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Arrested Development? Energy Crises, Fuel Supplies, and the Slow March to Modernity in Scotland, 1450-1850

In common with records from many parts of Northern Europe through the period c.1450-c.1850, Scottish record sources portray a protracted crisis in respect of energy resources generally and the supply of fuel to urban centers specifically, despite the fact that, unlike many European states, Scotland was a relatively energy-rich environment. Several factors hindered intensification of industrial activity and retarded national economic growth: an underdeveloped communications infrastructure for bulk intraregional transportation, strong regional variation in the natural presence or accessibility of particular fuel types, often punitive pricing strategies, and localized fiscal-legal systems that limited the potential or incentive for infrastructure or internal trade development. Lack of capital for investment in commercialized fuel extraction completed a picture of abundant but inaccessible fuel resources. This hampered the development of economic activity, activity that might stimulate demand and so encourage investment in the resource exploitation. Further pressure was introduced by social and cultural factors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where use of particular fuel types became linked to theories of social progress, politeness, and modernity. The pressure encouraged abandonment of the use of an abundant and relatively cheap resource—peat—and promoted the use of a scarcer and more expensive alternative— coal. Rapid expansion of the banking sector, access to capital for investment in mine engineering technology, and progressive enhancement of transport networks relieved those pressures and completed a transition to a marketization of the energy supply and a redeployment of the opportunity value of labor from activities like fuel-winning to what were perceived as more economically productive tasks.