Why did Europe industrialise first?

Why did Europe industrialise before other parts of the world?

Why were there differences between when different parts of Europe industrialised? For example Britain was early while Russia was late.

What is the key characteristics driving industrialisation in early modern Europe?

Was industrialisation ineviteble?

EDIT: I think this thread should be in the before 1900 category. I must have swithched inside my head from after 1900 to before 1900, without doing do IRL.
 
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This sounds suspiciously like an essay question.

A twenty book series is dedicated to the Chinese case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China

"Needham's Grand Question", also known as "The Needham Question", is this: why had China and India been overtaken by the West in science and technology, despite their earlier successes? In Needham's words, “Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilisation or Indian civilisation?”
As far as industrialisation goes, I'd argue because Europe developed Mercantile capitalism in the form M—C—M (money for goods) which inspired productive capitalism M—C—M' (goods produced solely for profit). Industrialisation absorbed vast capital stocks which would have otherwise gone on mercantile speculation or luxury; and, allowed faster production of profit (same profit, shorter turnover). However, Humphrey McQueen hypothesises that capitalism's first productive crisis came before the central industrialisation of cloth in England. And of course, the question then devolves to "Why did China not develop Mercantile capitalism?"

yours,
Sam R.
 
Glass!

Europe was the only part of the world to produce decent quality glass in quantity which allowed advances in a range of disciplines especially science from the the 15th century onwards. These advances lead to increased industrialisation which eventually led to the industrial revolution.
 
This should be on the pre-1900 era board.

But I can list some reasons.

1. London and Amsterdam were paying the highest wages in the world by 1700. This created a incentive for capitalists to find alternative sources of labor.

2. England has a lot of coal. Steam engines could help mine coal by burning coal. This creates positive feedback loop.

3. European smithing and metallurgy had finally reached the quality required to build steam engines.

4. Calvinist culture being more lax on usury allowed for people to make larger loans. Capitalism really took off once usury stopped being seen as taboo.
 
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Why did Europe industrialise before other parts of the world?

Why were there differences between when different parts of Europe industrialised? For example Britain was early while Russia was late.

What is the key characteristics driving industrialisation in early modern Europe?

Was industrialisation ineviteble?

Peas. There was a significant shift in the European diet during the 11th and 12th centuries involving a move to legumes as a staple. This lead to a far higher iron content and subsequent increase in life expectancy. However far more importantly it caused a significant drop in infant and maternal mortality during childbirth allowing allowing fewer women to produce the same number of adults. This lead to smaller family sizes and a greater concentration of wealth.
 
- Manorialism : give individual / nuclear family its own private property
- Consanguinity Law : prevent creation of clans and tribes
- Canon Law : give 'Individual' personal responsibility in face of law, generate safety of private property, allow 'rule of law' to develop

All of above create basis of medieval Western civilizations which eventually develop basic background for Capitalism and Industrialization.
 
Nobody's mentioned the Colombian Exchange and the Age of Exploration yet. Controlling most of world trade is a help.
And new crops help that your people don´t get killed by hungry and/or famine is a important plus also and it´s help to maintain the social peace
 
Lots of small states which are weak on their own in Europe as opposed to the single hegemonic super states dominating India and East Asia at the time, the small ones look for any advantage they can get to get ahead of the rest while the super states just tell the surrounding smaller ones to behave or else.
 
Labor guilds lost their control of technical knowledge. When a family of Craftsmen, or a local craft guild keeps a bit of technical information secret for generations it slows industrial development.

In China a group of well diggers developed techniques for drilling salt wells 1000+ meters deep, in the 1700s CE, or possibly earlier. The technique remained in limited use until the Europeans & Americans got ahold of it in the mid 19th Century.

The west developed selling information & open source, reducing secrecy, restriction and monopolistic use.
 
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This sounds suspiciously like an essay question.
This is what I thought as well. Especially since there have already been so many threads on this question in this forum, and the questions proposed in the OP are extremely basic and non-specific, like something you would find on a school paper.

If this is the case, OP, then you came to the wrong place to ask for help, because we can only provide you with obscure historical facts and sources which your teacher doesn't know about and will think you're bullshitting.
 
Add literacy to the equation. The English Revolution and the Cromwell Protectorate placed great emphasis on the ability for one to read the bible. So, industry takes first hold in Britain, then parts of Europe that embrace technology, and finally into the colonies in New England, population permitting.
 
I read somewhere (GGS?) that one of the things that helped the Industrial Revolution along in Europe was the close proximity of good coal and iron deposits that were near river/water power... so, several nations that had these three things handy were competing with each other, something that always drives innovation and industry...
 
Interesting issue, I was auditing a course at our University in Nebraska and one hypothesis is the lack of working population. The reasoning is the Western European world was repeatedly hit by famine, war, and plague which kept the population lower. This drove the innovation to make use of automation while highly populated areas of the world (e.g., China) led to the use of manpower to support the economic engine of the region rather than automation. The premise is when you have lots of people/manpower, then you gotta use the manpower ... the drive is full employment.
 
M-C-M? People sell goods for money almost everywhere in the world.

The point is: Britain developed the steam machine because they needed to pump water from their coal mines. China also had lots of coal mines, but their mines weren't too wet but too dry - hence, no need for pumps, and no steam engine. (That's a fact I learned here on AH.com.)
 
Geography. Europe was close to the Americas, so when they hit a certain threshold of ship-building technology, the Columbian crop exchange happened, generating an enormous surplus of wealth. By contrast, East Asia would have needed much better boats to trigger a trans-pacific Columbian exchange because East Asia was much further from the Americas.

And certain parts of Europe happened to be both favourably positioned relative to the Americas but also gifted with very conveniently located coal.

So Britain and Belgium end up with both the coal and the large economic surpluses from adopting Columbian crops early.

Before Columbus went West, there's nothing especially remarkable about Europe's population, culture, wealth, technology... After Columbus went West, Europe started to gradually diverge and the non-European world only started to catch up again in the 1990s.

It's interesting to consider what might have happened if Mali had started colonizing Brazil before the Europeans discovered the Americas (there are legends of kings sailing off to the west just before the European age of discovery was dawning and West Africa is even better placed in relation to the Americas than Spain and England are). In such a world, West Africa would have gained the head start of being the first place new world crops arrived (and the suite of tropical plants in the Americas is even better than the suite of temperate crops), so the Age of Exploration might have belonged to Muslim Africans. But England and Belgium still have the perfect geography to become the first industrial centres. So industrial European states might have still risen to eclipse the Muslim naval powers who owned the alt-age of exploration.

fasquardon
 
At the end of the day it's a bunch of semi-random factors that existed at some point in other areas of the world but all came together at the same time in Europe and took advantage of other states who had temporary problems.
This compounded the advantage until Europe hit the self destruct button twice in 30 years.
 
In order to industrialize you need 5 things.

1: your society needs excess cash. To invest into starting industry's .Either the private civilian or the state intself.

It's why you never see impoverished states industrializing without foreign investment. It's also why china took so long to industrialize, the Unequal treaties destroyed the states revenue. While high taxes,civil wars and opioids harmed the chances for individual Chinese civilians from building industry.

Britain was loaded with cash due to the empire.

2: It needs infrastructure to transport industrial inputs to your industy.

North western Europe is like the flattest place in world, with the exception of the American midwest.
Thus building railroads isn't very difficult.

3: you need market access to said industrial inputs in the first place. Without which you industry's cant produce anything.

This where Britain ruling a significant part of of the planet and kick starting free trade comes in. It gave acces to goods that could not have been sourced locally.

4: this is an either or requirment. Now under normal conditions industrializing. Is going to out produce your previous cottage Industy driving it out the market. The resulting issue can be solved two ways. You can have a large enough consumer market to absorbing the increased production with out issue. Or your society is stable and militarized enough the deal with the incomeing unrest from all the now unemployed people

Britain had a large capitve market in the form of it's colony's which it could force to buy British goods.

5: an educated populace.

Once you setup your proto industy you need and educated populace to mange and supply it with skilled labor.

Britain was 50% literate in 1800 one of the highest rate in the world.

With these five elements combined you can industrialize. It has little to do with culture or manpower.
 
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Nobody's mentioned the Colombian Exchange and the Age of Exploration yet. Controlling most of world trade is a help.

DocJamore is secretly mentioning this, channeling Robert Allen's explanation of the Great Divergence. Per Allen, Western Europe managed to be the center of world trade in the Early Modern era and this led to high wages in England and the Low Countries, spurring industrialization.
 
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