Summary of Vaclav Smil's Grand Transitions

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The modern world is a result of several transitions that have changed the way we live our lives. The premodern world was marked by a high degree of inertia and pattern persistence, as different climates and beliefs produced many specific outcomes.

#2 There were many differences between everyday diets in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but they all had one thing in common: they were highly inertial. They produced low population growth, limited food supplies, low-power energy conversions, and barely changing economic performance.

#3 The lives of people can be changed dramatically by the effects of grand transitions. For example, the lives of a woman born in a poor French village in the first decade of the 19th century and her son in the Paris of the 1870s could have been completely different.

#4 China is a great example of how a grand transition can be covered by the lives of just two generations. A girl born to a poor peasant family in 1945 grew up in a society whose mores and material possessions were near carbon copies of life a century ago. By 1961, she became the only member of her extended family who survived the world’s most devastating famine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822531789

IRB Media

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Insights on Vaclav Smil's Grand Transitions

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The modern world is a result of several transitions that have changed the way we live our lives. The premodern world was marked by a high degree of inertia and pattern persistence, as different climates and beliefs produced many specific outcomes.

#2

There were many differences between everyday diets in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but they all had one thing in common: they were highly inertial. They produced low population growth, limited food supplies, low-power energy conversions, and barely changing economic performance.

#3

The lives of people can be changed dramatically by the effects of grand transitions. For example, the lives of a woman born in a poor French village in the first decade of the 19th century and her son in the Paris of the 1870s could have been completely different.

#4

China is a great example of how a grand transition can be covered by the lives of just two generations. A girl born to a poor peasant family in 1945 grew up in a society whose mores and material possessions were near carbon copies of life a century ago. By 1961, she became the only member of her extended family who survived the world’s most devastating famine.

#5

The book’s raison d’être is to describe how such epochal transitions took place. It will discuss the premodern norms, common uses and capabilities, and aggregates and specific achievements of various societies that have undergone those transitions.

#6

There are many simplifications in the following text, but I ask those critical readers who might feel that the text contains some excessive generalizations and imprecise remarks for temporary indulgence.

#7

All premodern societies had high fertility rates, and high birth rates were accompanied by high death rates. This is how Francois-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, described his family’s experience in pre-Revolutionary France.

#8

The largest cities in Japan continue to grow, and this growth is just a continuation of another key transition trend: urbanization. The urbanization process began to accelerate during the 19th century in Europe and North America, and its culmination has been the emergence of megacities with more than 10 million people.

#9

The last famine in Japan took place between 1833 and 1837, and in Europe, in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. The most devastating one, in China between 1959 and 1961, was caused by deranged Maoist policies.

#10

Pre-transition societies were energized in ways that remained unchanged for millennia. Human and animal muscles were the dominant sources of kinetic energy, and this was used in agriculture, food processing, construction, felling of trees, quarrying of stones, mining of ores, and trade and commerce.

#11

The first millennium of the Common Era saw minimal rates of growth, with economies being dominated by subsistence food production and limited energy supply. Economic transitions transformed the contribution of major sectors.

#12

The post-World War II decades have seen the rapid rise of the economic importance of services, which include wholesale and retail goods, household improvements, education, financial management, and leisure activities.

#13

The five grand transitions that have shaped the modern world have also created the modern world with its admirable advances and improvements, as well as its worrisome socioeconomic divides and environmental concerns.

#14

The most notable positive social outcomes of the Industrial Revolution are the elimination of famines, reduced mortalities, and lengthened life expectancies. The most challenging negative social outcomes include the burdens imposed by aging populations, the diffusion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and increasing intra- and international income disparities.

#15

The European demographic transition was connected to industrialization, but the onset of the fertility decline was