Industrialized World Without Nations?

I'm wondering if there's any way to have a fully industrialized (or industrializing) world without the centralized nation states that dominate the present day map. It's easy to imagine industrialization beginning in nation states and spreading to less centralized areas, and city states and nomadic groups have survived to the present day, but I'm wondering how modern nations might not develop at all. Or are they inevitable?

What would have to happen for industrialization without nationalization to be the norm? What would alternative political structures and societies look like?
 
industrialisation requires concentration of people in a small space and cooperation between them. Even if it wasn't nations in the strictest sense, you would still need some sort of entity that help the flow of raw material to the plants and then out to the consumers.
 
Sorry, if I am rambling and ranting...but I played an RPGame like this, it was pretty cool. :)

A warlords scenario? Chaotic times and dark ages, where you would have industry but not long distance trade much.

I think it depends on that single citystates ability to ward off the power of an industrial national state. It was possible in times when fortification was supreme, early middleages and classical grecce for instance...

How about a 1930´s scenario where you would have a "maginotline" around a city and a strong airforce that would bomb oncoming enemies, bomb bomb everything! Radar and radio perhaps not invented for some reason.

So that is a "the bomber always strikes through" game and civilisation ends in the 1930´s.
 
What Marc Pasquin said, basically. If, however, you mean to achieve an industrialized wold without (as you said) "centralized nation states that dominate the present day map," but will accept local governments, such as city-states etc. ...well, then it becomes very possible. Very plausible, even, since history has often demonstrated that many competing city-states are likely to achieve rapid innovation (largely because of their competitive situation).

What does help is the removal of restictions on travel and trade. Those can become crippling when you have countless polities, and thus gazillions of borders. :rolleyes: If the rise of the modern nation-state could be prevented, and Europe becomes something like a radically decentralized Holy Roman Empire consisting of numerous microstates that all agree to allow unrestricted trade and travel, that would probably be a good thing for all kinds of innovation (scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, economical...)

After all: it would mean that lots of different competing approaches could be tried out on a political, legal, economical level. More importantly, it would mean that scientists, inventors and thinkers who might otherwise be suppressed or persecuted by a centralized government could just hop across the border and continue their study unmolested in the next town over... which would also be another country. :D This actually happened, after all, when France was a increasingly centralized monarchy, and Germany and the Dutch Republic were not. Many persecuted French thinkers fled to the smaller states, where they could easily relocate if they got persecuted.

Is this idea of radical Kleinstaaterei something that meets your criteria, Fox Eating Bamboo?
 
I'm confused, are asking about industrialization in a world without centralized states, or a world without Nation-States?
 
I've sometimes speculated on somthing like that myself, but I thought it would be ASB, or require an early POD that led to a totally unrecognizable world?

I was thinking something like a Europe made up of city-states. Each controlling some food-producing areas around them. City-state leagues like the Hansa are the power-players, but memberships are too transient to allow for any kind of nationality or tribal/national feeling to develop.

Individuals self-identify as a citizen of a city, and equally importanly, the middle classes identify as members of trade guilds.

Is something like that realistically achievable? It would shut down most of colonization, and an actual nation, even one we would consider small would be a vast power. I am thinking it would be an unstable setup, because nations woud just be so much more powerful?
 
I've sometimes speculated on somthing like that myself, but I thought it would be ASB, or require an early POD that led to a totally unrecognizable world?

I was thinking something like a Europe made up of city-states. Each controlling some food-producing areas around them. City-state leagues like the Hansa are the power-players, but memberships are too transient to allow for any kind of nationality or tribal/national feeling to develop.

Individuals self-identify as a citizen of a city, and equally importanly, the middle classes identify as members of trade guilds.

Is something like that realistically achievable? It would shut down most of colonization, and an actual nation, even one we would consider small would be a vast power. I am thinking it would be an unstable setup, because nations woud just be so much more powerful?

The problem is Europes cities (as opposed to small villages or towns) were this more or less IOTL; in Germany they remained indepdendent to various degrees, while in Italy they basicaly annexed alot of the land around them, turning them into larger states.

Without some vastly powerful source (like an advanced civilization) actively preventing it, city-states are not going to remain stable indefinately.
 
Yes, this was my conclusion too:(

The setup would be inherently unstable, because larger entities would be both more selfsufficient and more powerful. Hence, once consolidation starts anywhere, it will continue.

What kind of non-asb factor could counter this? And stabilize such a setup?

One thing may be that city-states will be far less self-sufficient for resources. No-one is going to have everything they need. Trade, therefore will be paramount. And exceptionally powerful trading houses and guilds will oppose any kind of consolidation into larger entities. Such entites would be more self-sufficient and have less need for trade. Or so the merchant princes would reason.
 
What kind of non-asb factor could counter this? And stabilize such a setup?

One thing may be that city-states will be far less self-sufficient for resources. No-one is going to have everything they need. Trade, therefore will be paramount. And exceptionally powerful trading houses and guilds will oppose any kind of consolidation into larger entities. Such entites would be more self-sufficient and have less need for trade. Or so the merchant princes would reason.

There are two three things that can (either individually or in conjecture with one another) allow for City-States to continue existing;

1. Geography; the city is located in a very fertile spot on the coast, surrounded by desert or otherwise non-usable/livable area around it for along time, thus preventing it from expanding into a larger state easily; the Emirates of the UAE were this to some degree originally.

2. Politics; the city exists in a political situation that allows it to be/makes it have to be independent; Singapore is a current example of this, while Danzig would be a historic example.

3. Popular support for independence; the population of the city not only wants to be independent, but the city actually can remain so; Singapore is an example of this, while historically several European City-States were as well.
 
Hmm...yes, I actually visited Gdansk/Danzig a month ago, and noted what a history of independence it has.

2) and 3) can be managed. I am seeing a situation where the actual power resides in multi "national" trading guilds, who desires the local political classes kept weak. No competition to their power base. Political classes get to do most they like except interfere with trade at the local level.

Keeping political entities fragmented increases the power and importance of trade.

Controlling the resources flow to the city-states, they will have them by the short and curlies, and this grip will strengthen as technology progresses. Greater variety of resources needed.

But how does this play on the global scene? I have problems seeing it as a world setup. There may be nations in Africal or Asia that are comparativly gigantic powers.
 
Hmm...yes, I actually visited Gdansk/Danzig a month ago, and noted what a history of independence it has.

2) and 3) can be managed. I am seeing a situation where the actual power resides in multi "national" trading guilds, who desires the local political classes kept weak. No competition to their power base. Political classes get to do most they like except interfere with trade at the local level.

Keeping political entities fragmented increases the power and importance of trade.

Controlling the resources flow to the city-states, they will have them by the short and curlies, and this grip will strengthen as technology progresses. Greater variety of resources needed.

But how does this play on the global scene? I have problems seeing it as a world setup. There may be nations in Africal or Asia that are comparativly gigantic powers.

probably you would have a difference evolving between the itinerant "Providers" tribes who are the ones protecting their source of raw material and the urban "machiners" who jealously keep the knowledge of transforming raw material into finished products. The providers threaten to cut off any city state attempting to expand into the countryside (in an attempt to grab raw material) and the machiners prevent the providers from settling permanently within the city by allowing them entry only to sell or buy for fear that they would undercut them by "learning the trade" and gaining a monopoly themselves by controlling the whole of the production chain.
 
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