The Chinese were mass-producing cast iron, wrought iron and steel centuries before that - by some accounts two thousand years earlier. Ditto for India. The use of coke for iron smelting seem to have been well-known in China by about 1100 or so, so this explanation does not seem to stack up.
Wasn’t Scotland and its literacy programs and free University education accountable for a lot of this? James Watt. John McAdam. James Maxwell. Alexander Graham Bell.
Struan should be helpful here.
What did literate scots have that was different from all the thousands of thousands of literate Chinese that that were churned out by the civil service examination system from 1000AD? Provision of free education sounds like it might be a better bet - my understanding is that one needed o be relatively wealthy to obtain a decent education in early China. But again one runs into the problem that anything the British had in the 17th century, the Chinese (and to a slightly lesser extent the Indians) had centuries earlier. The only exceptions seem to have been
[ul]
[li]A convenient natural barrier to keep enemies at bay[/li][li]A relatively weak but still sufficient central government that could provide stability without being able to dominate the merchant and aristocratic classes[/li][li]The steam engine (although again the Chinese had all the pieces to build one, by essentially reversing a waterwheel-powered air pump from AD31. They just never had the bright idea)[/li][/ul]
There are so many factors in play with these historical questions that it becomes essentially an opinionated guessing game. I’m going to put my money on those inconvenient northern neighbours of the Chinese being the reason why we didn’t all grow up learning Mandarin.
I wrote my honors thesis on this very question, and was lauded for writing what was considered, even by the standards of my very good university, an outstanding, original thesis. I used over 100 sources.
Unfortunately I can’t find it right now and I don’t remember most of what I wrote. It’s been like ten years and I have trouble remembering when I left my keys if I put them down more than eight minutes ago. Sorry.
But blah blah blah, England with more coal and steel, progressive government, modernization of banking and insurance, confluence of technology, patent rights, wars fought overseas. That’s all pretty much the explanation. You guys pretty much have it nailed.
One thing it definitely was not, however, was a “Protestant work ethic.” That’s just racist baloney; Protestants don’t have some magical work ethic others do not. The assignment of alleged “work ethics” is usually done in hindsight. People talk about Germans having a great work ethic, so why did East Germany leg so far behind West Germany? Did all the lazy Germans just happen to live in the East? Pretty much all the world’s humans will work as hard as anyone else given equal returns on their investment of labour.
Another factor is that Europe had been making industrial use of rotary power for centuries, in the form of windmills, waterwheels and animal- and human-powered shafts, with slowly-developed systems of gearing and belt drives, trip hammers, etc. As soon as steam engines were practical, there were already plenty of ways to put them to work.
China had Confucianism to deal with, where individual innovation was not encouraged.
I’m not entirely convinced that all cultural groups will work equally hard, even given equal returns on investment. There are defnitely different cultural norms about what is important in life. Some societies value individuality while other societies value harmony more. Making lots of money is valued in some societies much more than others. That’s not to say that everyone in a given society has to fit within those particular norms, but there are definitely different cultural environments around the world, which can have as much impact on technical and economic innovation as the more tangible factors discussed in this thread.
It is certainly arguable that the Industrial Revolution in Britain pre-dates the wide-spread use of steam. Large scale cotton spinning started in northern England with water power in the mid to late 18th century.
Unfortunately, although like RickJay I studied this to death 10-15 years ago, I can’t remember all the factors that came together to kick off the Industrial Revolution. The obvious ones have already been mentioned:
Availability of indiginous resources - water, iron, coal.
Growing population to provide a labour force.
Increase in agricultural production to feed the workforce.
Availability of overseas resources - cotton etc.
Availability of capital.
Stable political and financial system.
Growing middle class to buy the products.
Positive attitude to inovation and trade amongst all classes including sections of the aristocracy.
I’m sure there are others but I can’t think of them at the moment!
Quite apart from the fact it might be thought that by the time he and Bell came on the scene, the ‘Industrial Revolution’ had already happened, Maxwell was the only one of those four to attend a Scottish university.
It is true that Watt was the instrument maker to Glasgow University. But he had never been a student there. Like Macadam, he never went to university. Just indeed like Richard Arkwright, Matthew Boulton, Samuel Crompton, Abraham Darby, James Hargreaves, George Stephenson, Thomas Telford and Richard Trevithick. The key figures, whether in Scotland or England, tended not to have university educations.
This book looks like an interestying take on the OP’s question:
The First Industrial Revolution (Paperback)
by P. M. Deane
And lest you think that the preceding centuries were stagnant:
Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (Paperback)
by Jean Gimpel
Here are a couple of guesses which I don’t think have been covered yet.
Britain had a growing middle class which had, IIRC, acquired its initial wealth from textiles. The nobility had no need of technology, since there were lots of people to do work for them (although, of course, a lot of scientific work was done by members of the nobility). The poor had no means. But the middle class had both the means and the impetus to come up with new technological solutions to their problems. And, of course, once you’ve solved one problem, two more pop up to take its place. Farmers also had good reason to come up with new methods to fill the expanding needs of manufacturers and merchants.
Also, there is a constant need to equip the military. Pumping out ever larger amounts of more and more deadly weaponry is very important, particularly if you have an empire to build and control. The invention of gunpowder led, after a while, to an enormous acceleration in weapons development.
Just guessing here; no time to go looking for cites.
Although the Royal Dockyards were enormous organisations, turning out equipment for ships on a major industrial scale - blocks (pulleys) were mass produced on a production line - they were not really the precursor of the Industrial Revolution. The point about the Industrial Revolution was it was self sustaining, it pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, driven by market forces and private capital. It wasn’t the product of government sponsorship. In France Colbert pumped enormous sums into various industrial projects associated with the French Navy but when the King’s priorities changed the investment stopped.
In fact weapons development was not that fast in the 18th century - the ships and cannon of the Napoleonic Wars were not that different to those of the Dutch wars. The take off in weapons development was in the mid to late 19th century once the Industrial Revolution was well underway.
But for that to work, the Chinese would have had to hit on a single crucial idea, one that was missed all over the world for thousand of years, even by people who were already playing with steam devices, an idea that AFAIK was original to Watt: that boiling water into steam generates pressure. Every steam device before Watt that I’ve heard of used steam simply to create a suction by condensing the steam, a very inefficient way of harnessing the steam’s energy. Was Watt really the first human in history to realize that steam can push?
I think the Industrial Revolution started in England, because of a unique confluence of events:-
-Englnad was running surpluses in foreign trade-investors had money to invest
-the population was growing
-England’s navy provided safety in ship transport of goods
-a large supply of foodstuffs (sugar, grain, etc.) from the New World
It is interesting to note, that the efficiencies of factory assembly came about even before machines-just the division of labor accounted for a lot of the productivity increases, from 1600 to 1800.
Hero’s classic spinning ball steam engine certainly used steam as a pushing force.
And Watt didn’t invent the Steam Engine, he only improved it with the condensor etc.
IMO, the biggest factor was the adoption of capitalism and property rights. That, coupled with a modern banking system made capital available to the average person, and gave them the incentive to borrow and invest.
Other factors helped - the end of peasant-squatter farming made a huge pool of cheap labor. The country as a whole was fairly wealthy as compared to others.
But in my opinion, the biggest factor was the acceptance of capitalism and ‘the invisible hand’ by the government - the availability of capital and the property protections that caused people to want to borrow it and employ it in the creation of shops and factories.
A reaction jet, possibly an even more wasteful method than condensed-steam suction.
Unless I’m mistaken, Watt’s engines were the first to generate mechanical power by the pressure of steam pushing against a piston. All earlier designs used atmospheric pressure pushing against a piston with a condensed-steam vacuum on the other side.
The Grand Lodge of England formed in 1717, the industrial revolution happened soon after. Coincidence? I think not.
It’s the Freemasons, I tell ya.
Just a little nitpick,the hereditary nobility did not engage in "Trade"as business was known as it was considered very "infra dig"and to be seen to do so was social suicide,you might just as well shoot foxes and sitting ducks.
The H.N. owned vast estates and made their money from farming and rents though I have no doubt that some,just like those of the Roman senatorial class who laboured under the same social restrictions circumvented this.
It happened here 'cos we are the bestest…ever 