Academic literature on the topic 'Chinese American farmers'

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.

The development of farmer cooperatives in China which was an important form that led farmers to get rich and improve the competitiveness of China's agriculture has been lag behind, in 2007, Law of Chinese Farmer Cooperatives promoted the development of cooperatives in certain extent,, but compared to a new generation of cooperatives developed in North America 1970s, whether performance or the ability of service for members were far behind. Through report the successful experience of the development of new generation cooperatives in North America and sum up the useful enlightenment which could improve the development of farmer cooperatives in China, we should promote the development of farmer cooperatives in China better and faster by specific measures implementation.

The chestnut (Castanea Mill.) industry in the northwestern United States is in its relative infancy, with most orchards being less than 10 years of age. Currently there are an estimated 300 acres (121 ha) in Oregon and Washington. California has about 500 acres (202 ha) in chestnuts. Current worldwide production is over 500,000 tons (435,600 t). China is the leading producer with 40%, followed by Korea at 15%. Italy, Turkey and Japan grow 10% each, while France, Greece and Spain grow 4% each. The United States, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia each grow less than 1%. The value of chestnuts imported into the United States is estimated to be $10 to 15 million annually. Domestic producers hope to displace some of the imported chestnuts in the marketplace. The leading variety being grown in the western United States is `Colossal,' a hybrid between european chestnut (C. sativa Mill.) and japanese chestnut (C. crenata Gillet). `Dunstan' hybrids are chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica Murr.) resistant, and were bred in Florida using chinese chestnut (C. mollisima Blume) and american chestnut (C. dentata Marsh. Borkh.) parentage. Prices received by chestnut producers in the northwestern United States have ranged from $1.20 to $7.00/lb ($2.64 to $15.40/kg). The marketing of chestnuts has been through brokers into wholesale markets, farmers markets, mail order and direct sales through catalogues and World Wide Web sites.

In the early twentieth century, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded international expeditions with the aim of finding plant specimens for introduction into the agricultural landscape and the new experimental projects in hybridization. One such agricultural explorer, noted for his eponymous lemon, was Frank Nicholas Meyer, an immigrant from the Netherlands whose expeditions in Asia have brought to the United States celebrated fruit and toxic weeds. Neither professional botanists nor farmers, plant hunters like Meyer worked by taking advantage of historical allegiances to academic programs, while leaning on the authority of their newer national institutions. In addition to plants, through photographs that transposed Chinese landscapes to U.S. environmental counterparts, Meyer contributed to the imagination of the agricultural promise of the American West. The era of these plant explorers has ended but their material trace remains in a variety of spaces and modes of existence that have hitherto been disregarded. Reading Meyer’s letters shows the authority and discipline behind his transformation from gardener’s apprentice to professional plant collector. I argue that photographs and plants are understudied material traces that enable historians to re-examine the means by which credit was received, given, and exchanged. By drawing together these traces, I chart the continued importance of exploration and collection in the twentieth century and show the epistemic continuity between nineteenth-century natural history and twentieth-century experimental science.

Abstract Disparities in health care information and access often experienced by rural residents exacerbate health risks of older adults. The purpose of this symposium is to highlight efforts in varied rural settings to develop new information that contributes to identifying, assessing, and addressing the causes of these disparities, thus informing and strengthening advocacy and intervention. Mi and Ma address an unmet need for the description of challenges related to the extensive migration of Chinese rural workers and their families (46 million increase since 2011) that has exacerbated disparity of Social Security access. They describe barriers to establishing eligibility of these newly urban families for social services as they change from rural farmers to urban householders. Asman and Sisofo discuss barriers to working successfully with an alliance of diverse city, county, and state organizations to meet perceived needs of three categories of rural older adults: 1)active but denies aging, 2)adapting to aging and achieving satisfaction; and 3)dependent aging. Using a novel measure to determine true needs of their rural older communities resulted in benchmarks, which the alliance used in creating their strategic plan. Ford and colleagues tested a church-based program in a rural African American setting to facilitate chronic disease management. They tested the efficacy of utilizing online resources in underserved settings. Wiese and Williams investigated stakeholder perceptions/knowledge regarding dementia at six diverse rural sites. Although 71% of participants believed heart disease and poor diet increased dementia risk and were willing to be screened, only 15% had been tested for memory loss.

The effectiveness of Persea americana (Avocado), Musa sapientum (Plantain), Veronia amygdalina (Bitter leaf), Colocasia esculenta (Cocoyam) and Carica papaya (Pawpaw) leaves were compared in the preservation of habanero pepper (Caspicum chinense) against storage rot for a period of six weeks. Habanero pepper are tender and have high water content which makes them enormously perishable and susceptible to fungal attack thereby making storage a problem. Habanero pepper was wrapped in surface sterilized leaves of the above-mention plants and control was kept in a different basket without leaves. At seven (7) days intervals, soft, rotten and wilted habanero pepper were counted, pick out and the leaves replaced with fresh ones. Examining the performances of the different leaves, P. Americana and V. amygdalina were significantly (P=0.05) better than those of M. sapientum, C. esculenta and control. To show the different percentage rates of survival, M. sapientum and C. esculenta had 0% by the end of the 42 days treatment. C. papaya, V. amygdalina and P. americana had 5%, 26.25% and 28.75% survival rate respectively. Some organisms responsible for the decay of the pepper fruits were inoculated, incubated, isolated, inspected and finally identified as: Fusarium moniliforme, Aspergillus niger and Mucor irregularis. These findings showed that Persea americana leaves preserved pepper better and reduced storage rot. The results of this experiment have created an alternative storage method and can be used to back up the claims of local farmers that lined baskets with V. amygdalina leaves.

According to modern scientific and philosophical representations, the world is its creation as development. Because of anthroponoospherization, world development appears as a historical and spiritual development. A measure of progressive development are: 1) the completeness of the implementation of legislative tendency (directions) of development, 2) the superiority of the old to new, 3) the increase of consciousness and spiritual factors of development. In the development of society, the historical-spiritual appear to it: 1) degrees, 2) local ways (civilization) actually happen-ideas-development, which are: 1) initial with the stages of anthroposociogenesis, tribal community of collectors and hunters, the clan community of farmers and herders, 2) agrarian society with the stages of the first civilizations of the copper stone age (Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian-Babylonian, Indo, Aegean, Hatto-Smallasian Early Chinese, Ancient American) iron age from the 1st millennium BC of ancient (Middle East, Antique, Ancient Indian and Ancient Chinese) and medieval (Far Eastern, Indian, Austrian, Central Asian, Iranian-Islamic, Eastern Christian and West Christian local civilizations) and so-called industrial society with preindustrialization XVIІІ-mid. ХVІІ century, industrialization the middle of ХVІІ–ХІХ centuries, industrial first half of Twentieth century and, the middle of XX century, the globalization-information stages of development with the corresponding all of them-events-ideas-development. Stages of development are determined by their main direction. Civilizations can be defined as local socio-culturaland organisms that are inherent in the physiognomic unity of distinctive features. In the process of historical development there is a growth of conscious-spiritual factors of development (socio-cultural paradigm), mainly as the implementation of various socio-cultural projects, which prompts the creation of consciously projected, intellectually creative, idea-creative, spiritually-constructed world as it happens-idea- development. Events are actingknowledged as ideas, and ideas are projected as development. All further history of mankind is the deduction and embodiment of consciously-projected ideas. Socio-cultural projects require the realization, and that’s why historical development is somehow dejected, and is carried out as some kind of enthusiasm. Religion - faith in God through the cult, what is the act of consciousness (faith) of world creation (God) through its activation in itself (the cult). The historical-spiritual world-development are as follows: 1) the continuation of the world creation, 2) the belief of realization as a kind of locomotive, because of what 3) religious socio-cultural projects of spiritual world transformation are currently the largest. From the New Times monotheism comes into the secular phase of practicing faith. From the seventeenth century humanity passes to industrial ways of development and to the twentieth century. the world economy is formed, world politics and world spirituality that are from the middle of Twentieth century turn into the globalization-informational period of “the inventive future”, when any social and cultural projects can be implemented. There is a world civilization as a cathedral unity of national cultures. In the field of religious, there is not immorality, but newly-religions as a God's gradual faith. Innovation faith occurs as: 1) ecumenization, 2) secularization, and 3) new secular dynastic theologians. A peculiar “spiritual evaporation” of globalization processes is the maturation of the so-called universal religion. There can be no universal religion, only a universal faith can be. Universal religion is not a separate religion, but the unity of all religions of the world as its spiritual transformation. Universal religion arises as 1) activation of the creative forces of man, 2) the locomotive of socio-cultural projects that require the faith realization, 3) as a social and cultural project for the spiritual transformation of the world (God's reign, etc.). The unity of all religions in the world is currently the most expressed in theistic evolutionism, which in modern universal evolutionism receives a scientific and philosophical justification, where a new process-creative-centric image of the world for its transformation arises. Secular gradual faith passes into the development of the world, world-wide – the consciousness of the world as its development, which is achieved by the event-idea-development. The world of faith appears in three hypostases: 1) as the unity of all religions of the world as its spiritual transformation, 2) the world is not religion, but faith, and 3) acts consciousness of the world as its development. Concentration of the meanings of spiritual uplift form the so-called spiritual republics (Zion, Shambhala, mountainous Jerusalem, etc.) as our antisocial spiritual homeland. World-development of historical-spiritual appears as an intelligent world development (World building).

Aromatic hot peppers (Capsicum chinense Jacq.) are an important agricultural commodity for many small-scale farmers in the Caribbean because it is a commercially viable crop and one that is integral to the cuisines of the region. The large variation in fruit shape, size, color, pungency, and aroma of this species facilitates a diverse range of uses. Using 264 accessions from a Caribbean germplasm collection (representing primarily the Caribbean Basin, Central and South America), this study investigated 1) morphological variation in 13 fruit descriptors of agro-economic importance; and 2) morphological groups based on geographic origin. All 13 fruit descriptors showed significant variation. Fruit color [immature (six states) and mature (12 states)] was the most diverse qualitative fruit trait. Among the quantitative traits, fruit weight and fruit width showed the highest broad-sense heritability (0.81), and fruit weight was highly correlated with fruit width and placenta size. Cluster analysis revealed four main clusters, which did not show a clear separation of accessions based on major geographic regions, but there was a highly significant association (P < 0.0001) between geographic subgroups and the clusters to which they were assigned. Most accessions of the Northern Caribbean (particularly the Bahamas and Puerto Rico) separated quite distinctly from most accessions of the Southern Caribbean and clustered with most accessions of Central and South America. Accessions of the Southern Caribbean (Lesser Antilles, Trinidad & Tobago) were substantially more similar to each other than they were to most accessions of Central and South America, thereby suggesting genetic differences between accessions of the Southern Caribbean islands and the mainland populations. Collectively, the results show that this germplasm collection contains useful accessions with desired fruit quality traits and a level of genetic variation that can be used to encourage its active conservation and use for further evaluation trials and crop improvement as well as guide ongoing complementary germplasm introductions to augment the collection’s diversity.

The Good Earth (1931) by the American author, Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) is recognised for its predominant theme of the nourishing power of the land. Buck’s novel situates this universal theme within the context of traditional Chinese culture. Wang Lung, a farmer, has an intimate relationship with the earth because he produces his harvest through his own labour. Buck suggests that Wang Lung’s reverence for nature is responsible for his inner goodness, as well as for his increasing material success, and that the decadent, wasteful ways of the wealthy are due to their estrangement from the land. Buck also suggests throughout the book that while human success is transitory, the earth endures forever. These ideas about the earth give the novel its title. The novel is recognised for its glorification of land and soil as the foundation of life. Throughout the novel, a connection to the land is associated with moral piety, good sense, respect for nature, and a strong work ethic, while alienation from the land is associated with decadence and corruption. This paper is an attempt to offer viable alternatives to reconstitute ecocritical ideas in The Good Earth and to evaluate them in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to the worsening environmental crisis.

Dengue is the most common mosquito-borne, viral disease in the world. Dengue virus is a single stranded positive polarity RNA virus, belongs to the family Flaviviridae. It is transmitted through the bite of an infected female mosquito of Aedes species - mainly the species Aedes aegypti and, to a lesser extent, Aedes albopictus. This mosquito also transmits Chikungunya, Zika and Yellow fever viruses.1-4 There are 4 distinct, but closely related, serotypes of the virus (DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4). Recovery from infection by one serotype provides heterotypic or cross-immunity to the other serotypes. This is only partial and temporary, lasts only a few months, but homotype immunity is lifelong. For this reason, a person can be infected with a dengue virus as many as four times in his or her lifetime. Subsequent infections (secondary infection) by other serotypes increase the risk of developing severe dengue.1-5 The fifth variant DENV-5 has been isolated in October 2013. DENV-5 has been detected during screening of viral samples taken from a 37 year old farmer admitted in a hospital in Sarawak state of Malaysia in the year 2007.6 The first record of a case of probable dengue fever reported in a Chinese medical encyclopedia from the Jin Dynasty (265–420AD).The first recognized dengue epidemics occurred almost simultaneously in Asia, Africa, and North America in the 1780s, shortly after the identification and naming of the disease in 1779. The first confirmed case report dates from 1789 and is by Benjamin Rush, who coined the term "breakbone fever" because of the symptoms of myalgia and arthralgia.7 Haemorrhagic dengue was first recognised in the 1950s during dengue epidemics in the Philippines and Thailand. 8 The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades. A vast majority of the cases are asymptomatic and hence the actual numbers of dengue cases are underreported and many cases are misclassified. Dengue is common in more than 100 countries around the globe, with its endemicity in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and the Latin American countries. Forty percent of the world’s population, about 3 billion people live in the areas with a risk of dengue. Annually, some 400 million people get infected with dengue, with an occurrence of 100 million clinically apparent infections, and 22,000 die from severe dengue across the globe. The increasing incidence, severity and frequency of dengue epidemics are linked to trends in human ecology, demography and globalisation, and may have been influenced by climate change. 8,9 In Bangladesh, dengue occurred sporadically since 1964.10 Literature shows, the first documented case of dengue like fever occurred in 1964, popularly known as "Dacca fever" which later on serologically proved as dengue fever.11 Bangladesh has been experiencing episodes of dengue fever in every year since 2000. All four serotypes have been detected, with DENV-3 predominance until 2002.12,13 After that, no DENV-3 or DENV-4 was reported from Bangladesh. During 2013-2016, DEN2 was predominant followed by DEN-1 in circulation. Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control & Research (IEDCR) predicted that as the serotypes DENV-3 and DENV-4 are in circulation in the neighbouring countries, they may create epidemics of secondary dengue in the near future in Bangladesh.14 In 2017, reemergence of DENV-3 was identified; subsequently there was a sharp rise in dengue cases from the beginning of the monsoon season in 2018.15 In 2000, dengue attacked 5,551 individuals and the number of deaths was 93. Since 2003, the death rate has declined gradually, with zero fatalities in subsequent couple of years, but a devastating turn with 10,148 cases and 26 deaths in 2018. In 2019, during January to July, number total cases were 18,484, with 57 deaths.16 Directorate General of Health Services conducts periodical (Pre-monsoon, Monsoon and Post- monsoon) Aedes survey to estimate the vector density of the mosquito. The monsoon survey (18-27 July 2019) of 100 sites of 98 wards in Dhaka city both North and South revealed that the number of adult aedes mosquito was increased by 13.52 folds, in compare to the pre-monsoon (3-12 March 2019) survey.17 The aedes larvae were also increased by 12.5 folds in this period. Breteau Index (BI) was considered in the study. Report shows that the BI was more than 20 in 57% and 64% of total wards in Dhaka North and Dhaka South respectively. Furthermore, in terms of House Index (HI) or percentage of houses infested, 75% and 83% of total wards in North and South city respectively having HI more than 5.17 Furthermore, recent studies show that mosquitoes have grown resistant, and how certain insecticides are completely ineffective against them.18 Considering the situation, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has taken commendable steps including training on case management for nurses and doctors across the country, review of the national guidelines on case management, expansion of dengue services along with increasing bed capacities in hospitals, strengthened mass awareness with special attention to the school children and the community people, ensuring availability of dengue diagnostic kits, diagnostic services at free of cost in public health facilities and fixed and reduced rate in private sectors, strengthening collaboration with city corporations, municipalities and other agencies both in public and private sectors and development partners. Prevention and control of dengue in Bangladesh, is not a sole responsibility for any single ministry and or its agencies. It needs effective and timely coordination, collaboration and partnership, among all the concerned ministries and their agencies, led by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Furthermore, strengthening of the existing efforts including capacity building and resource mobilisation, and integrated surveillance, sustainable vector control, optimum and active community participation, and adequate monitoring and periodic evaluation throughout the year across the country, considering it an endemic disease, are strongly recommended. Bangladesh Med Res Counc Bull 2019; 45: 66-68

This chapter examines recent controversies over internet addiction and Chinese gold farmers, players of World of Warcraft who make a living acquiring in-game virtual currency and selling it for real money to (mostly Western) players looking to accelerate the tedious “grind” of the leveling-up process. The chapter shows how “cheap play” has been revived as a tool for condemning Chinese “cheap labor,” powerfully informing how internet game addiction is itself culturally and spatially represented in popular and psychiatric discourse. Using Cory Doctorow’s story “Anda’s Game” as a case study, it considers how twenty-first-century American anxieties about ludic immersion, compounded by the nation’s own destabilized position in the global economy, have led American game developers as well as medical professionals to pathologize gold farming as exclusionists had Chinese gambling: as symptomatic of an “Asian” psychosis that fails to respect normative boundaries between play and work, virtual and real world.

Plant remains from Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California, and historical accounts show that Chinese migrants relied on a variety of strategies to obtain plant foods in western North America in the second half of the nineteenth century. They farmed Chinese and European American crops, purchased local and imported foods, and collected wild resources. They faced a diversity of local environmental, social, and economic conditions that required a flexible cuisine and making choices beyond the dichotomy of maintaining a traditional Chinese diet or adopting European American foods.

<i>Abstract</i>.—The North American Paddlefish <i>Polyodon spathula</i> was first introduced into China from the United States in 1988, with the importation of 3,000 larvae. From this and subsequent introductions, successful spawning of broodstock raised in China was first achieved in Hubei Province in 2001. As of 2018, this nonnative Paddlefish is cultured in more than 10 provinces, including Hubei, Sichuan, and the southern area of Shaanxi, all throughout the Yangtze River basin, and Guangdong, in the Zhujiang River basin. Four large Paddlefish hatcheries with other, smaller, newly-established facilities produce about 10 million fingerlings per year. With feeding habits of Paddlefish being similar to those of Bighead Carp <i>Hypophthalmichthys nobilis</i>, a traditional fish species produced by Chinese aquaculture, fish farmers rear Paddlefish as a substitute species for Bighead Carp in their production systems. Typically, Paddlefish fingerlings (10 cm TL) are cultured to market sizes (0.6–0.75 kg) in ponds or cages in reservoirs. Paddlefish in China are cultured primarily for meat rather than roe. Acceptable market size can be reached within six months on prepared diets, whereas it takes one year on natural diet. Paddlefish are usually marketed live, as no processing industry has developed. Because Paddlefish have a low tolerance to hypoxia, long distance transportation of live market size Paddlefish is relatively limited. A few Paddlefish are also marketed as aquarium fish. Because of the limited supply of fingerlings and the difficulty of efficiently catching Paddlefish from large bodies of water, reservoir ranching as a production system has not been well developed. Also, reservoir ranching for Paddlefish was slowed due to concerns about potential hybridization between the nonnative Paddlefish and the critically endangered Chinese Paddlefish <i>Psephurus gladius</i> of the Yangtze River. The short supply and high price of fingerlings remain major factors limiting the expansion of North American Paddlefish production in China.

Throughout the forests of the Northwest Coast of North America— those few forests that have not been logged—one finds cedar trees from which long strips of bark have been removed. These strips were taken, at various times in the recent or distant past, by local Native American peoples, to use for a wide variety of reasons. The trees were never cut for their bark; only one long, narrow strip was removed. The process made it necessary for someone to climb high up in the tree to cut the top of the strip. This difficult and dangerous climb was economically reasonable; cutting a cedar is a long job, and would, in any case, eliminate the chance of future bark. But the climb was required for a more immediate and compelling reason: the cedar is sacred, and its indwelling spirit must be respected. Wanton cutting of a cedar is unthinkable. Before a cut is made, prayers and apologies are made to the tree. The cutter explains that he or she really needs the bark, and often adds that he or she will take as little as possible, in the most careful way. In spite of two centuries of contact with, and borrowing from, the outside world, this reverence for the cedar continues today. It is part of a wider religious involvement with the landscape—with water, mountains, plants, and animals— that incorporates environmental management rules as part of sacred ethics. Across the Pacific from China, the Native American peoples of the Northwest Coast maintained, until recently, a way of life based on fishing. While the Chinese changed from foragers to farmers, and slowly built the world’s most populous civilization, the Northwest Coast Indians developed more and more sophisticated ways of harvesting the abundant fish and shellfish resources of their cold and rainy coastlines and rivers. Although they built no cities and wrote down no literature, they created a brilliant, complex culture that had an extremely finetuned adjustment to its environment.

Joan Hinton and Sid Engst went to China in the late 1940s, became fervent believers in Mao’s revolution, and stayed for the rest of their lives, working to improve China’s dairy industry. Hinton was a promising physicist who worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and Engst was a farmer from central New York. In spite of the horrors of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, they remained dedicated to socialism, believing that Mao had done a tremendous amount to improve Chinese society. After Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and opening to the West, they lamented the loss of Mao’s dream for a classless egalitarian society. From their perspective, his vision had been betrayed.

This chapter discusses Mexico's agrarian reform policy, one of the earliest land reform programs of its kind in Latin America. The labor unions that had formed in the 1920s became crucial to the movement for land reform in the 1930s. Under the two waves of agrarian reform, most land was distributed to single men and male heads of household. However, some women seized the limited opportunities they had to gain farmland. Anti-Chinese sentiment and President Lázaro Cárdenas' expropriation of U.S.-owned land in the Mexicali Valley ended the flow of Asian migration to the Valley's rural areas. Most Asian workers were excluded from obtaining communal farmland. Nevertheless, some Asian farmers purchased property and continued their commercial relationship with U.S.-owned companies on a smaller scale.

In a commercial society like ours it is understandable that money-makers should be the ones who pay the greatest attention to the implications of economics. Historians have been a breed apart, with most of them (until recently) paying little heed to the ways in which economics affects history. Yet surprisingly, a basis for the eventual integration of economics, ecology, and history was laid in the nineteenth century. The Victorian who tackled history from the economic side was William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882). The distinction made in the previous chapter between living in a area and living on it was a paraphrase of what Jevons wrote about the material basis of English prosperity: "The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields; Chicago and Odessa our granaries; Canada and the Baltic are our timber forests; Australia contains our sheep farms, and in South America are our herds of oxen;.. . the Chinese grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar, and spice plantations are in all the Indies. Spain and France are our vineyards, and the Mediterranean our fruit-garden.'" A century before the term "ghost acres" was coined, Jevons had clearly in mind the idea behind the term. Half a century before Jevons was born—in fact in the year the Bastille was stormed by French revolutionaries (1789)—an English mineral surveyer by the name of John Williams had asked, in The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain, what would happen to the blessings of the industrial revolution when England no longer possessed the wherewithal to power the machinery that produced her wealth? Optimism is so deeply engrained a characteristic of busy people that this warning, like most first warnings, was little noted. It remained for Jevons to rouse the British public in 1865 with the publication of his book, The Coal Question. Jevons's life coincided in time with the period when the nature and significance of energy (in its prenuclear formulation) was becoming manifest to physical scientists. Since energy was needed to turn the wheels of industry, and coal was the most readily available source of energy, Jevons reasoned that the continued political dominance of Great Britain was dependent on the bounty of her coal. This naturally led to the double question, How long would English coal and the British Empire last?