It isn't a misstatement, it is (as I explained) a common argument that falls within Marxist/materialist viewpoints such as Robert Allen's account of global IR, it was the dominant viewpoint when this guy was at uni, you often hear people in the UK of that age saying this stuff (I know, I studied economic history during this time) but the field has continued to progress since then. Water energy wasn't a "starting", it was the IR. Coal didn't come until significantly later (and the major issue with materialist history is also what happened in the 20th century, you had multiple countries attempt and fail to industrialise using this idea that energy intensity was the only thing that mattered, the biggest issue with anti-Eurocentric theory is that it was designed to explain a 40-year period around the end of the 18th century and completely fails to generalize).

What is anti-woke? You realise that stuff existed before zoomers starting saying everything was woke/anti-woke. Eurocentrism is a school of thought within economic history, it is nothing to do with wokeism...I have no idea how these two things are related apart from you trying to relate it to something you understand, i.e. pop culture.

"Pure innovation" fluff is the dominant theory today, McCloskey's books are the most important ones in this school. To call this "fluff" suggests ignorance rather than the superiority that you seem to be trying to portray.

Petroleum wasn't a key ingredient of IR...at this point, I am assuming you know nothing about basic aspects of economic history because petroleum wasn't widely used as a fuel until the 1930/40s (again, you seem intent on talking about things that you know rather than the actual subject).