Research On Historical Experience Of Energy Transitions And Rising Of Great Powers

Great power rising is an outcome of many factors combined with both of economics and politics.Energy transition is a good perspective to further look into it.As our human beings have been experiencing two grand energy transitions from biomass to coal and from coal to oil since modern era,there were several great powers had rised to developed countries.Relatively,the great power rising and the energy transitions had consistently formed international power structure,social-economies and civilizations.Therefore,this view is worthy of drawing attention in the subject of IR.In general,this dissertation is a kind of historically comparative study mainly combined methodology with International Political Economy and Historical Sociology,and it tries to analyse historical experience of the rising of great powers from the perspective of energy transitions.On the one side,the paper argues the energy transition could trigger a more efficient growth path that brings the effect of economic expansion as well as economic and social changes.On the other side,the paper illustrates the expansion or contention of the source by a few countries would create a dilemma which turned out to be an important factor making them fail in reaching the status of hegemon.After retrospection and analysis,the paper argues and proves the conection and relation between energy transition and great power rising,along with other historical hints.There are several key findings could be drawn.Firstly,an importan energy transition was one of essential prerequisite to push the rising of great powers,while the process of energy transition was the process of taking off and power rising.Secondly,the rising rank was made by the role in the transition.The grand energy transition was pushed forward by the leading power,while leading of the transition led to the hegemon.Thirdly,energy transition led to ―energy dilemma of dependency‖,which is an important factor repressing followers or challengers rising to the hegemon.This paper tries to supplement the theory of great power rising with ―energy factor‖ and enrich the theory of energy transition and energy security.Meanwhile,it could shed light on the policy implication of the peaceful rising of China and other countries.