Ming Dynasty and Steam Power

[EternalCynic]

Luck and lots of it. You have to have emperors who like the steam power and especially ones who like the people who research it in order to get a foot in the door.

Or additionally the bureaucracy may view the newfangled industrial revolution as cool, but unworthy of the Imperial Court's attention. Who cares about machines to burn coal and produce goods at much lower cost when eunuchs are busy with nasty plots? Before the Emperor has noticed, large workshops across the coal-rich parts of Northern China are absorbing the hordes of excess agriculture workers. The Ming and the early Qing economies were close to the definition of classical liberal.

These trading companies then create railways to reduce the cost of transporting goods, and lay telegraphs along them to enable instant communication of prices and company strategies. Initially these were for private usage, but slowly the trading groups realize transportation and communication as businesses in their own right.

However, once railways and telegraph massively shrink the size of the empire, the state will have no choice but to invest in an empire-wide network. If nothing else, all the feuding eunuchs want to strengthen control over the outlying provinces.

So, if the state neglects the development of these technologies until their importance of running the empire are obvious to even the most conservative mandarins, the Industrial Revolution is irreversible.

 

[Elfwine]

Perhaps our "great man" won't single-handedly invent the steam engine, but it was a train of thought that had the Industrial Revolution begun in China, it would probably have started through that general process. Note that no expeditions to America were needed!

This is true. I think the issues involved will slow it down, but at least it's something that actually applies to conditions in China, which is nice.

These trading companies then create railways to reduce the cost of transporting goods, and lay telegraphs along them to enable instant communication of prices and company strategies. Initially these were for private usage, but slowly the trading groups realize transportation and communication as businesses in their own right.

Wait wait wait wait. How did we go from steam engines hauling water to railroads and telegraphs?

That's going to take more effort and more development on top of what already happened.

Not impossible, but not an immediate, effortless consequence either. And coal burning locomotives take some work in terms of fireboxes and such - it's hardly impossible, but there's a reason it took a while to develop in the US (and it's not a lack of coal).

 

[EternalCynic]

Wait wait wait wait. How did we go from steam engines hauling water to railroads and telegraphs?

This was a response to Leo Xiao's question that an imperial edict could simply shut down this industrial revolution. The Chinese state wasn't *that* powerful. I'm just tired of the cliche that China could not start the Industrial Revolution without Zheng He sailing east and discovering mountains of Mexican silver. This, on the other hand, requires far less handwaving.

That's going to take more effort and more development on top of what already happened.

Not impossible, but not an immediate, effortless consequence either. And coal burning locomotives take some work in terms of fireboxes and such - it's hardly impossible, but there's a reason it took a while to develop in the US (and it's not a lack of coal).

True. Between Newcomen inventing a crude steam engine to pump water to Stephenson linking Liverpool and Manchester, over 100 years elapsed. Something similar would have happened in China, unless industrial development is given unceasing state support.

 

[Elfwine]

This was a response to Leo Xiao's question that an imperial edict could simply shut down this industrial revolution. The Chinese state wasn't *that* powerful. I'm just tired of the cliche that China could not start the Industrial Revolution without Zheng He sailing east and discovering mountains of Mexican silver. This, on the other hand, requires far less handwaving.

True. I think it would be difficult to start it here - China's circumstances economically and politically don't really favor it quite so well as 18th century Britain did OTL (though I heartily agree on the issue of America)- but it's more a matter of how it would be taxed mercilessly sort of "stomped on" than a wave of the Imperial hand and it vanishes in a puff of smoke.

The real downer I think is that the response to the inevitable (sooner or later) boiler explosions and such disasters is going to be fierce - and the environment is not conducive to just chugging along despite that.

But that's more nuanced than Imperial Government > You - more a social issue.

True. Between Newcomen inventing a crude steam engine to pump water to Stephenson linking Liverpool and Manchester, over 100 years elapsed. Something similar would have happened in China, unless industrial development is given unceasing state support.

And the odds of that are pretty low. Unceasing state support for something that primarily profits merchants (indirectly the treasury, but even there most taxes are land taxes if I'm not mistaken) is not likely anywhere, and China isn't one of the less unlikely ones.

But IF a steam engine is invented, and IF it does useful work, there's probably at least a limited future ahead.

 

[Count Dearborn]

What if the "Great man" is inspired by an an old scroll that talks about Hero's Engine, and gets inspired that way? All kinds of things came down the Silk Roads.

 

[Elfwine]

What if the "Great man" is inspired by an an old scroll that talks about Hero's Engine, and gets inspired that way? All kinds of things came down the Silk Roads.

He'll waste time and money pursuing a dead end, slowing down development of a practical steam engine.

 

[Flubber]

What if the "Great man" is inspired by an an old scroll that talks about Hero's Engine, and gets inspired that way? All kinds of things came down the Silk Roads.

We really need an aeropile sticky on the Before 1900 board.

Apart from threads and posts by the usual trolls and retards, the Sealion sticky greatly helped the After 1900 board so an aeropile sticky would most certainly work here.

 

[Elfwine]

What I don't get about the goddamn aeropile is that even if it was useful in any way shape or form, OTL inventors went well beyond it without any need for it in front of them as even a lesson in how not to design a useful engine. So why would ATL inventors benefit from the damned toy?

 

[Flubber]

What I don't get about the goddamn aeropile is that even if it was useful in any way shape or form, OTL inventors went well beyond it without any need for it in front of them as even a lesson in how not to design a useful engine. So why would ATL inventors benefit from the damned toy?

Remember our fairly recent young friend? The one believed the only way England could go Protestant was if Henry VIII wanted a son? Well, he knows more about the English Reformation than the Amalgamated Association of Aeropile Admirers know about engineering.

ATL inventors benefit from the aeropile in the same way Sealion can work: abject ignorance on the part of the poster.

 

[Elfwine]

Remember our fairly recent young friend? The one believed the only way England could go Protestant was if Henry VIII wanted a son? Well, he knows more about the English Reformation than the Amalgamated Association of Aeropile Admirers know about engineering.

ATL inventors benefit from the aeropile in the same way Sealion can work: abject ignorance on the part of the poster.

And apparently, Greeks (or Germans in the case of Sealion) are so cool that even the sloppiest research can stumble across them, so . . .

 

[Count Dearborn]

Not trying to cause trouble. What I was trying to say is that the scroll plants the idea, and maybe when he is trying, on paper to recreate it, he has a "eureka" momment, abandons his version of Hero's engine, and goes on to invent a steam engine that is similar to one from otl. Though, I think at first, he would build one of his engines as a toy for a magistrate, to get said magistrate as a patron.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

I think I see his point. Gliders & hot air balloons have really limited practical application, but trying to make something out of them contributed/led to powered flight.

 

[Elfwine]

I think I see his point. Gliders & hot air balloons have really limited practical application, but trying to make something out of them contributed/led to powered flight.

The problem is that the aeropile is - at best - a distraction from developments needed to make a workable steam engine.

It's counterproductive to spend time on it as opposed to new designs not confined by the limits of that damned toy.

 

[Flubber]

I think I see his point.

Believe me, there is no point.

Gliders & hot air balloons have really limited practical application, but trying to make something out of them contributed/led to powered flight.

The two are not even remotely similar.

Studying and building gliders allowed the Wrights to recalculate Smeaton's co-efficient and make their breakthrough regarding dynamic three-axis control while studying and building aeropiles leads to making better toys. This is because gliders operate like aircraft and aeropiles do not operate like steam engines.