A mineral-based energy economy

Abstract

This chapter considers the aspects of coal-based industrialisation in the north-west England and explores a number of ways in which the geography and organisation of production might be understood. It opens with a consideration of coal and transport nodes as locational constants. The chapter then examines the links between the organic and mineral-based economies, chiefly in terms of salt and iron production; but the main focus is on the growing cluster of coal-using industries in south-west Lancashire. Next, the chapter explores the detailed differentiation which characterised the nascent mineral-based economy. Within a mineral-based energy economy, the growing importance of coal has an increasing bearing on the location of industry; it also encourages a growth in the scale of production and changes in its organisational structure. This classically involves the emergence of centralised and proletarianised manufactories that are financed and controlled by industrial capital.