Was Song China really that close to industrializing?

I've been spending a good deal of time reading about how and why the West rose while the rest didn't. The key event, of course, was industrialization (though I would argue the West was partially dominant even in the 16th and 17th centuries anyway since the "industrial revolution" is largely a historical fiction).

Industrialization happened in Britain, based on my reading, largely because of inclusive institutions (developing over time), unique technological innovations, proton-capitalism, as well as other tertiary things such as geography and religion. All of these things took hundreds of years to develop before it finally culminated, and I'm not exactly sure east Asia had any of those, save technological innovations, so I'm not sure why this is such a common trope.

Was Song really that close to industrializing?
 
I've been spending a good deal of time reading about how and why the West rose while the rest didn't. The key event, of course, was industrialization (though I would argue the West was partially dominant even in the 16th and 17th centuries anyway since the "industrial revolution" is largely a historical fiction).
Not sure what you mean there.

Industrialization happened in Britain, based on my reading, largely because of inclusive institutions (developing over time), unique technological innovations, proton-capitalism, as well as other tertiary things such as geography and religion. All of these things took hundreds of years to develop before it finally culminated, and I'm not exactly sure east Asia had any of those, save technological innovations, so I'm not sure why this is such a common trope.

Was Song really that close to industrializing?
You're making the assumption that there is only one path to industrialization. With a sample size of one, we can't know definitively, but if you examine Song China in the 11th and early 12th centuries, they certainly appeared to be on the way to industrialization. They were using coal for fuel domestically and industrially (to power furnaces to smelt iron, which they developed a new technique for smelting). Their population in the 10th century consistent with the European population explosion immediately preceding their industrial revolution. New market innovations came out of the Song's industrial period (I don't have my sources on hand, but I'm pretty sure a major upgrade was made to their currency around this time).

If the Jurchens hadn't sacked Kafeng in 1127 and then cut off the industrial north from the fertile south, I do think Song China would have continued industrializing. I see no reason why not.
 
Yes.. but doesn't an industrial revolution require the invention of a steam machine? And that invention is not a given. Sure, Song had the basic set-up but missed the catalyst imo.
 
Yes.. but doesn't an industrial revolution require the invention of a steam machine? And that invention is not a given. Sure, Song had the basic set-up but missed the catalyst imo.
I think the steam machine certainly helped but may have been more a means to an end. The catalyst I think it more economic, focused on increasing production to provide for other markets and the Darwin-esque nature of capitalism. I'm not sure how capitalistic Song China was or how much they traded with the outside world, but perhaps if they increased trade and were open to new ideas on increasing production then that could lead to more inventions akin to what we saw in the Industrial Revolution.

Thoughts?
 
I think the steam machine certainly helped but may have been more a means to an end. The catalyst I think it more economic, focused on increasing production to provide for other markets and the Darwin-esque nature of capitalism. I'm not sure how capitalistic Song China was or how much they traded with the outside world, but perhaps if they increased trade and were open to new ideas on increasing production then that could lead to more inventions akin to what we saw in the Industrial Revolution.

Thoughts?
China's internal market is huge. Something like 1/5th or 1/6th of all humans lived in China at the height of their population explosion in the 11th century. Meanwhile, the industry was all concentrated around Kaifeng. If China continued to industrialize, they would follow a different track than Britain, due in part to their very different geographic (and geopolitical) situation.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Yes.. but doesn't an industrial revolution require the invention of a steam machine? And that invention is not a given. Sure, Song had the basic set-up but missed the catalyst imo.

No, the first round of industrialization in Britain didn't involve the steam engine, but evolution of machinery designs from the medieval era.
 
I think you can read Mark Elvin's 'The Pattern of the Chinese Past' if you want to see China's economic history. The gist I got from his book was that no, Song China probably wasn't that close to industrializing... though as others have mentioned, there may have been alternative industrialization paths that we have missed.

Anyway, the reasons are thus:

1) Chinese scientific development wasn't conducted systemically and this was especially the case in the natural sciences, where most of the research was mainly alchemic in nature. Shen Kuo in Song China was, by Elvin's reckoning, the closest China came to a native-born Aristotle, but even then his enquiries were more on the line of 'musings' rather than an actual method. Coupled with this, you have no patent law in China and so the incentive for people like Bi Sheng (moveable block-type) to innovate was quite low.

2) The 'high-level equilibrium trap'. This is probably Elvin's most famous argument and it purports to explain why China, as a whole, failed to industrialize. The main point was that China's pre-industrial transport and logistics networks were so efficient that a) that new innovations weren't efficient enough to justify start-up costs, and b) that capital was too thinly spread around for innovation. For example, the spinning wheel was in use in China during the Song Dynasty, but by the Ming merely two hundred years later the machine had disappeared. Elvin explains that this was the consequence of large-scale influxes of labor into the Jiangsu region during the period, which lowered the cost of labor so much that the spinning wheel just wasn't worth it anymore. This is not to mention things like the steam engine which would have required huge investment.

3) I would also argue that the bureaucratic and Confucian nature of Chinese government stifled innovation in more ways than one. Firstly, throughout Chinese history one can see that the bureaucracy was, more often than not, very resistant to any real development in Chinese economic management - the Xin Dynasty's innovative market-liberalization plans were never implemented and ended up provoking revolts that ended the dynasty, and the Song's own Wang Anshi's reforms were quite effectively blocked by the conservatives in court. Now you can say a lot about whether these reforms were actually good for China, but one thing is for sure - the bureaucracy sure as hell didn't want to try. Furthermore, Confucianism is an ideology that is essentially backward-looking, heralding the glorious days of the 'Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors' and telling everybody to emulate them. Confucius also had a noted distate for commerce, and this prejudice carried on into the rest of the literati. This is not an attitude that is conducive to progress.

So there are reasons to believe that Song China wasn't exactly at the cusp of industrial progress. Now I don't think that it wasn't ever going to industrialize - with some luck, state-sponsored commercialization might eventually break Confucianism's hold over the Chinese elite (especially before the days of Neo-Confucianism) - but that might have taken some length of time. Song China still remains China's best shot at development before the West.
 
3) I would also argue that the bureaucratic and Confucian nature of Chinese government stifled innovation in more ways than one. Firstly, throughout Chinese history one can see that the bureaucracy was, more often than not, very resistant to any real development in Chinese economic management - the Xin Dynasty's innovative market-liberalization plans were never implemented and ended up provoking revolts that ended the dynasty, and the Song's own Wang Anshi's reforms were quite effectively blocked by the conservatives in court. Now you can say a lot about whether these reforms were actually good for China, but one thing is for sure - the bureaucracy sure as hell didn't want to try. Furthermore, Confucianism is an ideology that is essentially backward-looking, heralding the glorious days of the 'Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors' and telling everybody to emulate them. Confucius also had a noted distate for commerce, and this prejudice carried on into the rest of the literati. This is not an attitude that is conducive to progress.

While I would argue with the characterization of the Confucianism bureaucratic system as stifling, I would agree that it was the main obstacle to China pulling a Europe. China didn't experience the series of capital-R revolutions (agricultural, scientific, industrial, exploratory....) in the 1000-1800 period; Europe did - roughly in the 1400-1900 period.

The key aspect was risk aversion. In Europe loans at compound interest were legal; in China preventing that practice was one of the main roles of the state. This (among many other things) allowed China to maintain the highest standard of living in the world for most of the last 2000 years. Even the best spots in Europe (England, for example) only caught up in the 1820s, and that was in part because of declines in China due to trade with Europe. The price paid by China was relatively few skilled professional men willing to take major risks for the possibility of profit, relatively few desperate landless poor to work in factories, and relatively little capital available for ventures that could easily fail.

Interest protects the lender; compound interest guarantees the lender. Heck, as near as we can tell, the practice was invented by government officials in ancient Mesopotamia precisely for loans made to merchants sailing the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Europe had the advantage of both forms of legal loans.

But these loans also serve as excellent motivators to entrepreneurship. In Europe, as in China, a man could have captained ships for two decades and mastered trade, navigation, and a dozen languages - yet still lose everything due to misfortune. In China this man would fall back on his extended family to support him (who would not be happy with him) or lapse into poverty. In Europe a man (or king....) in the same position could offer to undertake some mad adventure - a crusade to seize the riches of Byzantium, an expedition across unknown seas, the enclosure and use of public lands for a larger profitable plantation, or an industrial venture. In exchange he would have to offer collateral - which often amounted to all his worldly possessions and some of the most valuable ones of his family. Obviously the risk that he and his loved ones might lose everything and be thrown to quite literally rot in debtor's prison would ensure the very best and most thorough efforts on the part of the borrower.

Interest-bearing loans were also essential for producing the labor necessary for industrialization. These loans to poor farmers inevitably result in a proportion that cannot be repaid except through land confiscation. If high interest is involved and/or a period of poor climate reduces yields, its easy for most of a region's population to fall into this trap. In China this would result in revolt, which would be put down; the leaders of the revolt and local lenders (illegal, and thus we may call them loan sharks) would be put to death; and the debts of the peasantry and land confiscations would be cancelled. This deprived China of economies of scale in agriculture and denied it a body of rootless laborers who would have to learn how to do whatever work was available. Europeans, by contrast, were lucky enough to have a system that could support the production of labor desperate enough to work for wages from cradle to grave.

It was equally important for producing the materials necessary. Those same abused small-farmers that turned to factory work were the primary (white) source of colonists for European expansion. The wheat that fed the growing cities of Europe was grown by North American and Australian farmers whose ancestors had generally fled debt or been transported because of it. The beginning of the industrial boom was in cotton textiles - cotton grown on plantations that had required interest-bearing loans for seed money and were run by the descendants of laborers indentured to pay off their debts. The black workers on those plantations were occasionally themselves imprisoned and transported debtors, but more to the point they were delivered by the slave trade, a very dangerous and risky business that tended to employ debtors and be financed by interest. All of the above being illegal under the Confucian bureaucratic system.

Industrialization requires that massive numbers of people be moved around, and necessarily this will be against the will of most, and so require coercion. Widespread interest-bearing loans backed up by the force of the state were the only efficient way to accomplish this. If you want China to industrialize Confucianism has got to go, or at least compromise its core focus and principles. Why not Buddhism? The early Buddhist monasteries in China often functioned exactly like banks when it came to loan practices. If a few emperors in a row really sided with the Buddhists, and kept the country together despite the resulting disruption, who knows how far it could go?
 
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No, the first round of industrialization in Britain didn't involve the steam engine, but evolution of machinery designs from the medieval era.

Glad you said that. Indeed. Industrialization created the conditions for a boom in steam technology; not the reverse.
 
I think you can read Mark Elvin's 'The Pattern of the Chinese Past' if you want to see China's economic history.

I don't want to knock on this book, which is a very good one, but our understanding of Chinese history has changed a fair bit since 1973.

Coupled with this, you have no patent law in China and so the incentive for people like Bi Sheng (moveable block-type) to innovate was quite low.

See, the problem I see here is, the argument is that backwards, stagnant China couldn't innovate. The problem is the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, the rudder... I could go on, but you see the point. This innovative society had no problem coming up with tons of ideas. And I'm not sure that Shen Kua's thought is really less organized than Thomas Aquinas.

For example, the spinning wheel was in use in China during the Song Dynasty, but by the Ming merely two hundred years later the machine had disappeared. Elvin explains that this was the consequence of large-scale influxes of labor into the Jiangsu region during the period, which lowered the cost of labor so much that the spinning wheel just wasn't worth it anymore. This is not to mention things like the steam engine which would have required huge investment.

Most early industrial families in Britain were family sponsored enterprises, and China certainly had rich families with cash sloshing around, so I don't think there was a lack of capital. I think Elvin's onto something about the cost of labor; the Ming in general seemed to see people being used for things that machines or waterpower once were.

3) I would also argue that the bureaucratic and Confucian nature of Chinese government stifled innovation in more ways than one. Firstly, throughout Chinese history one can see that the bureaucracy was, more often than not, very resistant to any real development in Chinese economic management - the Xin Dynasty's innovative market-liberalization plans were never implemented and ended up provoking revolts that ended the dynasty, and the Song's own Wang Anshi's reforms were quite effectively blocked by the conservatives in court. Now you can say a lot about whether these reforms were actually good for China, but one thing is for sure - the bureaucracy sure as hell didn't want to try.


On the other hand, China was using a fiat currency, which Britain didn't try until the 1790s, and its scholars were writing about how to resolve inflatoin.

Furthermore, Confucianism is an ideology that is essentially backward-looking, heralding the glorious days of the 'Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors' and telling everybody to emulate them.

This is pretty common to all cultures, Europe included. I mean, the European creation story is about man's fall from grace into a world of barbarism.



While I would argue with the characterization of the Confucianism bureaucratic system as stifling, I would agree that it was the main obstacle to China pulling a Europe. China didn't experience the series of capital-R revolutions (agricultural, scientific, industrial, exploratory....) in the 1000-1800 period; Europe did - roughly in the 1400-1900 period.

I'm not sure what point you're making; China certainly had the concept of loans and interest rates.

Yes.. but doesn't an industrial revolution require the invention of a steam machine? And that invention is not a given. Sure, Song had the basic set-up but missed the catalyst imo.

But it's not like Britain in 1800 had railroads or steamships. Take away Britain's textile mills in 1800; would you still say it was in the midst of an industrial revolution?
 
Complacency is fatal.

During the Ming and early Qing Dynasty, most of the New World's silver, plus the New World's crop package, flowed into China. There was a correspondingly large population boom, which obviated the need for machines. The Chinese didn't even have to do anything. Maybe the army would get used for minor border incidents or the odd revolt but otherwise, there was nothing that created the pressure that the frequent, desperate and existential warfare of Europe created.

In 1807, the pirate Zheng Shi chased off the Royal Navy. A pirate. I mean, how threatening could those Westerners really be?

The court artificers have already made steam carts but those are just curios. Who needs those? You have unlimited, low cost labor. Besides, are the Westerners going to figure out steam carts anytime soon? Probably not. You can wait another 50 years, right?
 

Dorozhand

Banned
Complacency is fatal.

During the Ming and early Qing Dynasty, most of the New World's silver, plus the New World's crop package, flowed into China. There was a correspondingly large population boom, which obviated the need for machines. The Chinese didn't even have to do anything. Maybe the army would get used for minor border incidents or the odd revolt but otherwise, there was nothing that created the pressure that the frequent, desperate and existential warfare of Europe created.

In 1807, the pirate Zheng Shi chased off the Royal Navy. A pirate. I mean, how threatening could those Westerners really be?

The court artificers have already made steam carts but those are just curios. Who needs those? You have unlimited, low cost labor. Besides, are the Westerners going to figure out steam carts anytime soon? Probably not. You can wait another 50 years, right?

It makes sense that, of all the eras of Chinese history, Song came closest to industrialization and renaissance-style explosion, given that they faced the existential threat of the Jin.
 
I'm not sure what point you're making; China certainly had the concept of loans and interest rates.

I thought my point was fairly obvious. High interest loans were illegal. The concept was there, of course. Loans themselves are a human universal, of course. And as for interest-bearing loans, the concept predates China itself. Certainly they were being used before the first unified Chinese political entity expanded south of the Yangtze (that being the Qin). The concept was fine. [Obviously you have to have an idea before you can pass laws forbidding it.] In hindsight I exaggerated the extent a bit - I am aware that the government did promote low-interest as well as zero-interest loans.

But otherwise as far as I can see my point remains fairly clear and fairly sound.

Do you have sources suggesting that high-interest loans weren't used in the manner I described as drivers of the Industrial Revolution?

Or do you have information showing that such loans were in fact used in China?

I am not clear on how it wasn't clear, is what I'm saying. ;)
 
Complacency is fatal.

During the Ming and early Qing Dynasty, most of the New World's silver, plus the New World's crop package, flowed into China. There was a correspondingly large population boom, which obviated the need for machines. The Chinese didn't even have to do anything. Maybe the army would get used for minor border incidents or the odd revolt but otherwise, there was nothing that created the pressure that the frequent, desperate and existential warfare of Europe created.

In 1807, the pirate Zheng Shi chased off the Royal Navy. A pirate. I mean, how threatening could those Westerners really be?

The court artificers have already made steam carts but those are just curios. Who needs those? You have unlimited, low cost labor. Besides, are the Westerners going to figure out steam carts anytime soon? Probably not. You can wait another 50 years, right?

I dunno. While this obviously has a strong element of truth, I think it can be overstated.

The Europeans had been sailing to China in basically the same sort of ship with vaguely the same sort of cannon for 300 years to no effect. If the United States suffers a catastrophic reversal three centuries in the future at the hands of Canada, would you call the current attitude toward Canadians fatal complacency? If it's any manner of complacency I'd be inclined to call it justifiable.

And did the Industrial Revolution win the Opium War? I thought it was won by superior sailing, ship building, and cannon construction - none of which at that time were products of industrialization. I suppose the land battles involved some industrial products.
 
It makes sense that, of all the eras of Chinese history, Song came closest to industrialization and renaissance-style explosion, given that they faced the existential threat of the Jin.

China faced no existential issues after Qi Jiguang finally ended the Mongol threat. The Jianzhou Jurchens that eventually became the Qing Dynasty had Sinicized long beforehand. The earlier Jurchens weren't even that foreign. The Mongols were and they were beaten back using new firearms based tactics. Besides that though, there weren't really the sort of horrid civilization/culture ending crises that Europe faced. Violence and death, sure but none of the involved parties intended to end Chinese civilization.

I dunno. While this obviously has a strong element of truth, I think it can be overstated.

The Europeans had been sailing to China in basically the same sort of ship with vaguely the same sort of cannon for 300 years to no effect. If the United States suffers a catastrophic reversal three centuries in the future at the hands of Canada, would you call the current attitude toward Canadians fatal complacency? If it's any manner of complacency I'd be inclined to call it justifiable.

And did the Industrial Revolution win the Opium War? I thought it was won by superior sailing, ship building, and cannon construction - none of which at that time were products of industrialization. I suppose the land battles involved some industrial products.

Exactly. Complacency. Or at least something very radically different. Three centuries of the same shit, then all of a sudden (especially in the way Chinese people viewed the passage of time), the British show up with steamships packing rifled cannon firing explosive shells. Steamships are a product of the Industrial Revolution and if the Chinese had them, the British would never have started with the opium trade there. Had the Opium War taken place only 10 years beforehand, the British wouldn't have won.

The sudden pace of the change surprised the Chinese, who had, as recently as say...the mid-1820s, been unquestionably on top.
 
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