The fact that Europe imported major innovations from Asia and was obsessed with finding a route to India should also tell something
That Europeans wanted to save money by producing stuff themselves and cutting out the middle man?
The fact that Europe imported major innovations from Asia and was obsessed with finding a route to India should also tell something
There's also a very notable connection between the development of steam technology and the mining industry in England. The early Newcomen engines were only suitable for mineside operations due to their low fuel efficiency. Attempts to use Newcomens early in the 18th century to pump water in London and for similar purposes failed due to fuel cost. It was the extensive use of early steam in the mining industry that established the engineering base that led to better engines later in the century and wider uses for steam power.
Fully agree. There's some analysis of the prerequisites for an industrial revolution in this article: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolutionExactly, people vaguely understood the basic principles at play but they didn't actually understand the exact maths behind them. Because of this the Newcomen engine was designed quite poorly, and virtually all early adopters outside of the coal mines discarded them because the fuel costs (usually firewood) were too high. Even Sweden, which the other article called out for its abundance of wood as an alternative to coal, had this exact problem with a Newcomen at the famous Dannemore iron mine. The engine, along with the iron smelters, burned through wood at such a rapid pace that prices were driven up and people began to get scared that they would run out of easily accessible firewood.
But in the coal mines like those found in England or Wallonia (Liege and Namur both had Newcomen engines by the mid 1720s, hardly a decade after its invention) they used their own scraps as fuel, meaning that these steam engines used trash to allow more coal (and therefore energy) to be unearthed and more profits to be made. It was a virtuous cycle for the mine operators and created an environment where other engineers could improve on the design until it became efficient enough to be employed in other industries.
That analysis makes some interesting points, though somewhat limiting in their implications--like the remark that Indian cotton was important to get the textile industry demand for reciprocal motion going. That would seem to exclude any landlocked heartland for the IR (including my own dark horse of Bohemia, unless it turns into an empire that rules the whole Danube), and would seem to favor those who have argued here that it basically just leaves Belgium.Fully agree. There's some analysis of the prerequisites for an industrial revolution in this article: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution
Although it's answering the question of 'why was there no Roman industrial revolution?' it does this by looking at what led to the OTL one.
This excerpt sums it up well (very similar to what I've quoted above):
Fundamentally this is a story about coal, steam engines, textile manufacture and above all the harnessing of a new source of energy in the economy. That’s not the whole story, by any means, but it is one of the most important through-lines and will serve to demonstrate the point.The specificity matters here because each innovation in the chain required not merely the discovery of the principle, but also the design and an economically viable use-case to all line up in order to have impact.Fundamentally, there's no reason why in another timeline an industrial revolution couldn't happen somewhere other than the UK, but it would need all the various prerequisites to fall into place - which might need a PoD a long way back for some places. So, not impossible, just a sliding scale of plausibility depending on where and when.
Manchuria/Silesia are good location for industrialization too. Relatively flat, good river access, and access to iron/coal.
In the case of Silesia, I had the impression that the Hohenzollerns and Austrian Habsburgs were relatively decent governments, for the Early Modern Era at least.They too would need governments which would are ready to invest industrialisation.
The Low Countries probably or maybe France.
Mongol invasion.Indeed, what did?
?Paper money largely disappeared,
Yeah, the latter.?
I thought the Mongol Yuan dynasty had printed so much paper money that hyper-inflation ensued, with the result that near the end of the Yuan Dynasty paper money was close to worthless, and towns and cities were resorting to a barter economy.
Or were you referring to later when the Yuan Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty?
A Netherlands that controls the coal deposits in Wallonia.
I'd say this sounds farfetched given the distance of 1100 and the 1800s, but you make a good case... I remember a statistic from an economic historian that the Song was literally the richest China had been on a per capita basis until like 1920 which is utterly insane to think about.Mongol invasion.
Song china had all of the signs of early industrialization, especially the often overlooked commercial revolution that was key to funding europe’s own industrial efforts. Paper money, joint stock companies, and fractional reserve banking were all widely used in the Song Dynasty by 1100, as was widespread foreign trade. The imperial government of the time was arguably the most free market of any point in chinese history, and had enacted policies of freedom of speech which allowed scholars to criticize the imperial government without fear of punishment.
Coal was being increasingly adopted as an energy source, especially in deforested north china, where it fueled kaifeng’s massive industrial complex, and, alongside water-powered machinery, led to a sixfold increase in iron production in a century. In the south, salt production occurred on an industrial scale, with natrual gas-powered industrial complexes springing up across sichuan.
The chinese economy grew exponentially during this period, and came to account for almost a third of the entire world economy.
The mongol invasions put a stop this progress, between the destruction of countless urban centers, and the genocide of over half china’s population. Paper money largely disappeared, as did joint stock companies. Wood again replaced coal, and the massive ironworks of kaifeng fell into ruin. It would take china over 700 years, in the late Qing dynasty, for the economy to recover to the levels it had achieved under the Song, and the free market conditions that allowed for the Song economic boom in the first place would arguably never return, allowing europe to catch up and begin its own Industrial Revolution.