Earlier Proto-Industrialization?

On the path to 'proper' industrialization, as exemplified by the increased mechanization from water and then steam power, there were many improvements in the concept of the division of labor. Take Adam Smith's classic example of the pin workshop, where 10 workers could produce 48,000 pins daily by dividing the steps of production, whereas 10 independent workers could only produce 100-200 pins daily. There is also the prominence of the putting out system, or cottage industry, which came into its own in the 17th/18th centuries.

What both of these systems have in common is that neither really involves a technological change over previous forms of manufacturing, just an organizational change. So, the question becomes 'how early could these forms of production come into their own?' It would seem that the main factors in enabling their existence would be political stability and population. With that in mind, could the high middle ages have seen such production?
 

Philip

Donor
I recall someone, maybe @Jared , discussing an almost-industrial revolution in the French textile production in the mid-to-late 17th Century. The Edict of Fontainebleau disrupted the Protestant community that dominated the production, and the revolution never quite developed.
 
One way is to decrease the number of independent craftsmen/women as opposed to guildmembers. That way factorisation will come in earlier where quantity becomes preferable over quality.
 
Independent crafters have to do all the work themselves unless they have apprentices. With guilds shared work is more common and that readily allows division of tasks along more efficient lines.

Except they don't - thats the entire point of the putting-out system.
 
Division of labour was around before the Middle Ages, and depending on how they are defined, during them. It crops up all over the place when there's a suitable market.

There are examples of division of labour during Roman times. Mass production of oil lamps (complete with recognisable brand names) has been confirmed as existing around Modena, and there are suspected examples with other products.

The Venetian Arsenal is well-known as an example of mass production with specialised labour. That didn't really get started until after 1320, so after the High Middle Ages proper, but it's feasible for it having emerged earlier.

Outside of Europe, it also existed in China. The porcelain production complex at Jingzedhen had massive production of porcelain which was exported around China and then around the globe. There was extreme specialisation of labour there, both with individuals who did only one task, and with workshops which specialised in different aspects of porcelain production.

Jingzedhen proper didn't really get started until the tail end of the Middle Ages, but some earlier Chinese examples may also have qualified - Song iron production, for instance.

The thing about division of labour is that while it is productive, it can also be risky. If you overspecialise and there's not enough of a market for your goods, you will be broke and quite possibly starving.

So it tended to emerge where there were several factors. Population and stability were indeed part of the picture. But more fundamentally, what was needed was sufficient mass demand for a particular product to guarantee a steady supply of work, and sufficient low-cost transport access to permit products to be exported to consumers.

The mass demand existed in Roman times for oil lamps and probably other ceramics and metallurgy. Mass demand in Venice for ships was sufficient even without exports. Mass demand in China came from the army (for metallurgy) and from producing a highly desired consumer good (porcelain).

China had low-cost transportation through the Grand Canal and other waterways to permit the import of raw materials and export of finished products, and this also handily connected to the sea. Rome had it through Roman roads and (relative) suppression of banditry, tolls etc. Venice had the mass demand onsite but also had naval capacity to import raw materials when these weren't available in its hinterland.

So to get earlier mass division of labour, what you need is the guaranteed mass demand for a particular product or products, and sufficiently cheap and safe transportation to get it it to consumers. The mass demand in turn requires not necessarily a high population - though that helps - but a sufficiently wealthy population.

I suspect that the biggest barriers in the High Middle Ages were low wealth (in a cash, able to buy consumer good sense) and transportation costs, due to tolls on rivers, poor roads, higher risk of banditry, etc.
 
Well my take on proto-industrialization is mutli-faceted. I agree in general with Jared's analysis on low wealth, heck most of the trade systems at the time were geared towards luxury demands of the rich but a good deal of proto-industry was luxury manufacturing, the silk industry of the Po Valley was a good example of all aspects of proto-industry from individual cottages unraveling and spinning the silk to centralized and supervised workshops working mass spinning frames. On the other hand Europe pre-14th century was pretty short of silver and credit, the mediums of trade and it only improved slowly over time.

Culturally a good deal of proto-industry occurred when peasants needed to supplement their agricultural income during the off months in areas with decent market access to sell their goods. What was the climate like? If agriculture was possible all year round there wouldn't be the need to supplement incomes if work was to be found all year round.

There was also the question about children and women, what economic rights do they have? What cultural expectations are placed on them? There's a lot to go into here but an example would be French weavers during the first decades of the mechanized looms; a good deal of the early impoverished women and children that worked long hours in shitty conditions for little pay tended to be the wives and kids of weavers whom in their pride as "self-sufficient workshop owners" relied increasingly on their family to supplement their income (sometimes the only income when the weaver operated at a loss) weaving against mechanized competition and lobbying for "honest pay for honest work" in pursuit of some idealized past.

Another would be the labour rights of women, plenty of skilled women provided dirt cheap labour for early industry and guilds as those in charge classified them as "unskilled" labourers instead of the skilled work men doing the same thing did. Better rights might just dry up the labour supply.

Another example would be the property rights of women: which if one were to look at early markets a good deal of the demand for mass produced goods came from women that preferred to work in their jobs and buy everyday essentials instead of making everything themselves; in contrast to the traditional household where all of the pots, chairs, clothes, and more were self-made the women that worked and purchased helped create a massive market of millions. The net productivity may be the same but the self-sustenance household doesn't contribute to market volume or commercialization.

This also depended a lot on land-ownership agreements that varied from community to community, for example: some communities restricted their landownership to a few original families, creating large pools of seasonal labour that they can cram into monotonousness of a supervised workshop working in cramped dark places from dawn to dusk for poor pay; this was in contrast to women that spun, weaved, knitted, and socialized with their friends on their own terms and one can see the unattractiveness of "industrial work". Some communities shared land equally but required the families to farm them, this created disincentives to work in industry and bounded people to the land (since they lost a good deal of money in land ownership if they turned their backs on agriculture).

It also depended a lot on soil fertility, poor soil quality naturally leads peasants to resort to war and industry to make a living.

One of the main problems was guilds, while they maybe useful initially as allies for rulers, sources of revenue, and institutions of knowledge they tend to inevitable turn into labour aristocracies that lobbies the political powers to crush all industrial opposition so that they can maintain their monopoly, a side effect of which can be guilds soaking up all the free capital for investments. Proto-industry can't really develop when its outlawed.

There's of course the political aspects of this: you can have the church as a neglectful mass land owner like Naples, you could have the landowning nobles forbidden to participate in industry or commerce like Spain, or you could have Swabian lords that actively developed industry and forced their peasants to sell to them at low prices so that they can pocket the difference. There's countless possibilities.

Geography also plays a big role, Hungary for example was landlocked with the Danube that was barely navigatiable past the Iron Gates. It doesn't make sense for a workshop to produce 10,000 nails a day when the town only needs about 1,000 a month on an ad hoc basis, better to just have a few generalized blacksmiths. Trading was also very difficult on land, it was cheaper to ship something 100 km than it was to carry it 10 km over land; here canals helped mitigate geography but that takes time, money, desire, and expertise.

I'll tidy this up when I wake up.
 
Another would be the labour rights of women, plenty of skilled women provided dirt cheap labour for early industry and guilds as those in charge classified them as "unskilled" labourers instead of the skilled work men doing the same thing did. Better rights might just dry up the labour supply.

If i recall correctly, a number of people in early labor movement in france were against women working in their trade because that would lable them as unskilled laborers rather than artisans in the eyes of the law.
 
If i recall correctly, a number of people in early labor movement in france were against women working in their trade because that would lable them as unskilled laborers rather than artisans in the eyes of the law.

Whatever label justified the treatment at the end, if calling them artisans meant that they were responsible for themselves and no one needed to spend a dime then great, if trying to preserve "virtuous knitting" at home got domestic manufacturers the tariffs they wanted then great, and so on and so forth.
 
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