Morning: Industrial Revolution: Coal and Oil
Continuing last week's theme of how we have affected our environment, we turn to the impact of The Industrial Revolution. In order to look at this question in a little depth I am taking the two natural fuels used to power the Revolution from the mid 18th century up to the present day; namely, coal and oil.
We shall begin, however, with a general view of The Industrial Revolution; Blake's 'dark satanic mills'. We shall briefly look at the industrial and social unrest generated by the Revolution in Lancashire in 1811-12, Luddism.
We then turn to the first of our fuels, coal. Tracing the reasons for its rise, the damage caused by its extraction and use, and, here in Britain, our moves away from dependence on it as a power source. We shall linger a little over Global Warming and 'The Greenhouse Effect' on the environment.
Our final subject for the morning will be oil. We shall explore its use in the Ancient Middle East, its 19th century exploitation in USA, before concluding on its huge impact on the planet's environment.
Our ending will ask the question, Where are we today with all this?
Two books worth looking at relate to coal,
Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese
The Domestic Revolution: How the introduction of coal into our homes changed everything by Ruth Goodman (this is the sort of quirky book I enjoy).
Afternoon: Berlin The Cold War.
This is a massive subject to cover in one lesson, so I am going to concentrate on certain key events, as I see them:-
Setting the Post War Scene
4 Berlins become 2 Berlins
Berlin Blockade/Airlift 1948
Two Countries, two capitals 1948
Uprising in East Berlin 1953
West Germany's Economic Miracle 1950-60
The physically divided city: Berlin Wall 1961
The Wall Falls 1989
A re-unified Berlin
Three Books:
Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor
The GDR by Jens Schone