Postponing Industrialization

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I would imagine we would be living in much the same sort of society that existed in non-industrialised 19th century nations.

The vast majority of our population would be involved in agricultural production. Less than twenty per cent would be in urban or semi-urban areas.

Those who did work in non-agricultural sectors would mostly work in small workshops.

International trade would be a major feature of such a world, and I would predict that steam ships would be in use for long distance transport. However, given the small-scale production facilities for these ships, they would not make up the majority of any nation's merchant fleet.

There would be many examples of 'high technology' scattered around (I would guess most of it would be of late 19thC standard with some examles from the early 20thC) but none of it would have been mass produced, industrially, all of it would be extremely expensive and employed only by government concerns or the wealthy elite.

In short, while science and technology would continue to progess, they would progress following the economic and social model of the pre-industrial age. That economic and social model would have proved extremely limiting from our perspective. But from the perspective of the people of this universe, things would have continued a slow, steady improvement from the Enlightenment onwards.

The only real problem would be solving the population growth issue. I could imagine that governments would become deeply involved in creating large canal systems, funding scientific research into new agricultural methods, and reforming the strucuture of agriculture to maxmise production.

Provided that things continue to improve for the populations of these nations, there would be no significant pressure resulting in the drastic reorganisation of the economy, society and politics that industrialisation both requires and produces. There would be no sudden 'break' with the past 'way of doing things'.
 
This is an extremely fascinating topic to me, and I thought I would bump it to see if anyone has more thoughts on it, now that a decade has passed.
For my view, I would expect that the IR would have occurred somewhere else in the fullness of time (in Great Britain or otherwise) if I dropped a butterfly into 1700.
However, the fullness of time might well be the 29th Century.
Or the 129th Century (1029th?)
In other words, I mostly agree with Kit.
 

CalBear

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This is an extremely fascinating topic to me, and I thought I would bump it to see if anyone has more thoughts on it, now that a decade has passed.
For my view, I would expect that the IR would have occurred somewhere else in the fullness of time (in Great Britain or otherwise) if I dropped a butterfly into 1700.
However, the fullness of time might well be the 29th Century.
Or the 129th Century (1029th?)
In other words, I mostly agree with Kit.

What the....

You have been here almost literally from Day One of the New Board (Member #33 to be exact) and post in a TEN YEAR DEAD thead?

Don't do that!
 
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