Bengal Industrial Revolution

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A problem shared by Holland.
How did OTL 19th century Holland industrialize?
Partly through wind, but mostly through steam engines and imported coal. One of the nice things about being across the North Sea from Britain was that coal could be imported relatively cheaply.
 
A problem shared by Holland.
How did OTL 19th century Holland industrialize?

Interestingly enough it did only relatively late after England, France, Belgium and Germany (all of which had both hydropower and and coal/iron). Even Switzerland which had only hydropower but no other resources was faster. So the lack of hydropower appears to have been a retarding factor.
 
Certainly if the initial mechanisation can get started, there will be a population shift, I'd imagine. It doesn't need a particularly large population to get started with the weaving, in itself, although whether there's an equivalent of the outworker system in Britain would be interesting. There are other conceivable ways of having a textile weaving industry develop other than the outworker system, it's just (as always) that the outworker system was the one we know worked in OTL.

The putting-out system is hardly the only conceivable system for working mechanized production. For example, instead of disparate household based cottage industries each with their own spinning jenny or comparable machine, there's the possibility of a more urban-skewed workshop based system utilizing the larger workshop versions of the spinning jennies which were usually kept operating overnight.

The merchants would just tender out the cotton to these workshops for production instead of dispersed household-based outworkers. Or, if the inputs are cheap enough, as cotton eventually can be, it can just be stockpiled in one place and the workshops themselves would approach the merchants and offer up a production quota based on how many units of the finished product they would produce and how much they wanted to be paid per unit. If this negotiation produces a ratio for product and price suitable to the merchants, then any workshop agreeing to that quota will be given the the raw inputs to manufacture the finished product by a certain deadline. Only the workshops who put out the agreed amount of finished product get paid, the rest don't, but are free to keep the raw material given over to them since that isn't as much a loss to the merchant company as not receiving the finished product for export would be.
 
So, how about John Company exports English Industrial Revolution to Bengal?
After all, the express aim of Permanent Settlement had been to create in India an improving gentry like England. So exporting things which seemed to work in England did get done - even at a fiscal cost.
If, instead of suppressing Bengal industry, the English develop it to exploit it as investors and tax collectors, what would happen? Englishmen build factories in India, remit licence fees to inventors and patent holders in England, and the Company government issues patents to both English inventors in India as well as Indian inventors...
 
Interestingly enough it did only relatively late after England, France, Belgium and Germany (all of which had both hydropower and and coal/iron). Even Switzerland which had only hydropower but no other resources was faster. So the lack of hydropower appears to have been a retarding factor.

The lack of efficient coal mining (as efficient as in Britain) anywhere on the continent until too late was probably the bigger hindrance to a Dutch Industrial Revolution. Indeed, as Jared pointed out, coal only got readily available and cheap enough once British coal mining got improved to the extent that even coal exported to the continent was cheap.

The other cheap fuel available to the Dutch was peat which fulfilled all demands for fuel but was useless for industrialization. If coal in the Ruhr Valley or Belgium was exploited earlier and efficiently, then it would have been possible to have a lowlands-based industrial revolution.
 
The lack of efficient coal mining (as efficient as in Britain) anywhere on the continent until too late was probably the bigger hindrance to a Dutch Industrial Revolution. Indeed, as Jared pointed out, coal only got readily available and cheap enough once British coal mining got improved to the extent that even coal exported to the continent was cheap.

The other cheap fuel available to the Dutch was peat which fulfilled all demands for fuel but was useless for industrialization. If coal in the Ruhr Valley or Belgium was exploited earlier and efficiently, then it would have been possible to have a lowlands-based industrial revolution.

I doubt that an earlier exploitation of the Belgian coal reserves would have lead to an industrial revolution in the lowlands, because when they were exploited the resulting industrialisation was limited to the immediate surroundings (what one may anachronistically call Wallonia) while the adjacent lowlands (Flanders) remained rural. However, it is important to note that even without a large coal- and iron-working industry Holland had a thriving shipbuilding and became an reach and powerful region, which allowed them to import resources and implement technologies from elsewhere, so a lack of coal and iron in Bengal (or other part of india) by no means dooms those areas to remain non industrial. It does however mean that their industrial revolution would follow a different path, possibly a hydropower driven textile revolution as Flocculencio postulated.
 
I doubt that an earlier exploitation of the Belgian coal reserves would have lead to an industrial revolution in the lowlands, because when they were exploited the resulting industrialisation was limited to the immediate surroundings (what one may anachronistically call Wallonia) while the adjacent lowlands (Flanders) remained rural. However, it is important to note that even without a large coal- and iron-working industry Holland had a thriving shipbuilding and became an reach and powerful region, which allowed them to import resources and implement technologies from elsewhere, so a lack of coal and iron in Bengal (or other part of india) by no means dooms those areas to remain non industrial. It does however mean that their industrial revolution would follow a different path, possibly a hydropower driven textile revolution as Flocculencio postulated.

The lowlands and Germany had a good level of market integration, I think that if coal mining in Wallonia or the Ruhr was as efficient as it became in England that coal would be cheaply available in the Netherlands or even Belgium.
 
The lowlands and Germany had a good level of market integration, I think that if coal mining in Wallonia or the Ruhr was as efficient as it became in England that coal would be cheaply available in the Netherlands or even Belgium.

Of course the lowlands could import coal, but just as well the finished products. And historically this is what happened: As the technologies of the English industrial revolution spread throughout Europe heavy industry formed mainly in the areas where coal and ore were (e.g. Wallonia or the Ruhr area) but not in the areas that were further away.
 
So, how about John Company exports English Industrial Revolution to Bengal?
After all, the express aim of Permanent Settlement had been to create in India an improving gentry like England. So exporting things which seemed to work in England did get done - even at a fiscal cost.
If, instead of suppressing Bengal industry, the English develop it to exploit it as investors and tax collectors, what would happen? Englishmen build factories in India, remit licence fees to inventors and patent holders in England, and the Company government issues patents to both English inventors in India as well as Indian inventors...

Because its much more profitable to extract raw materials and sell back finished products
 
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