WI: Industrial Revolution prior to discovery of New World?

[DominusNovus]

Very broad level discussion here. Without getting bogged down in specifics (unless you have any particular ideas), how might the exploration and colonization of the Americas have looked if the industrial revolution preceded discovery?

The minimum tech to qualify by the date of discovery is steam engines powerful enough to be used for steamships. The various economic and social changes that come with industrialization are fair game in either direction.

Consider how steamships might have altered the exploration and projection of force, how the likely development of telegraphs when the colonies are young would have altered communications, or just in general, would the colonization of the Americas resemble the scramble for Africa in any sense?

 

[VMOLTKE1996]

This is very difficult to achieve, if not impossible, because the industrial revolution is intimately linked to previous European exploration, the discovery of new foods and raw materials, and the conquest of markets in the new world and India. Crops such as potatoes and cotton would not have been produced without the great European explorations and the transatlantic slave trade which was very important for the capital accumulation that led to the development of industry. One could almost say that it was the discovery of the new world that gave Europeans a decisive advantage over China or India in commercial dynamism and access to new raw materials that ultimately led to the industrial revolution.

 

[Optical_Illusion]

It seems like it would be hard to do, not because colonies and colonized peoples contributed to industrialization (they probably did not in any essential way, whatever else they did), but because its hard to imagine how anyone in Europe would not have applied the same sorts of developments that make industrialisation possible to develop ocean-going ships much earlier.

Assuming that you did get to that point though; I'd expect colonization by industrial powers of Americas to be much less extensive, at least initially. Industrial powers do not operate agricultural models that require vast amounts of humans to settle territory (high agricultural productivity), and once reduced child mortality and increased education, population growth tends to decrease. So I most think you'd get pretty thin actual settlement, but quite a few mining and logging / resource exploitation without much settlement, and maybe more bounceback among Native American populations.

OTOH assuming that there was still a population boom going on - maybe this society has made much more progress in industry than it has health, for example - you might just get something like OTL but more intense.

It's basically depend on how much industrialization has done to big demographic drivers of settlement; population growth and agricultural productivity.

 

[Prince di Corsica]

How about having an industrial revolution away from the Atlantic while leaving Europe and generally the Atlantic shore as a backwater, leaving the Americas more akin to a large Polynesia in terms of colonisation?

Maybe a industrialised Middle East or India?

 

[DominusNovus]

I should have been clearer (posted this literally before going to bed), but just an early steam engine is enough to qualify. So I should have asked “what if a steam engine useful enough for propelling ships was developed before the New World was discovered?”

 

[raharris1973]

How about having an industrial revolution away from the Atlantic while leaving Europe and generally the Atlantic shore as a backwater, leaving the Americas more akin to a large Polynesia in terms of colonisation?

Maybe a industrialised Middle East or India?

This is the best way to do it geographically - have it start away from Europe. East Asia would be okay too.

 

[Vinization]

The Song dynasty came seriously close to industrializing before the Jin moved in. Say they manage to conquer the Sixteen Prefectures from the Liao, something that should keep their capital, Kaifeng, safe from northern aggression for a while.