Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy says that our fossil fuel consumption has shaped the state of our democracies in ways poorly understood. A look at the role of the oil sector from colonialism until today sheds light on the impact. Craig Morris takes a look. This is part three of a series on democracy and energy; read parts one and two. One big question in history is why Europe colonized the planet although, as late as the 1700s, China and India, for instance, had equally or more advanced civilizations. Mitchell explains that the dawn of the coal age in the UK necessitated colonialism. With the invention of the steam engine fired with coal power, the energy the British could utilize easily outstripped locally available raw materials, such as textiles. Foreign countries then had to be forced to stop growing crops needed locally and focus on exports. Until then, trade had been practiced worldwide not as a means of making production more efficient, but as a way of getting materials (like porcelain and spices) you couldn’t make at home. Otherwise, trade … Continue reading “Free trade” should be called “forced trade”