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There wasn't really an "industrial revolution". The term is just carefully doctored spin and propaganda from the British Empire. Europe has been manufacturing

There wasn't really an "industrial revolution". The term is just carefully doctored spin and propaganda from the British Empire. Europe has been manufacturing at scale with industrial processes for centuries before the "industrial revolution". (And industrial-scale mechanized mining dates back to the stone age.) Basically, it wasn't a "revolution", just a gradual slow development of more of the same.

kortilla 2y ago
>And industrial-scale mechanized mining dates back to the stone age. Citation needed. “Industrial scale” doesn’t just mean “a lot”.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  "Industrial scale" as in mechanized, formalized processes and world-spanning supply chains. The stone age (as well as the bronze age) ended because the supply chains that spanned continents started to be untenable and something new needed to be done. Our mental model is wrong - industrial processes and global supply chains are not a recent invention. In fact, these things are some of the first things homo sapiens invented. (Many millennia before agriculture or the wheel, for example.) Homo sapiens has always been "modern", whatever characterizes our society isn't that.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Mechanized how though? I don’t think a few cases of water or wind mills turning things meaningfully moves the needle. And it’s definitely not “a formalized process” because those existed long before the qualitative change that came with the Industrial Revolution, which was significant energy expansion into basically every industry, especially transportation. Moving away from depending on animals to move goods outside of waterways dramatically shifted the entire world because it completely changed what was viable (cities of any significant size off of water ways).
Jensson 2y ago
Production of most things started to grow exponentially, that is a revolution. We call it the industrial revolution since industrialization made that happen. The industrial processes you talked about were done, yes, but they weren't revolutionary and changing everything like the industrial revolution did. That is why the industrial revolution is called a revolution while the other things aren't.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  > Production of most things started to grow exponentially, that is a revolution. No, exponential growth is compound interest. By definition not a "revolution" because there is no discontinuity anywhere. The term "industrial revolution" was invented much later by propagandists, people living at the time certainly didn't see it as such.
  - gumby 2y ago
    You are confusing cause and effect. The revolution (upturning of a system) refers to the cause of the increase of the exponential growth, not the consequence. There is a very sharp bend in the growth rate in the 19th century. Even more interestingly, it produced a sharp uptick in global wealth even though industrialization itself did not immediately diffuse uniformly and completely around the globe.
    - defrost 2y ago
      The UK was an empire of some global influence in the 19th Century, a number of events occurred during that time, eg: a sizable fraction of the commercial traders got to share in a (modern) £17bn bailout following the abolition of slavery. While having "lost" ownership of slaves many still retained profit sharing in the industries, cotton production, coffee, sugar, etc. and now had lump sums for capital investment in new colonies, new canals, new railroads, new factories, new steam engines, etc.
      - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
christkv 2y ago
The revolution really was the change from using streams and rivers to coal and steam engines. Suddenly you were not as limited in location for setting up factories allowing flat continental European countries to industrialize at scale.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  > The revolution really was the change from using streams and rivers to coal and steam engines. Yes, that is what they say. A very minor "revolution" compared to everything else going on at the time. (Also we're back to using "streams and rivers", hydropower is growing.)
card_zero 2y ago
Points at a dark satanic mill

kortilla 2y ago

>And industrial-scale mechanized mining dates back to the stone age. Citation needed. “Industrial scale” doesn’t just mean “a lot”.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago
"Industrial scale" as in mechanized, formalized processes and world-spanning supply chains. The stone age (as well as the bronze age) ended because the supply chains that spanned continents started to be untenable and something new needed to be done. Our mental model is wrong - industrial processes and global supply chains are not a recent invention. In fact, these things are some of the first things homo sapiens invented. (Many millennia before agriculture or the wheel, for example.) Homo sapiens has always been "modern", whatever characterizes our society isn't that.
- kortilla 2y ago
  Mechanized how though? I don’t think a few cases of water or wind mills turning things meaningfully moves the needle. And it’s definitely not “a formalized process” because those existed long before the qualitative change that came with the Industrial Revolution, which was significant energy expansion into basically every industry, especially transportation. Moving away from depending on animals to move goods outside of waterways dramatically shifted the entire world because it completely changed what was viable (cities of any significant size off of water ways).

Jensson 2y ago

Production of most things started to grow exponentially, that is a revolution. We call it the industrial revolution since industrialization made that happen. The industrial processes you talked about were done, yes, but they weren't revolutionary and changing everything like the industrial revolution did. That is why the industrial revolution is called a revolution while the other things aren't.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago
> Production of most things started to grow exponentially, that is a revolution. No, exponential growth is compound interest. By definition not a "revolution" because there is no discontinuity anywhere. The term "industrial revolution" was invented much later by propagandists, people living at the time certainly didn't see it as such.
- gumby 2y ago
  You are confusing cause and effect. The revolution (upturning of a system) refers to the cause of the increase of the exponential growth, not the consequence. There is a very sharp bend in the growth rate in the 19th century. Even more interestingly, it produced a sharp uptick in global wealth even though industrialization itself did not immediately diffuse uniformly and completely around the globe.
  - defrost 2y ago
    The UK was an empire of some global influence in the 19th Century, a number of events occurred during that time, eg: a sizable fraction of the commercial traders got to share in a (modern) £17bn bailout following the abolition of slavery. While having "lost" ownership of slaves many still retained profit sharing in the industries, cotton production, coffee, sugar, etc. and now had lump sums for capital investment in new colonies, new canals, new railroads, new factories, new steam engines, etc.
    - otabdeveloper4 2y ago

christkv 2y ago

The revolution really was the change from using streams and rivers to coal and steam engines. Suddenly you were not as limited in location for setting up factories allowing flat continental European countries to industrialize at scale.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago
> The revolution really was the change from using streams and rivers to coal and steam engines. Yes, that is what they say. A very minor "revolution" compared to everything else going on at the time. (Also we're back to using "streams and rivers", hydropower is growing.)

card_zero 2y ago

Points at a dark satanic mill