Early Industrial Revolution

May I ask who "we" are?

Human beings.

The point is that the industrial revolution was mostly about a reprganization of labor in terms of production, in the early stages. That is why the early factory towns were centered around areas well-suited to hydropower. A millennias-old technology, the water whel, was used in a new way. Rather than dispersed labor over a wide area (like the putting out system, which itself was quite an advancement over previous arrangements), harnessing power in a central location and placing all the workers there was the keystone of the early stages of the industrial revolution.

From that point, we were able to refine the process further, by introducing new machines here and there, and then new power sources, in a gradual (but fast in historical terms) fashion. But the change from simpler looms to complex looms? Or water power to steam power to electrical power? Thats all evolutionary. The revolution was the organizational principle.
 
A millennias-old technology, the water whel, was used in a new way. Rather than dispersed labor over a wide area (like the putting out system, which itself was quite an advancement over previous arrangements), harnessing power in a central location and placing all the workers there was the keystone of the early stages of the industrial revolution.

I think you're underestimating both the prerequisites and the consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

The condition for the complete revolution of production, labor relations and scientific progress that was the industrialization wasn't just "placing all the workers" in a central location; not only had this happen before, no quite the contrary: one of the most common production modes in the "early stages of the industrial revolution" was the Putting-out system, which was actually a decentralization of production. And while centralizing labor certainly can increase the efficiency of production, it's an old method and nothing truly revolutionary.

If I was to trace the deeper causes of the industrialization, I would point to the growth of scientific knowledge and its dissemination. This too wasn't a new phenomenon. However, since all fields of science are interconnected, the rate of scientific progress is intrinsically dependend on collaboration and communication of scientists. The Museion of Alexandria was particularly effective because it centralized knowledge and housed specialists of different sciences; this idea reappeared in the western world with the Medieval universites. But the real breakthrough in organizing human knowledge and scientif research was the printing press. Within one century, it completly changed scientific communication. Knowledge became more easily available to those relying on it. The 17th century then saw scientific academies and the intensification of scientic communication and correspondence. It's no coincidence that most discoveries that later inspired a lot of inventions were made in the 17th and 18th century.

This scientific revolution, which arguably ignited the whole process, was followed by an agricultural revolution. While agriculture had seen a lot of progress starting with the "Neolithic Revolution", the growth rates achived in the 17th and 18th century were unprecedented. This wasn't only related by the scientific revolution; the progress achieved was partially due to experience and luck, as in the centuries before. But other elements of this agricultural revolution were rooted in methodic and deliberate improvement of farming. The consequences of the improvements in agriculture were twofold: first, an increase in population, and second an increase in productivity, freeing workers for other economic sectors. For the first time in human history, the share of humans occupied with providing themselves and other humans with food was significantly decreasing.

The same methodic approach, developed by science and displayed by agriculture, was now applied to industry: centralization of workforce and labor divisions certainly were part of this progress. But an increasing number of workers alone can't achieve everything. To build a ship larger than any ship humanity had conceived in the last 2000 years, doubling the workforce wasn't enough. The same goes for two other important examples of early industrialization: textile industry and transportion. Quantitative improvements weren't enough. You had to change the quality, the essence of production. Progress in metallurgy as well as the development of new machines, the steam engine being the most prominent, made real mass production possible. Due to the agricultural revolution, more humans than ever were born and survived, their number rising exponentially; due to the industrial revolution, they still enjoyed a living standard unknown before even to the elites of society. Maybe the best characterization of the industrial age is the exponential growth of human beings, of their knowledge and of their standard of living.

Now you might be right in saying that the gradual improvement of machines were only secondary to the process, but I would dispute that its core was a new organization of labor. It's core was scientific progress and its consequences.
 
We’re also negelecting the role of globalized capitalism. Early industrial revolution was a textile revolution. Superior new world cotton grown by slaves was exported to Britain where water powered spinning machines turned it into threads, for use by underemployed spinsters working on cottage looms, until them themselves were replaced by weaving machines.

Could water powered machines be invented earlier? Perhaps, but they didn’t have the slave labor and the Mexican cotton plus the shipping and the investment banks earlier.
 
The requirements for industrial revolution are:
- Burnable resources (either wood, peat or coal).
- Experience with mechanization (english fulling mills in OTL, started late medieval age).
- Capital, as the research and construction of machines and steam engines is expensive.
- Intellectual background, (royal societies in OTL) who could reasonably be expected to invent such machines.
- Judicary institution for protection of inventions (patents&cetera).
- A willingness to experiment/ necessity to experiment
I'd agree with these. I would add (& they may be merely subsets of the above):
  • Willingness to disperse technology & profit (not just make imperial monopolies, as in China)
  • Minimum levels of broad education
  • Minimum levels of skill in tool making (to produce the looms, frex, & later to bore the cylinders of steam engines)
There's also a kind of "cultural" effect at play, that may be a combination of factors already mentioned, an acceptance of change & innovation for its own sake, of intellectual freedom. It was found especially in Britain, similarly (less so?) in the Netherlands, & much less so elsewhere in Europe (or China before that).

Social mobility may also be a factor (related to willingness to experiment?): with no perceived gain... (This was true in Ancient Greece: {labor was for slaves} & China {merchants were looked down on}.)
This, as usual in such discussions, ignores the cultural/religious factor.

Neither 3 nor 5, or even 4 and 6, were possible without protestantism IOTL.
IMO, you're right, there are cultural/social effects, but I'm less sure Protestantism was key. It was a central factor for Britain OTL, in developing the atmosphere allowing/encouraging innovation. AFAIK, it had nothing to do with capital formation: that was driven more by primogeniture (which is one major reason China never went the same way: the Chinese subdivided bequests, the Brits didn't, & so the first-born Brit could accumulate capital, & pass it on.)

Now, if you can manage to raise the standards of living earlier, you might get small enough families, or sons with enough capital, even in a system without primogeniture--but it's going to take doing without industry in the first place...
specialization with windmill towns
Given you're following a Chinese model (as it sounds like), two possibilities occur to me: vertical-axis turbines (eggbeater style), which are very much more efficient (& known to be around the 1109s in Europe), & high-altitude wind access by kites.

would it be plausible for someone to create an oil powered steam engine?
I can't see why not. Oil lamps have been around a very, very long time, so oil as fuel isn't a new idea. (Petroleum is...so you might be starting with, frex, olive oil or whale oil.) AFAIK, steam engines, even the atmospheric (Newcomen) type, didn't care what the fuel was; coal had uses in manufacturing processes (for iron), but so did charcoal (for things before that), & taking a separate path for smelting or iron processing, & for powering engines, doesn't seem outrageous.

Edit:
industrialization could have occurred in ship building or weapons manufacturing. But production was inconsistent and could be "drafted" by monarchs. There's no need to industrialize cannon manufacturing in this case.
I'm not seeing shipbuilding as a means; military shipping needs are so different from civil, there's not a lot of crossover.

In the mooted nation, with a population of 150 mil, the army might be large enough to create demand for thousands of crossbows (frex), & so hundreds of thousands of bolts, & millions of swords, not to mention armor. (Would armor necessarily be metal? No; it could be boiled leather, or, in Chinese context, lacquered folded paper {believe it, or not}.)

Would demand for swords (frex) be enough to support an early industrial society? Maybe not--but it would spark a lot of spinoffs that might. And I'll confess, if there's enough shipbuilding, deforestation might lead to demand for new fuels, & shipbuilding materials...; I'm less sure that's a direct route, & not an ultimate dead end.

Edit 2:
OTL equivalent seems to have allowed authors to copyright books and allowed corporations to copyright symbols pertaining to their company. Seems there is no record of patents for inventions through.
It's not that simple. It's about rule of law: knowing contracts are enforceable, knowing your factory can't be seized by the government at will, knowing bribery isn't a given. Compare modern Russia to 18th or 19th Century Britain

Edit 3:
Humanity progressively becomes more Eldritch
Am I seeing an evolution toward disembodied intelligence, here? That's pure nonsense. Once people have effective control over their environment (& we already do), biological evolution stops: it's not needed anymore. It's replaced by cultural evolution (technology, social norms, & such).
 
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