Britain without coal

historylesson

It is said that the industrial revolution may not have started in Britain if it wasn't for its coal reserves. My question is how does the world turn out if Britain has no coal?
 

Martinus Paduei

Is there any other valuable mineral or resource where the OTL coal is/was instead, or is there just miscellaneous rock of no appreciable economic value?
 

Thoresby

We talk about the Belgian or Rheinland Industrial Revolution. The various elements that made up the Industrial Revolution were floating around Europe it's just they were first put together in the North of England. You don't even need to change Britains geography to make them come together somewhere else.
 

historylesson

Thoresby said:
We talk about the Belgian or Rheinland Industrial Revolution. The various elements that made up the Industrial Revolution were floating around Europe it's just they were first put together in the North of England. You don't even need to change Britains geography to make them come together somewhere else.
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Do those areas have the same amount of natural resources Britain had?
 

unprincipled peter

Donor
no coal, no british led industrial revolution.

haven't read enough about the industrial revolution, but I know enough that if coal weren't there, Britain doesn't lead it. So maybe timeline slows down a bit. England, though, becomes an afterthought, and that makes for big waves in the TL timeline vs the OTL. England is just a two-bit country, while whatever region does have coal and iron rules the world.
 

Thoresby

historylesson said:
Do those areas have the same amount of natural resources Britain had?
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Both have coal, limestone and iron ore in large accessible quantities though not as close together. But they do have a much better river network that can be canalised. So on balance just as good. What they don't have is political unity and an absence of tariff boundaries. That's one of the reasons why it took until the Zollverein for the Ruhr to really get going.

unprincipled peter said:
no coal, no british led industrial revolution.

haven't read enough about the industrial revolution, but I know enough that if coal weren't there, Britain doesn't lead it. So maybe timeline slows down a bit. England, though, becomes an afterthought, and that makes for big waves in the TL timeline vs the OTL. England is just a two-bit country, while whatever region does have coal and iron rules the world.
Click to expand...

Not really, remember the First British Empire (aka North America) got going before the British Industrial Revolution and India was acquired by East India Company without calling upon Britain's industrial capability but was funded by trade. So while Britain isn't going to be the dominant power it was in OTL it certainly isn't going to be irrelevant.
 

Simreeve

The British industrial revolution in textile production was actually powered hydraulically (at least at the start) rather than by steam, so maybe that would still have happened.

Don't geological PODs belong in the ASB section?
 
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