Was it a lack of manpower? Was it geographic circumstances? Why couldn’t civilizations like, say, Babylon or Rome have an Industrial Revolution?
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This is crazy cool.
I just heard on CBC radio about the Maunder Minimum which was a period of a couple of decades during the 1600’s where there was a massive decrease in sunspot activity. And, the theory is that it had a big impact on the IR.
It goes like this:
Less sunspot activity means less surface temperature. Which means far less hurricanes and bad weather in general. Which means that the slave trade from Africa to N America was more “successful” ( what a reprehensible way to describe it). More forced labour allowed the sugar plantations to thrive injecting huge amounts of money into the economy. With so much capital available investment was possible into the parts that contributed to the IR : transportation, resource extraction, heavy manufacturing and development of key industries (metallurgy, smelting, specialty skills)
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