alternatehistory.com

In the book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, there's an account of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire and how the monks had built something resembling a modern blast furnace prior to Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Here're some links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1397905/Henry-stamped-out-Industrial-Revolution.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods43.html

Say that the data on this blast furnace gets out of England before the Dissolution takes place and Cistercians all over Europe that are involved in iron-making start building them. The English might start building them too, since they've got the original device and the monks who created it close at hand, so it might spread via them to the Protestant states as well.

What effects will this have? The people involved seem to think the Industrial Revolution could have began 200+ years early, which seems a bit optimistic.
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