The Industrial Revolution forever changed not only economics, but society and the rythm of life. While many have promoted industry as a lofty goal and indeed it has bettered life for many people, many unrelated movements have attempted to return to an agrarian lifestyle. From the Luddites through attempts at agrarian socialism to the horrors of Democratic Kampuchea, some movements have tried to turn back the clock in a way and return to the pre-industrial state. Some, like the anarcho-primitivists, reject civilization altogether.

Your challenge is make a nation or a large group of people deindustrialize and return to an agrarian-based economy and way of life. It can be its people's own choice, by a rebel group (like Pol Pot's Cambodia) or imposed by a harsh peace treaty, like some of the proposals for post-war Germany.

Unrelated destruction by war, economical crises or natural disasters does not count. It has to be done with the specific goal of returning to a pre-industrial state.
 
Dammit, I was going to propose Germany.

Ok, for something else: some African post-colony and its dictator (Zimbabwe for instance) decides that modern tech is an evil thing, corrupting its people.
He bans any kind of modern activity (banking, industry, banning corporations...) and the country falls back entirely on a feodal system.

Otherwise, a bit ASB but Greece after 2009. Some epidemic piles on top of all the other troubles, emptying the cities.
 
Ok, for something else: some African post-colony and its dictator (Zimbabwe for instance) decides that modern tech is an evil thing, corrupting its people.
He bans any kind of modern activity (banking, industry, banning corporations...) and the country falls back entirely on a feodal system.

Seems a bit like Francisco Macías Nguema. Given the right country, the right circumstance, you could have a ruler with a more consistent ideology along those lines come to power in an African country. If I recall, there actually was a school of thought in post-colonial Africa that advocated a sort of African traditionalism, though not to extremes like that. You'd just need to mix it with an individual like Macías Nguema or of course Pol Pot.
 
arguably, in terms of what used to be a large number of middle-class manufacturing jobs, we have chosen deindustrialization right here in the good ol' U. S. of A. !!
 
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