Why did Europe industrialise first?

Rowe and Rozman aren't much of a revisionist.

I'm relying on reviews and introductions (freely available). Both were described positively as centring China as the subject of China in terms of historiography, rather than answering Eurocentric questions.

Rozman is primarily a historian of Russia, IIRC, and his schema was originally designed for Russian urban development over history. So I wouldn't say it "centers on Qing societies" in any particular way. In any case, what conceptual framework would you say was present in Early Modern Europe and not in Early Modern China? Both processes you mention are fully visible in Ming and High Qing economic history (even if they actively regressed as China fell into poverty in the nineteenth century, e.g. Chinese rural monetization declined with European involvement).

I'm quite obviously Marxist in bent. I don't think it is a theoretical structure present in England, but rather the development of capital accumulation through bulk commodity trade, and the extensification of wage labour into a generalised system of production in the early 18th century; including rural labour and very early enclosure; which transformed the relationship between production and finance capital. Without a proletarianisation, similar processes to the Dutch republic would have happened in England. And yes, I'm well aware of wage labour in Holland, much as there was in 17th century England. The difference being that wage labour became a generalised system of production for profit—particularly outside of rural commodities.

Monetisation isn't the key if the production is local handicraft for local consumption, ie, within a village and city trade network. The speculative production of English cloths for overseas consumption is relevant here.

To an extent Chinese prosperity could have afforded higher wage rates within traditional production structures averting the need to proletarianise wage labour. If revenue is perceived as a source for pleasurable use values, or existing within an expected rate of return, it is a different situation to a bank reliant on the bank of england, breathing down a producers neck for a profit.

yours,
Sam R.
 

Deleted member 97083

I don't think very many historians consider funicular railways that important for industrialization.
Well, in what situation would it be easier to construct a rail network--when you already have funicular railways and wagonways at most coal mines, and minecarts have been used for over two centuries? Or when rail transport is completely unknown? It seems it would be far easier to innovate on existing rail techniques than to invent rail for the first time.

No, because the developed areas of China do not have a lot of natural coal deposits. This is one geographic factor I'm willing to concede.

What textiles from the Americas? In any case, a direct comparison between British foreign trade and Qing foreign trade is misleading because of the Chinese empire's sheer size.
Lack of coal in the most developed areas of China at that time is likely a significant factor.

Precisely because Britain was so much smaller than the Qing Dynasty, then Britain would have been able to economically transport goods such as coal from semi-periphery to developed center much more easily, especially in that era when transport was so slow and expensive.

I think comparing foreign trade is relevant. British foreign trade was concentrated in the most developed area of England, and British extraction of resources from its colonies was more exploitative, leading to a cheaper surplus of raw materials to process.

Granted, the most developed area of the Qing Dynasty around Nanjing was roughly England-sized. But the Qing dynasty's main foreign trading port was not in this area of Jiangsu, but on the other side of the country in Guangzhou.

If we were to hypothetically "bridge the gap" between the Qing Dynasty's conditions for industrialization and England's conditions for industrialization, then perhaps we'd place significant, easily accessible coal deposits in Jiangsu. Also, all foreign trade in the Qing Dynasty that passed through Guangzhou, would instead be based at Nanjing (as a decree on the Qing's own terms, and in the 1700s). This would more closely approximate England's industrial situation, I think. (Although even then, tribute exacted by China from its tributaries probably would have had to be much more severe to be comparable to the East India Company.)
 
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I think the only thing left out might be metallurgy. At least, that wasn't addressed in detail. Certainly I'm not convinced by the implicit argument that Europe simply got lucky. Luck seems insufficient to explain a process that took decades or centuries to reach fruition.

Evolution's a process that took millions of years, and is still in progress. Will you also make the argument that humanity was not the result of luck, but intelligent design?
 
Well, in what situation would it be easier to construct a rail network--when you already have funicular railways and wagonways at most coal mines, and minecarts have been used for over two centuries? Or when rail transport is completely unknown? It seems it would be far easier to innovate on existing rail techniques than to invent rail for the first time.
I get the feeling that there is something missing from the infrastructure tangent...
Some kind of infrastructure that played a vital role in the industrial revolution before the railroad...
And incidentally, something that China had an impressive example of long before Britain got around to have the first nationwide network of... :)
 
Well, in what situation would it be easier to construct a rail network
Railways came fairly late in the First Industrial Revolution, and were a corollary of the revolution in human energy that was the use of steam power. If China industrialized first, riverine steamships would probably come much faster than OTL, even if railroads lag behind. Doesn't really matter either way.

then Britain would have been able to economically transport goods such as coal from semi-periphery to developed center much more easily
In the context we're speaking of, North England is a center, or so close to the center that it practically doesn't matter. China should be compared to Europe as a whole, not to Britain.

British foreign trade was concentrated in the most developed area of England, and British extraction of resources from its colonies was more exploitative, leading to a cheaper surplus of raw materials to process.
In the mid-eighteenth century, Chinese economic relations were also marked by strong center-periphery hierarchies, even though the relationship between e.g. Jiangnan and Huguang was more like the one between England and Russia than between England and the Caribbean. Qing China's extremely tolerant trade laws (the lack of internal tariffs, for instance, and the very rapid spread of ideas) decentralized the Chinese economy and allowed the former periphery that was once forced to import manufactured goods from Jiangnan to produce their own goods, which weakened Jiangnan's economic base -- another "failure" of China that I admit, even though it would have been a virtue in Smithian terms.

But the Qing dynasty's main foreign trading port was not in this area of Jiangsu, but on the other side of the country in Guangzhou.
Again, you're comparing Britain to China, not Europe. Trade between China's eight or nine macroregions was functionally equivalent to Europe's international trade, and Jiangnan was at the heart of the macroregional trade.

Also, all foreign trade in the Qing Dynasty that passed through Guangzhou
Again, the best analogue to England's foreign trade isn't China's own foreign trade, but China's macroregional commerce.
 
Evolution's a process that took millions of years, and is still in progress. Will you also make the argument that humanity was not the result of luck, but intelligent design?

No, because evolution isn't entirely delineated by random chance - that's rather the point. To adopt your metaphor, this is a case where we're told that species A, China, lived in an environment more conducive to taking on certain characteristics than species B, Europe, and yet it was species B rather than A that made the adaptations our model considered possible or likely. At the risk of having contorted this metaphor beyond recognition, I think the most likely conclusion is that we've misread the context in one or the other case, or that there are details we've missed.
 

Jerry Kraus

Banned
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.

As a number of other posters have already indicated, I don't think its entirely accurate to say "Europe industrialized first". More precisely, Europe became the richest part of the world over a period of several centuries, following the discovery of the New World. And, the very unique aspect of that event, was the near total extermination of the native population by disease, because they had no immunity to diseases from the old world, because no one suffering from such diseases could survive the trip over the Bering Land Bridge, to get to the Americas from Asia. Consequently, the entire Western Hemisphere was available for the exploitation and colonization by Europeans, and the native population was so small they simply couldn't fight them off. So, what is really at play here, is NOT any great technological innovation, per se, but, rather, the more general principle that massive plagues are the great harbingers of wealth, prosperity and innovation for society as a whole, because fewer people means less purely destructive competition among people. We saw precisely the same effect, with the Black Death, in Europe. Suddenly, we had all kinds of useful new technologies like the Printing Press, because people had the time and the money to develop and use them. So, Europe didn't industrialize first. Europe developed some of the most recent industrial technologies, because Europe had the greatest and most unique recent advantage in terms of the extermination of our fellow human beings on a massive scale, which is always the source of all things bright, and beautiful!
 
No mention of agricultural revolution and the enclosure of the land that preceded the industrial revolution. Astonishing.
No, it's all about Britain being imperialist. Spain had a big empire and is flat too.

Spain lost it's empire during the Napoleonic war's. And the iberian peninsula is one of the most mountainous regions in all of Europe.
 
I think we are mostly agreed that industrialisation was almost certain to happen in the old world, for this case excluding sub-Saharan Africa, at least to a certain extent. This is because the spread of ideas and technology is much easier here. This area does not suffer as much from natural barriers as the Americas certainly, and the Sahara desert is not conveniently placed for travel.

While there are a number of candidates for early industrialisation, Europe was for a long time behind the rest of the world. The re-introduction of classical and Eastern ideas following the Reconquista could perhaps be a tipping point- it did spark the Renaissance after all, which helped Europe to once again catch up.

Industrialisation also happened in the west of Europe, an area that almost completely escaped the destruction of the Mongol conquests which did not help China or the Middle East one bit.

(I only propose these ideas as it is pointless repeating what has been said already- and these have not yet been mentioned.)
 
read 'guns, germs and steel' that would be a good place to start. you might find this interesting, there are historians who claim the song dynasty was on the verge of or even in an industrial revolution before being conquered by the mongols, i dont buy that argument though. the reason i believe the industrial revolution happened in Britain was because of patent rights.
 
No, because evolution isn't entirely delineated by random chance - that's rather the point. To adopt your metaphor, this is a case where we're told that species A, China, lived in an environment more conducive to taking on certain characteristics than species B, Europe, and yet it was species B rather than A that made the adaptations our model considered possible or likely. At the risk of having contorted this metaphor beyond recognition, I think the most likely conclusion is that we've misread the context in one or the other case, or that there are details we've missed.

If it's not random chance, then it's deliberate. And evolution is not deliberate. The same goes for social/scientific progress. Humanity likes to add a veneer of agency to history, but in reality much of it was complete luck.

Sure a particular action or result can be predicted, but the process that yielded such a result, if extrapolated over centuries, cannot.
 
If it's not random chance, then it's deliberate. And evolution is not deliberate.

Bit of a false dichotomy, no? Evolution is not deliberate, but it responds to environmental pressures that can be observed and understood. If something can be modeled, then however random the process, the results are not random.

The same goes for social/scientific progress. Humanity likes to add a veneer of agency to history, but in reality much of it was complete luck.

And yet adaptations build on each other, which is how a narrative can be constructed at all. By complete luck, Hero of Alexandria built a working steam engine during the time of the Roman Empire. Also by complete luck, rifled firearms were invented in Renaissance Europe. But because the complementary adaptations we generally associate those two inventions with didn't exist yet, they weren't commonly used for centuries after their invention. This suggests that certain breakthroughs require a confluence of different conditions, and those can presumably be modeled as well. If you think history is too teleological, then perhaps you simply don't fully appreciate the way different influences interact. It doesn't make a deliberate story out of chaos, but it does remind us that many different causes are often needed to yield an observed effect.

Sure a particular action or result can be predicted, but the process that yielded such a result, if extrapolated over centuries, cannot.

And what we're doing here is trying to understand a particular result, and how it differs from the results of related cases. My supposition is that there are differences between the observed cases that we don't fully appreciate. Simply declaring the matter a black box smacks of willful ignorance, to be honest.
 
If we are talking of a European "whole", then my annoying answer is that Europe industrialised first because the UK did.

And could this have been aborted by political changes?

If, say, Mary I had a son, who later became King of Spain as well as England, would the IR still happen in England but not in Spain, or in both or neither?
 
And could this have been aborted by political changes?

If, say, Mary I had a son, who later became King of Spain as well as England, would the IR still happen in England but not in Spain, or in both or neither?
It's also worth bearing in mind that it was a mixture of English and Scottish ingenuity that led to the inventions that made the industrial revolution possible. Had you avoided the increasing closeness of England and Scotland after the personal union under James I, you may well butterfly some of the connections made between the two that led to the development of the steam engine. This isn't to say that the industrial revolution couldn't have happened elsewhere, but without a POD back far enough you're looking at an industrial revolution starting decades later, if not a century or over. Without a British industrial revolution, Western/Central Europe remains a fairly likely candidate to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, but this is true also of the Yangtze Delta. One can categorically say that certain areas in the world such as Thailand, the Swahili Coast and so on were almost impossible birthplaces for an Industrial Revolution, but without the inventions that came out of Great Britain in the 18th century, Europe doesn't have the advantage that it did.
 
Since ancient Greece, Europe developed a culture that was simply more conducive to technological advancement. It was a culture of questioning and inquisitiveness.

Have you actually looked at ancient Greek culture? Much of the modern conception of "Ancient Greece" was actually back-projected enlightenment ideals made by the propagandists of 18th century Europe who were making stuff up about why Europe was special at the same time that they were trying to undermine the Catholic Church. The pagan ancient Greeks served a three fold purpose - they were European, made remarkable contributions to posterity, and weren't Catholic.

The Greeks were an ancient society, riddled with corruption, conservatism, superstition, vile customs and a powerful disgust for people of class getting their hands dirty (Greek aversion to practical philosophy meant Europe was stuck for millennia piling rationalization atop rationalization - arguing about angels dancing on the heads of pins and disdaining those who actually took pins used their own eyes to look for angels on the heads).

If anything, European technology happened despite the ancient Greeks.

That's not to say that the Greeks weren't a great civilization. Some of the Greek thinkers were real revolutionaries in their fields. Herodotus gave western civilization history - an innovation that occurred only twice - the second time in China. And Herophilos' work on anatomy was amazing - an achievement up there with the great medical innovators of India.

The idea that the Greeks were better than the other great ancient civilizations, however, especially in terms of technical aptitude, just doesn't hold water. The truth is, the Greeks were exactly as innovative as you'd expect for a relatively large population (around 6 million - quite alot for an iron age civilization) in close proximity to other great civilizations.

fasquardon
 
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