When it comes to studying the roots of the modern world, a new book takes an elemental approach.
Ed Conway’s “Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shaped Modern Civilization” (Knopf) looks at the influence of the elements iron, copper and lithium — along with salt, oil and sand.
“Without them, normal life as we know it would fall apart,” Conway wrote.
How about?
Sand is invaluable in the construction of buildings, bridges or world roads. But it is also important for the production of glass and silicon chips.
But even as the “most common” material in the earth’s crust,” is never enough.
In China, sand smugglers have dredged so much from the Yangtze River bridge that it is on the verge of collapse and the local ecosystem is threatened.
Meanwhile, in India the “sand mafia” controls a massively profitable industry.
Ed Conway’s “Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shaped Modern Civilization” (Knopf) looks at the influence of the elements iron, copper and lithium — along with salt, oil and sand.
There is documented evidence that this criminal organization has committed “murders and kidnappings, brutal beatings” to collect and sell the ubiquitous material.
But nothing reveals the importance of these ingredients more than oil. Its transformation into gasoline is important in the story of the 20th century.
Gasoline led to the car culture, but it also fueled the Allied victory in World War II.
As General George Patton said to Dwight Eisenhower, “My men can eat their belts but my tanks must have gas.”
The transformation of oil into gasoline is important in the story of the 20th century. Cavan – stock.adobe.com
Adolf Hitler agreed, explaining that Germany would have to attack the Soviet Union in part to control its oil.
“The life of the Axis depends on those oil fields,” he wrote to Mussolini.
Japan spent the war trying to capture the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies.
Fuel was so important that one reason Japanese military leaders used kamikaze pilots was because they only needed enough fuel to reach the target, not return from it.
Salt has helped shape the modern world. pepebaeza – stock.adobe.com
The Allies were less desperate for oil and gas because they had access to large supplies in the US and the Middle East.
Axis does not. Germany’s gasoline supply was so limited that in 1945 its air force, the Luftwaffe, was “effectively grounded.”
In his last days in the Berlin bunker, Hitler was making war plans for the part of Germany that had no gas at all, their trucks then being pulled by oxen.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
