The Chola merchant guilds had formalized corporate structures that dissipated the risk of long voyages 2000 years ago. Seeing that the Romans traded with the Cholas, the Romans probably had corporate structures too.

Humans have been living in complex societies since the Bronze Age. It’s difficult to run a complex society without some sort of bureaucratic organization.

Romans built blocks of dwelling houses 5-6 stories high, houses with central heating, and running water delivered to their cities (and wealthier homes) by systems of aqueducts and pipes, etc. These are things that we associate with 19th or even 20th century in large parts of Europe.

Sadly, their social institutions, even as famous as the republic, were also not practiced and even forgotten for long centuries. Much of the Enlightenment was fueled by re-reading and re-understanding of classic Greek and Roman works, which felt fresh and mind-expanding at the time.

I mean, the main social institutions that underpinned all the others in Rome were massive human trafficking and looting operations. The enlightened Greeks weren't any better.

My personal guess is that we would've had the industrial revolution thousands of years earlier if these groups we like to glorify in our history books would've laid off the enslaving, murder, and robbery.

I'm not saying the Greeks and Romans didn't have any merits at all. Can we learn some things from them? Sure. Do we have to call them 'great,' and aspire to be like them? Absolutely not.

Life in 700 AD was completely different from life in 1400 AD. Cities, population density, building styles, international trade, weapons and warfare, agricultural methods, secular institutions - almost nothing stayed the same.

People tend to even forget that the official definition of "the Middle Ages" stretches back into the Dark Age, where kings were more like chieftains, castles basically unknown, even most of the clergy struggled to read and write, and a typical member of the elite warrior class looked nothing like a stereotypical knight.

I seem to find that this is still the best way to communicate.

But I still think there was something unique about the legal entitlements in 17th century England that didn't really exist in previous eras. Previous versions of complex structures were still family oriented, or had to put up with local power brokers, or were a fiefdom unto themselves.

Like, you didn't see James Watt build a fort and hire goons to protect his assets. But that would have been a completely normal requirement of establishing an organization in the Roman world.

What was unique about legal entitlements 1600s England that wasn't in, say, 1600s Netherlands?

Like, why doesn't the Dutch East India Company count?

Or quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Mine#Free_miners :

> The organizational structure of Falun Mine created under the 1347 charter was advanced for its time. Free miners owned shares of the operation, proportional to their ownership of copper smelters. The structure was precursor to modern joint stock companies, and Stora Enso, the modern successor to the old mining company, is often referred to as the oldest joint stock company still operational in the world.[2]

My point isn't that England was first or best at these things, but the chronology of these things coming first was essential for the puzzle pieces coming together.

English is an unusual European language using "did" to express some negatives, like "I didn't want it" instead of "I want it not", and with a relatively insignificant gender system in the grammar.

Maybe that was part of the puzzle.

Or perhaps Anglicanism was part of the puzzle.

Or the wealth from colonial exploitation and slavery that was used to fund these projects.

For that matter, when Watt developed his steam engine, Scottish "colliers and salters [were] in a state of slavery and bondage" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Slavery_and... , so there's another puzzle piece. That surely seems like part of the legal entitlements you refer to, albeit in Scotland instead of England.

Or, as English people 150 years ago argued, the natural superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Scottish races -- a puzzle piece that biology has conclusively shown does not exist.

How do you know which puzzle piece is relevant enough to the puzzle, vs. a happenstance?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kay_(flying_shuttle)

Weavers rioted against his invention. He hardly collected any royalties from his invention in England, and departed for France persona non grata. The French manufacturers also did not pay royalties on the monopoly to the flying shuttle granted him. He died in poverty.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Arkwright

He lost a major patent case, which allowed competitors to use his inventions. He did make money because he owned mills himself rather than being a tinkerer like Kay.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hargreaves

He was run out of town because his spinning jenny put too many spinners out of work. He moved to the town that bought thread because they welcomed the lower prices. His patent survived but did not stop others from copying.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Crompton

Crompton could not afford to patent the spinning mule, so he open sourced it following promises from manufacturers to pay him a fee. The promises were broken. Crompton never made any money from his invention.

Then, as now, a patent is only worth one's ability to fund litigation.

The Europe science and engineering moved into England much before the economical activity, and as far as I can see, it was mostly because of that one. Some of the greatest minds of the time were literally chased outside of Italy during that move.

Also, it's a right that was missing from most of the world for about a millennium by that time.

interesting- I haven’t heard of this view before. can you give some examples?

(Paywalled, but you may be able to find a copy.)

Private land is almost as old as record history. So is selling across markets.

Double entry book keeping was invented in the late 15th century.

All of these existed for centuries before the steam engine.

Regarding its invention, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping#Histo... says:

> The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry system in Europe come from Amatino Manucci, a Florentine merchant at the end of the 13th century.

and lists precursors under "Other claimants".

Hell my own country didn't have any forests left by the 17th century and built ships from Baltic timber. For 300 years the entire world fed European industry with its natural resources. It is why God created Africa.

So which great invention is just around the corner now?

I wouldn't call the industrial revolution "the greatest moment of human progres". I would call it "the moment that sealed our fate". Climate change, un-renewable resources scarcity, biodiversity collapse, etc. We are headed at a breath-taking rate towards a planet that will be hardly inhabitable for us. We may only subsist as nomadic tribes only a few centuries from now.

Yet when you bring up a certain recent improvement to records of entitlement around here, you tend to get crucified. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯