https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Industrialization_of_China#/Hist...
Without demand, there is no supply. In highly unequal societies there is no motivation to improve production efficiency--rather the opposite.
An economics professor of mine put it as "markets are created by demand, not supply." That was nearly 20 years ago, but it's really stuck with me.
As the linked article notes, the precursors for technological innovations were present in many places, but many of those places lacked one or more components of demand flow to finance the required innovation. Only after demand for industrial innovation is present do gaps in the supply chain come into play.
They also invented gunpowder and paper money.
They were basically an early modern civilisation, when Europe was still in the middle ages.
What do you know about inequality during the Song dynasty?
In many ways pre-industrial economy was a zero sum game for someone to be rich and afford to have enough capital to invest into developing industrial production somebody had to be poor. This mean that 90%+ of all people in China and in every other relatively large country lived in extreme poverty.
European colonial powers were simply the first to outsource this dynamic into other continents. While most people in Europe did not directly benefit from native or African slaves in the Americas the transfer of wealth allowed them to import grain and other products from abroad which simultaneously freed up enough labor to develop mining and other industries and increased the purchasing power enough to create significant demand for manufactured goods.
No reforms in China or any ancient empire could have achieved this as long as 90% of their populations were confined to permanently remaining subsistence farmers. Also the Song created paper money because they did not have enough gold and silver it didn’t really offer any benefits besides that and had significant risks. Every attempt to institute paper money, not directly tied to gold or silver prior to the 20th century failed.
Is there any evidence to support this? I remember reading that exploitive practices like slavery added very little to Europe's GDP. There seems to be processes - like advancing textile production and coal mining technology and metallurgy - that began long before the age of colonialism, and thus would likely have continued even in the absence of the slave trade.
Portugal and Spain had huge colonial empires, but that did not drive any industrialization or really long term wealth explosion like the capitalism and the industrial revolution did.
Paper money was certainly adopted. There was a class of administrators who could see the advantages, and so there was demand.
In Britain the demand for coal was independent of social equality. In the sense that everybody needed it to stay alive, especially during the winter.
Ancient Rome was not just agrarian but tributary in nature: the social roles creating slaves and citizens were predefined through conquests. The empire had trade, and trade helped it prosper, but trade was not respected as a foundational ideology as was the case later with merchantalism.
The reason why Britain felt pressure to be an exporter was because this was where the dominant ideology ultimately led: put more assets on the national balance sheet, externalize the liabilities. That emerged from the struggle between the colonial powers of Europe over the course of centuries. The Crusades brought back new ideas, and later, so did the Spanish explorations. At first the dynamic was primarily derived from tribute, and the early conquests had a focus on bullionism: getting gold and silver. But it soon became clear that sugar, cotton, etc were more fundamental to prosperity, and by the 1700's, this had been refined by the utilitarian philosophers into a mode of thought about trade, ethics and invention that remains close to what we accept today.
In the prior societies, this wasn't a topic of discussion, and therefore new ideas were suspicious by default. So even if you had the idea to explore some topic, you needed to be close to, or part of, the nobility to have an opportunity to try. And a big part of early modern Europe was that the inventors and philosophers were always upsetting some noble and running away to the next country over.
So, while Britain got there first, continued emphasis on trade - both with the Americas and the East - would have eventually created the conditions for industry somewhere in Europe.
Maybe less clear to Spain, which did perhaps too well with the silver? Which may have been a contributing reason to the rise of the British (and Dutch) colonial empire(s), because not getting that huge influx of silver and gold, their merchants had more incentive to keep their eyes open for other ways to make money. (Just a WAG, not a historian.)
Potatoes and rice are roughly equivalent in terms of how many people they can feed. Potatoes was revolutionary to Europe because they didn't have rice, but would be nothing special to China.
They were, however, often processed into corn and potato starch, which is pretty common in Chinese cooking.
Chinese people took to peanuts (and chilis) rather eagerly. I think it took only 50 years between peanuts arriving in Eurasia for the first time, and them becoming a staple food in parts of China.
In fairness, the extent was largely unknown to Chinese of the time (the project began in the 1950s, it remains in process).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...
You can also read his 'How Taiwan Became Chinese' for free online: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/andrade/
> In 1600, Taiwan was a wild land, inhabited by headhunters and visited mainly by pirates and fishermen. A hundred years later it was a prefecture of the Chinese Empire, home to a hundred thousand Chinese colonists. What accounted for this transition? How did Taiwan become Chinese?
Same for the flying shuttle or steam engine. Water wheels and such were used by Romans. Romans liked useful engineering. But, I don't think they were a keystone technology. Rome could have still been Rome without water wheels, perhaps. What would they have powered with engines, and how much of it? Would they have learned to to mine coal?
The flying shuttle is even more interesting to me, because it's more independant. Like steel, textile is a trade good. Automated weaving probably would have become widespread in rome, and changed the economy.
I agree with you though. There are multiple routes to industrialisation. Metallurgical techniques could have been invented much earlier. Historical happenstance. Some important metallurgical techniques may have been invented, kept secret, and eventually forgotten. There are lots of curious, ancient steel artifacts in museums and even more in lore.
Metallurgy may have been retarded by millenia, because secrecy.
Perhaps in many thousands of years civilisation would somewhat recover but by then nearly everything would have to be rediscovered.
This in fact is one of the possible answers to the Fermi paradox. Intelligent life besides us does exist but has regressed to a pre technological state and is unable to get back due to depleted resources. Thus it is unable to make its self known.
There just seems to be so much we know we don't know, that to theorize we're the pinnacle of what civilization can be is...gauche? Insanely short sighted and Sol-centric?
I dunno, I'm obviously not a theoretical physicist or conducting well thought out experiments testing those theories - but it just seems defeatist and lame.
We have a visible Universe that has rules and guardrails - that's bonkers and needs to be hacked more.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ro6QSQaKdhfpeeGpr/why-safety...
About the end of the Chinese civilization technological advantage in the 16th century:
> War had ravaged the lands, laying waste whole cities. Plague had struck, killing millions, men, women and children buried in mass graves...
> (but) the force that put an end to the Chinese arc of progress was deadlier by far than all of these together, yet seemingly intangible as metaphysics. By the 16th century, the fleets had vanished, the proximate cause political; to this day there is no consensus on the underlying factors.
Also:
> The saving grace has always been the outside: when one nation, one civilization, faltered, another picked up the torch and carried on; but with the march of globalization, there may soon be no more outside.
Perhaps the direction the world is going in the last couple of years, with less unity, is not that bad.
Angrier and angrier narcissist dictators with nukes? -- less unity yes. Does it increase safety?
Yes beautiful text
That may be a necessary evil though in the really long term.
But with the humans of today, then yes I agree that conflict is unavoidable
Could you "be friends" with authoritarian countries led by dictators? If not, why?
Many countries' populations appear to see authoritarian regimes as the preferred way to govern, from China to Iran, Russia to parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. You can claim most people would prefer something else but are silenced, but I don't agree with that, as countries "forced" to be democratic, like Afghanistan and Iraq, unequivocably go back to being authoritarian as soon as the "oppressors" leave.
It's official policy of the USA to spread democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_promotion_by_the_Uni...
If you're the ruler of a non-democratic country, you would take this kind of behaviour as kindly as the USA would take any other country trying to spread authoritarianism, wouldn't you?
Whether one ideological belief system is more correct than another, or more just, is kind of beyond the point (and very difficult to prove objectively anyway)... my point is that if you're willing to accept a variety of cultures, ideologies and so on, you must not lay judgement at all on others, and specially you must not attempt to crusade around the world trying to impart your own believes on others. Accepting that would go a long way towards "everyone being friends enjoying the differences".
That's the same as believing the African Americans wanted to get captured by slave traders and shipped by boat to work as slaves in the US.
You have, or pretend to have, big holes in your understand of people and the world.
Putin was never chosen by the people, he doesn't represent them. He assassinates opposition politicians or put then in prison if they grow too strong, and fakes election results otherwise he would lose.
I wonder if you're a paid Chinese Communist Party 50 cent person, otherwise, the lack of knowledge you show would be baffling. If indeed you are, then, no hard feelings, I understand you might need a job and pay the rent and maybe you have family and kids what do I know. Probably I won't reply, have a nice day anyway.
Book tips: The Dictators Handbok. Those people don't ... Don't represent the people.
How is it any lazy
I found especially the Fermi paradox interesting (throwawayacc2 thanks for mentioning)
A hand-cranked wax cylinder with an acoustic cone, a needle, and a rod to move the needle along the cylinder.
Which time period are you talking about? I couldn't find a grand unifying graph of eg cost-per-kWh of electricity storage since 1900 or so, but what I could find points to steady declines in price.
Both in single use batteries and in rechargeables.
What you might see as stagnation is that rechargeable batteries haven only rather recently become good enough for many exciting applications (like practical electric cars). But just because we've only recently crossed these thresholds, doesn't mean there was stagnation earlier.
See eg https://enerpoly.com/alkaline-cell-then-and-now/ for some important progress that you might have missed.
The humble lead-acid battery also has a fascinating history, that is full of steady improvements.
> As an example, lead battery life has increased by 30-35% in the last 20 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/10/27/the-lead-aci...
The smelting could have occurred elsewhere --- the coal fields of norther Spain, France, or possibly Germany (I believe the Ruhr region corresponds to Roman conquest regions), or of course, Brittania. But then you'd need to have a far-removed high-tech industry and long-haul shipping of finished goods back to Rome or for trade elsewhere.
Common elements of industrial revolutions seem to be:
- A weak nobility and religious sector, relative to merchants and artisans.
- Extensive commerce, preferably by water.
- A stable political scene. It's interesting that island states adjacent to large continental regions feature in the rise of England / UK and Japan. Arguably the US was an "island state" relative to Europe. Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand would be exceptions, though these lacked a well-developed neighbouring region at the appropriate time, and NZ is a long haul from the corresponding continent. Indonesia too, I suppose.
- Indigenous resource, especially of industrial inputs: coal and iron. Japan is betrayed by its volcanic geography here. Lots of mountains, relatively few minerals. (Though neighbouring China and Korea had extensive resources, generating strong interest and tumultuous history.)
Another factor for Rome was that it didn't need steel to defeat any of its enemies. Low-quality iron and bronze sufficed, along with logistics and empirical organisation, for the most part. (Until of course it didn't.)
Japan figured out steel, but was so iron-poor that its construction and carpentry are almost wholly based on wood-on-wood joinery to minimise the need for nails or screws. (Not that the latter were standardised until the 19th and 20th centuries.)
Once you have a steam engine you can spin cotton, you can have trains, steamboats and later, turbines connected to generators in power plants.
It's a big upgrade from windmills, horses and mules.
And you cannot have a steam engine without knowing about the gas laws, laws of motion, etc. So advances in math, physics and chemistry to extends that were unknown to the romans were necessary to get to a steam engine.
You also cannot have an steam engine without having pistons, crankshafts, etc. Some of them were known to the Islamic civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ingenious_Devices
So... no! Steampunk romans could not have been a thing.
Creating energy, but only in specific locations, doesn't have the broader social impact.
And similarly, many applications require a minimum level of power (say, 2x horse) before they're fundamentally transformed.
The industrial revolution was, from my perspective, an ouroboros of the means to produce power increasing our means to produce those means, and out of novel raw materials.
Or, in other words... at some point the Romans had deforested their environs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Rom...
In 1840 the amount of steam power per worker in England was the same as in 1750. Total horsepower from steam only just matched water power in 1830.
And that was in the country using the most steam by far.
1. https://daviskedrosky.substack.com/p/a-study-in-steam
I recommend Dr. Kedrosky's blog in general, if you are interested in material progress.
That does not mean that innovations like the train and motors didn't transform society.
The Romans were remarkably good at glassware. This was one of the things that caught me off-guard when visting museums dedicated to ancient Rome vs ancient Greece. You go from no glass at all to lots of glass. Of course, I would say "suddenly", but in reality that's something like 7 centuries.
In addition, there's no real limit to the development of glass technology. Silica and wood are abundant. Trial and error will get you a very long way. And pretty things generally sell for nice money so there is lots of incentive.
The British industrial revolution was built from iron, not steel. Mass production of steel didn't appear until the 1880s, with the Bessemer converter. This was half a century after the deployment of successful railroads.
Iron and steel was known to the Roman empire. The steel wasn't very good, even by the standards of antiquity, but it was good enough for short swords and some tools. They got as far as the "bloom" process, but no further. Despite this, there was a modest iron and steel industry.
A Bessemer converter is a simple thing. It's a big iron vessel lined with brick attached to a furnace and blower. Roman ironworkers could have built one. It's the metallurgy that's hard. Bessemer built the thing, but steel quality was random at first. Robert Mushet, a metallurgist, after about 10,000 experiments, figured out how to get consistent quality from the process. The basic idea, from Wikipedia, is to apply enough heat and air to burn off almost all the carbon in iron ore, leaving pure iron. Then add 'spiegel glanz' or spiegel eisen, a "double carbonate of iron and manganese found in the Rhenish mountains" which was iron, 86…25; manganese, 8…50; and carbon, 5…25. Controlled amounts of manganese and carbon are thus put back into the molten iron, and steel comes out.
A number of cultures figured out steel by accident. Thus, Japanese steel, Damascus steel, etc. Various trace additives - vanadium, molybdenum, etc. were used. The Roman empire got as far as mediocre steel. But the process was neither understood nor reproducible at scale. Mass production required enough analytical chemistry to do quality control on the ingredients.
So an interesting speculation is what might have happened if an early culture had some people really into finding out what stuff is made of. That leads to analytical chemistry. Some Roman philosopher might have discovered that if you grind rocks to a powder, mix with water, and spray into a steady flame, colored light comes out. If you look at that colored light through a prism, you see sharp lines, in the same places for the same materials, which indicate the elemental composition of the material. If they'd happened to talk to someone in the Roman army responsible for a sword factory having yield problems, they might have gotten some samples of the minerals being used. That might have led to the beginnings of metallurgy quality control. As there is in a modern steel plant, there would be somebody in a little room not too far from the furnaces doing analysis on the raw materials.
Steel would still be somewhat expensive, but with a repeatable production process, swords and knives would get better. Then agricultural implements and other tools. If you need to plow hard or rocky ground, a steel plow is a big help.
The next big breakthrough in an an agrarian society with some steelmaking capability would be a reaper. The McCormick reaper was the first machine that really boosted agricultural production. That's what kicked the world past sustenance-level agriculture.
So that's an unlikely, but not impossible, alternative path to an industrial revolution.