Resources Production Index
Hub
Resources and production — the raw materials, agricultural commodities, manufactured goods, and strategic-materials supply chains that underpin every economy and every army — are a foundational research domain in economic and military history. The subdomain covers resources and production as a research domain across every era and civilisation: the Neolithic and Bronze-Age metal-and-stone extractive economies (Anatolian copper, Cornish and Indian tin, Egyptian and Nubian gold, the great Bronze-Age trade in copper ingots); the Iron-Age and classical resource economies (Greek silver from Laurion, Spanish silver from Rio Tinto, Roman lead, marble, granite, papyrus, grain, wine, oil, garum, and the great quarry economies); the medieval European resource economy (English and Scandinavian timber, Scandinavian iron, Welsh and Cornish tin, the wool clip, salt panning, mediaeval canals and roads); the Islamic Golden Age resource economy (Indian Ocean trade in spices, silks, slaves, gold, timber, dyes); the Chinese imperial resource economy (silk, porcelain, tea, paper, iron, salt, the long agricultural-tribute system); the Iberian Atlantic resource economy (silver, gold, sugar, slaves, cochineal, indigo, tobacco); the eighteenth-century European mercantilist economies (timber and naval stores from the Baltic, sugar and slaves from the Caribbean, cotton and indigo from India and the American South, fur from North America); the long-nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution that transformed resource production at scale (coal, iron, steel, cotton, wheat, rubber, palm oil, oil, rubber); the twentieth-century strategic-materials economy (oil and gas, aluminium and bauxite, uranium, the strategic stockpile programmes, the long Anglo-American oil empire); the post-1945 commodity-export-led developing-world economies; and the contemporary critical-minerals economy (lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, semiconductor materials) that underpins the energy transition and modern weapons systems. Notes treat extractive industries, agricultural production, manufacturing, labour, the relationship between resource endowments and strategic position, and the recurring debates about resource-dependency, resource-curse, and the political economy of scarcity. The British naval-stores economy of the long eighteenth century (oak, hemp, canvas, copper, iron, the Royal Forests, Baltic dependencies) that the current vault focus visits is one chapter of this much longer story. Adjacent to MOC_Economics_Commerce, MOC_Weapons_Technology (Metallurgy), MOC_Ships_Maritime (Shipbuilding Materials), and MOC_Geography_Places.
Primary Notes
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Roadmap
(planned notes as red-links — add as research identifies gaps)
Methodology
- Resource Economies as Research Subject — Extractive, Agricultural, Manufactured
- Reading Production Records, Customs Books, and Statistical Yearbooks
Ancient
- Bronze-Age Copper and Tin Trade
- Greek Silver from Laurion — Athens’s Naval Funding Source
- Roman Spanish Silver and Gold — Rio Tinto, Las Médulas
- Roman Building Materials — Marble, Granite, Concrete, Lead
- Egyptian and Nubian Gold Mining
- Han Chinese Iron and Salt Monopolies
Medieval
- Medieval European Timber Economy — Forest Management and Royal Forests
- Scandinavian Iron Industry 1000–1500
- Welsh and Cornish Tin Mining in the Medieval Period
- English Wool Clip and the Medieval Cloth Industry
- Medieval Salt Industry — Mining, Panning, and the Hanseatic Trade
- Indian Ocean Spice Trade — Pepper, Cloves, Nutmeg, Cinnamon
- Chinese Silk, Porcelain, Tea, and the Imperial Tribute System
Early Modern
- Potosí and the Spanish American Silver Economy
- Caribbean Sugar Plantations and the Slave Trade
- Brazilian Gold and Diamond Mining 1690–1800
- Indian Cotton, Indigo, and Saltpetre
- Swedish and Russian Bar Iron — Early-Modern European Supply
Age of Sail (current vault focus)
- English Oak and the New Forest — Timber Supply for the Royal Navy
- Baltic Hemp and Riga Flax — Rope and Sail Dependency in British Strategy
- The Royal Foundry at Woolwich — Cannon Production and Quality Control
- Deptford and Woolwich Ropewalks — Manufacturing the Fleet’s Rigging
- Swedish Iron — Bar Iron Imports and Naval Ironmongery
- Copper Sheathing — The Swansea Smelters and Cornish Mines
- Mediterranean Sailcloth — Genoese and Russian Duck
Industrial Revolution
- British Coal Industry 1700–1900
- British Iron and Steel — From Coke-Smelting to Bessemer
- American Cotton South and the Long-Nineteenth-Century Global Cotton Economy
- Brazilian and Malayan Rubber Plantations
- Palm-Oil Industry and the West African Resource Economy
Twentieth Century
- Oil — From Pennsylvania to the Middle East
- Aluminium and Bauxite — Twentieth-Century Light-Metal Economy
- Uranium and the Atomic-Era Resource Economy
- Strategic Stockpile Programmes — US Defense Production Act and Soviet Gosplan
- Anglo-American Oil Empire and the Seven Sisters
Modern
- Modern Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel — The Battery-Materials Economy
- Rare-Earth Elements and Modern Defence Supply Chains
- Semiconductor-Materials Geopolitics — Taiwan, Korea, Netherlands
- Critical-Minerals Strategy and Twenty-First-Century Resource Competition
- Modern Agricultural Production and Global Food Security
Cross-Cutting
- See also: MOC_Economics_Commerce
- See also: _Home