WI: Industrial Revolution in North America

If the European people had never arrived in America and had never undergone the Industrial Revolution, and if the Industrial Revolution had started in North America by the indigenous people, how would the North America map be like 300 years after the beginning of the revolution?

Alien Space Bats would have to intervene for both of those scenarios to happen. Number 1: The Europeans (or whoever else could make the trip) were coming one way or another.
Number 2: The indigenous peoples of North America were effectively in the Stone Age technologically even though there were very sophisticated civilzations that existed pre-Columbus.

I...really can't answer that, except to predict that the most likely space for industrialization would generally be northeastern North America, as far inland as the Great Lakes and as far south as the coal-bearing areas of Appalachia.

Of course, that is a huge area but it does narrow things down a bit. Other than that, it's pretty much up to your imagination.

They'd need to move past the Stone Age first for anything like that to happen.

Yes. They're missing a whole bunch of intervening stages of development.

Fun fact: merely inventing the steam engine isn't enough to start an industrial revolution.
And they were some way off that. They weren't even working iron yet alone the quality and quantity of steel needed.

I did not specify the moments for the POD. We could have two PODs.

The first POD should delay the European development. It may be a POD in Medieval Europe to keep Europe in the Middle Ages for more 1000 or 2000 years, or a POD that prevents the birth of the Greek and the Roman Empire.

The second POD should advance North America to the Middle Ages. The advance may happen from 600 AD to 1600 AD. If nothing is known about the location of the peoples before the European arrival, the advance may happen from 1600 AD to 2600 AD.

That erases the entire history and nothing can be predicted, but knowing the peoples that lived in North America and the geography of the continent, we could guess a map of North America in the alternate future.

Medieval Europe was more advanced than any civilization in the Americas and that includes the Andeans. Plus the Atlantic currents make it easy for people from Africa or Europe to reach North and South America. The Vikings were doing it and there's speculation that Mali Empire had done it as well. It's extremely difficult for any American civilization to get industrialized. They lack or beasts of burden for one thing and their trade routes are much farther spread apart. Even if a minor Industrial Revolution took place among oh say the Cliffdwellers, it would be hard for it to spread to the Moundbuilders. Same goes for industrialization to spread from Mesoamerica to Andeans only even harder. Geography and lack of beasts of burdens work against them from the start.

The factors that drive an industrial revolution are

• Existing industry to mechanise/power.
• Availability of energy from coal.
• High wages driving search for labour replacing machines.

The Eastern seaboard of the USA had some of those factors in OTL.

Interesting paper on why Britain was first to industrialise, and the other areas of the planet that had some of the same factors (particularly China and Belgium) here.

So, you need to find a PoD that gets pre-industrial-revolution-style industry and high wages in the area of North America where there's coal.

The semi-realistic option is perhaps for the Native Americans not to be wiped out by disease when they encounter the Europeans. Then, like the Japanese or a luckier Maratha Confederacy perhaps they can maintain control of their territory while frantically trying to build European-style industry. Eventually that leads to an industrial revolution.

Shimbo said:

Interesting paper on why Britain was first to industrialise, and the other areas of the planet that had some of the same factors (particularly China and Belgium) here.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for posting this!

As noted by others, you have to eliminate the potential for an old-world industrial revolution in the 1700's and create the preconditions for one in the new world. Both will require massive amounts of handwavium, especially if you want to posit a completely indigenous new world industrialization. However, once you've waved your hands correctly, I agree with Twovultures that northeastern North America would be the most obvious place.

Maybe

The Native americans were NOT stone age, they were bronze age.

What could work

1) Longer Viking settlement in North America
a) northeastern natives learning ironmaking
b) gaining some resistance to european diseases.
c) Iron weapons would make the tech difference at the end of the 15th century much smaller.
d) The technology of the Viking ships is transferred to the native peoples while not as good as later european craft it would be resulting in massive increase in trade and increase in native fishing. Viking ships would be very useful in the carribean and upriver in north america.
e)

Having a more extensive knowledge of iron and shipbuilding methods would make it much easier for native americans to copy and adopt european technologies. An iron plow would vastly increase agricultural yields

Well, at least some Indians utilized coal before Europeans arrived:

"By the end of the twentieth century, the Hopi tribe was considered one of the more traditional Indian societies in the continental United States. As far back as they can be reliably traced by archeologists (to the period called Pueblo II, between 900 and 1100), the Hopis have been sedentary, living in masonry buildings. Their villages consisted of houses built of native stone, arranged around a central plaza containing one or more kivas. Hopi villages are arranged in much the same way today.

During the Pueblo III Period (1100 to 1300), populations in the villages grew as the climate became more arid, making farming more difficult. The village buildings grew in size as well, some containing hundreds of rooms. During the Pueblo IV Period, the Hopi ancestral period from 1350 to 1540, the houses, made "of stone cemented with adobe and then plastered inside were virtually indistinguishable from the older houses of present-day Hopi, except that they were often multistoried," according to Page and Page. They added that the houses of that period contained rooms with specific functions, such as storage or grinding corn, and that kiva design was "nearly identical" to that of today. The houses and kivas of this period were heated with coal, which was also used for firing pottery."