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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So two of the top comments are basically arguing “tech was growing steadily before the industrial revolution” and another is arguing “the industrial revolution couldn’t have happened without the enlightenment.”
Both of these are over complicating matters unnecessarily and missing the real point.
The industrial revolution did not start as a continent wide eruption of advanced technology, but instead started in a small backwater town in England. If it was not for this tiny, dinky coal mine in the middle of nowhere, the industrial revolution would never have happened. No amount of Enlightenment philosophy or minor advances in agriculture would have changed that.
So what happened here that was so special? The invention of the steam engine. Before the Industrial Revolution, Coal was basically useless. Nobody bothered mining it. Except the British. Why?
The scarcity of trees in England led to the prevailing use of coal instead of charcoal, which was far more common on the continent. In order to effectively pump water out of these mines, one man named Newcomen invented the first efficient coal powered steam engine, making him single-handedly responsible for the entire modern world.
There is no industrial revolution without this tiny village in England which just so happened to have the perfect circumstances necessary to incentivize the invention of the steam engine.
Now, of course, Newcomen was drawing on the scientific advancements in physics and our understanding of vacuums which, arguably, was caused by the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. So that’s a fair point.
Here’s the thing though, Newcomen did not simply invent the steam engine first because it was impossible for anybody to think of it on their own until his time. The steam engine certainly could have been invented earlier and many civilizations throughout time have reached the necessary understanding of physics required, and never invented it.
It’s comforting to think of history like the top commenter does, as just one big long technological climb towards the Modern Day, but the sort of disturbing reality is that a lot of what makes history is really just luck and happenstance.
The truth is that if Britain had done a better job not cutting down all of their trees so they wouldn’t have needed to bother mining for coal, it’s entirely possible the steam engine could’ve gone centuries without being invented
So two of the top comments are basically arguing “tech was growing steadily before the industrial revolution” and another is arguing “the industrial revolution couldn’t have happened without the enlightenment.”
Both of these are over complicating matters unnecessarily and missing the real point.
The industrial revolution did not start as a continent wide eruption of advanced technology, but instead started in a small backwater town in England. If it was not for this tiny, dinky coal mine in the middle of nowhere, the industrial revolution would never have happened. No amount of Enlightenment philosophy or minor advances in agriculture would have changed that.
So what happened here that was so special? The invention of the steam engine. Before the Industrial Revolution, Coal was basically useless. Nobody bothered mining it. Except the British. Why?
The scarcity of trees in England led to the prevailing use of coal instead of charcoal, which was far more common on the continent. In order to effectively pump water out of these mines, one man named Newcomen invented the first efficient coal powered steam engine, making him single-handedly responsible for the entire modern world.
There is no industrial revolution without this tiny village in England which just so happened to have the perfect circumstances necessary to incentivize the invention of the steam engine.
Now, of course, Newcomen was drawing on the scientific advancements in physics and our understanding of vacuums which, arguably, was caused by the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. So that’s a fair point.
Here’s the thing though, Newcomen did not simply invent the steam engine first because it was impossible for anybody to think of it on their own until his time. The steam engine certainly could have been invented earlier and many civilizations throughout time have reached the necessary understanding of physics required, and never invented it.
It’s comforting to think of history like the top commenter does, as just one big long technological climb towards the Modern Day, but the sort of disturbing reality is that a lot of what makes history is really just luck and happenstance.
The truth is that if Britain had done a better job not cutting down all of their trees so they wouldn’t have needed to bother mining for coal, it’s entirely possible the steam engine could’ve gone centuries without being invented
Really really good explanation here of specifically why there was no Roman industrial revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/
Really really good explanation here of specifically why there was no Roman industrial revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/
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)
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)
You need to have a confluence of chemical power availability (coal), the need for chemical power (initially to pump water out of coal mines), and then a need for an unlimited amount of rotational power. The last part being industrial spinning of thread. All of these came together in Great Britain.
It didn’t happen in Rome because they didn’t have much of the precursor technologies needed to put this together: The basics of a useful steam engine, the need for industrial production of thread, and a large demand for coal.
A Roman Historian has a reasonable essay on what the industrial revolution was, and why earlier societies didn’t have an industrial revolution:
[https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/](https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/)
You need to have a confluence of chemical power availability (coal), the need for chemical power (initially to pump water out of coal mines), and then a need for an unlimited amount of rotational power. The last part being industrial spinning of thread. All of these came together in Great Britain.
It didn’t happen in Rome because they didn’t have much of the precursor technologies needed to put this together: The basics of a useful steam engine, the need for industrial production of thread, and a large demand for coal.
A Roman Historian has a reasonable essay on what the industrial revolution was, and why earlier societies didn’t have an industrial revolution:
[https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/](https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/)
There is a quite intresting theory about the Roman empire. They basically had the ingridents for an industrial revolution meaning they knew a bit about electricity and they knew about steam power. So they had the basics to expand upon. The intresting question is why didn’t they? And one possible answer is the abundant availability of slaves. There was simply no incentive to develop steam power because slaves could do all the work. And their society was still strongly agrarian so they lacked the social prerequisites that enabled the modern industrial revolution.
I find this rather convincing because if you look at Europe before the industrial revolution it was a time of societal upheaval. The decline of the agrarian nobility and the rise of the commoners in the city. With a lack of Labour in the Labour intensive agrarian and mining industries. Also due to the discovery of America and the rest of the world which brought about great commerce there was the economic class to develop the industrial revolution. All this was not present for the Roman’s. Yes there was sort of a global commerce but the world was a lot smaller. And the Patricians were City folk but they didn’t need to work the same as the Patricians of the medivela city’s had to. They relied on their estates still and their slaves
There is a quite intresting theory about the Roman empire. They basically had the ingridents for an industrial revolution meaning they knew a bit about electricity and they knew about steam power. So they had the basics to expand upon. The intresting question is why didn’t they? And one possible answer is the abundant availability of slaves. There was simply no incentive to develop steam power because slaves could do all the work. And their society was still strongly agrarian so they lacked the social prerequisites that enabled the modern industrial revolution.
I find this rather convincing because if you look at Europe before the industrial revolution it was a time of societal upheaval. The decline of the agrarian nobility and the rise of the commoners in the city. With a lack of Labour in the Labour intensive agrarian and mining industries. Also due to the discovery of America and the rest of the world which brought about great commerce there was the economic class to develop the industrial revolution. All this was not present for the Roman’s. Yes there was sort of a global commerce but the world was a lot smaller. And the Patricians were City folk but they didn’t need to work the same as the Patricians of the medivela city’s had to. They relied on their estates still and their slaves
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