What are some good late PoDs to prevent the Industrial Revolution?

CaliGuy

Banned
What are some good late PoDs to prevent the Industrial Revolution?

Basically, I am curious as to how late one can go and still come up with some PoDs to prevent the Industrial Revolution.
 
Stopping the Black Death is the classic of course, but we should probably start by trying to find situations where the IR could have reasonably happened but didn't and then mimic those conditions.

Tribal areas or fractured states seem to have difficulty with accumulating capital, especially diverse and geographically dispersed types of capital. Even if these areas do develop they may continue to favour artisans. An example might be renaissance Italy.

Another common approach is a calcified superstate, ala Imperial China or 1984. That can certainly happen much later, but as in the Oceania example, it depends on how much development is acceptable. Creating a European Hegemony before any part of the IR is probably going to take an even earlier POD though. Napoleon could conceivably do it, as a fairly late POD, but he seems unlikely to enforce agrarianism for all.

Alternatively, we could look at massive external invasion, with the Song as an example. I cant think of anyone who could reasonably take the place of the Mongols though. Not within a particularly late time frame anyway. Maybe someone else has a suggestion.

I suppose a reasonable place to start would simply be the steam engine. Setting aside Heron's aoelipile, we are probably looking at Newcomen in 1712 and Watt in 1781. Bad luck could have several of these engines blow up spectacularly, killing important people, say an investor or their loved one. That could delay steam's development for while. But Europe is big, and the Americas are accessible, someone is bond to try.

So we probably want a POD before 1700. Britain and France are probably going to be the focus. Protestantism's emphasis on work ethic and Calvinism's idea of pre-determinism might be able to be turned against any sort of innovation. Idle hands and all that. Its too late for tribalism, there are unlikely to be any invaders, so lets try for a late age calcified superstate.

Lets see, the Glorious Revolution was in 1688, that might be a way to tie England directly to the mainland, perhaps a union of the crowns. Have a King try and bolster his flagging support by radicalizing the church. Then let the Anglo-Dutch hordes descend upon Europe. Clearly the English King is the rightful king of France. The Hundred Years war will finally be won. The Netherlands is part of the HRE, so clearly the King needs to be Emperor. At this point the newly crowned Emperor thinks he is the leader of all Christendom, best make it a fact. Constant war, constant expansion. Non-military tech is constantly set back.

But I think this is both pretty implausible, and would probably only delay the industrial revolution even if you could get it to happen. England really isn't a good candidate for this, but thats the trouble, it doesnt look like anyone is. While it is certainly possible to derail the IR, its much harder to do it late outside of an ASB meteor strike or something.

I look forward to better suggestions.
 
From what i learned in college, the british IR was a result of two factors:
-British possessions in India, which allowed cotton to be imported to the capital islands. Cotton, in the early stages of the IR, was not only abundant, but it was also very lucrative, which, alongside spinning and weaving inventions and a workforce with available time to weave it and sell it as a side gig, helped kickstart the IR.
-A state with a bureaucracy and leadership interested in innovation. That wasn't much of the case with France, which was more feudal than Britain.
IMO, the best way to delay the IR would be a successful Jacobite restoration in Britain, and one before 1745 (when the seeds of the IR were already mostly planted). If that can somehow happen between the 1690's and 1710's and result in a french-aligned absolute monarchy in England, with possibly less possessions in India, then industrialization could find some obstacles.
However, i think you can only delay the IR or make it slower, not prevent it forever. Progress is technically inevitable, even more so after the medieval age.
 
From what i learned in college, the british IR was a result of two factors:
-British possessions in India, which allowed cotton to be imported to the capital islands. Cotton, in the early stages of the IR, was not only abundant, but it was also very lucrative, which, alongside spinning and weaving inventions and a workforce with available time to weave it and sell it as a side gig, helped kickstart the IR.
-A state with a bureaucracy and leadership interested in innovation. That wasn't much of the case with France, which was more feudal than Britain.
IMO, the best way to delay the IR would be a successful Jacobite restoration in Britain, and one before 1745 (when the seeds of the IR were already mostly planted). If that can somehow happen between the 1690's and 1710's and result in a french-aligned absolute monarchy in England, with possibly less possessions in India, then industrialization could find some obstacles.
However, i think you can only delay the IR or make it slower, not prevent it forever. Progress is technically inevitable, even more so after the medieval age.
To stop the Industrial Revolution one probably has to stop the Agricultural Revolution first, as it was fundamental to the development of the necessary pre conditions for the British Industrial Revolution, that looks very hard to do unless one waves away any progress in human knowledge, or new products from the new world, or Asia, and assume that wealth from trade will not be invested in useful improvements. One probably also has to remove the development of banking and stocks markets. To succeed I think we would need a really early departure (s). No printing press would slow things down a lot.
 
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