4 ms·
> However, unlike farming which developed independently in many places at different times, the industrial revolution happened largely in one place, once and the
by tus666 4y ago
> However, unlike farming which developed independently in many places at different times, the industrial revolution happened largely in one place, once and then spread out from there
This. We can ask the same question about feudal Japan, Imperial China, Revolutionary France/Germany/Russia/etc.
Maybe it was just a fluke after all, with the benefit of the prior scientific revolution and all that.
- triceratops 4y agoBecause having an industrial revolution implies that transportation and navigation are widespread, it's kind of a given that an industrial revolution can only happen once.
- towaway15463 4y agoI thought it all happened because of coal mining. Lumber was getting scarce and expensive in Britain so people started burning coal even though they didn’t have very good coal stoves at first. Demand for coal opened more coal mines. Mines need ground water to be pumped out of them. The first steam engine was a water pump run on coal because that was the cheapest fuel source. Better pumps => more coal => cheap energy => development of better machinery to use it => better pumps… There’s your virtuous cycle.
- Robotbeat 4y agoThat is a super common explanation, but doesn’t square with the fact that steam power was a complete side note of the first half of the First Industrial Revolution, which used water power almost exclusively (wind, animal power as well).
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoWater power doesn't require advances in precision machinery.
- Robotbeat 4y agoIndeed, which is why water power was the main motive power for the FIRST industrial revolution which developed precision machining. Gotta bootstrap somehow.
- shadowgovt 4y agoWe can, perhaps, hypothesize that lacking the interconnected maritime world of the 1700s, more independent industrial revolutions may have occurred. But it's a tricky hypothesis to support because those revolutions also breed transportation revolutions (especially if the condition of "isolated, unable to trade for enough survival resources" that the British Isles had is a significant incentivizer; isolated places that can put these engines to transportation have great reason to do so). So it would have needed to be some very close-in-time revolutions to happen in multiple places instead of one happening in one place and <70 years later has been transported everywhere by the engines of motion the revolution creates. Earth itself is only so big.
- BurningFrog 4y agoMaybe without a large international market to sell to, mass production isn't very useful?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoIn The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark says that Imperial China actually had an industrial revolution, in the 11th century. They produced 100,000 tons of iron. They were using the iron to improve productivity of other things. And then the imperial court ordered that everything be shut down because the wrong kind of people were getting rich. Stark has sources for this, which he documents, but I can't cite them because I don't have the book with me at the moment. But, presuming that Stark's sources are accurate, Imperial China did have an industrial revolution. The powers that be decided that it was causing too much disorder in their society, so they killed it. So maybe that's a big part of the answer. When it happens, don't kill it with stupid politics.
- kurupt213 4y agoThis sounds like Warf saying Shakespeare sounds better in the original Klingon
- mcphage 4y agoWhoever wrote that line: it was genius.
- CRConrad 4y agoDon't you come here with that Hebrew or Arameic or Greek gobbledygook -- we demand God's unadulterated word in the original King James version! (Have actually seen something like that for real, fully seriously, on the Internet somewhere. Years ago, can't recall where.)
- JasonFruit 4y agoOr maybe do? Maybe they were right that, from a societal rather than individual point of view, their industrial revolution was a disadvantage, at least at that stage.
- imbnwa 4y agoI would imagine the motivation would simply be that Chinese aristocracy had zero leniency with the notion of a wealthy, non-aristocratic class. From the perspective of the power structure, I can only imagine that's what 'wrong people' would mean. There was a similar tension in Europe I think.
- tshaddox 4y agoI don't see any reason to believe that industrial revolution wouldn't have been developed independently in multiple places if the movement of culture and ideas around the globe was as slow (or absent) as it was between all the places that independently developed agriculture.
- andrewflnr 4y agoIt's kind of like asking why there isn't more than one fire in a pan of gasoline, even though you struck so many sparks over it.