on an unprecedented scale.
From the moment when the continents split to the present quest to save Europe from ecological disaster, this book traces the formation, development and continual change of Europe and European civilization.
This account of Europe’s history is told from the standpoint of human interaction with the environment and draws conclusions about the success of the continent and its hope for the future.
Andrews seeks to merge the histories of lands and peoples, and does it in a very literal way. In the big picture that Andrews paints, very little of real substance has changed in the eyeblink of time since the book appeared in 1991.
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