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Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

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Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#201

Post by pm90 »

samus wrote: post #142
jltsiren wrote: post #45

It's been a while since I last read The Silmarillion, so some details might be wrong. The reason why Middle-earth did not have an industrial revolution is supernatural. When the Ainur sang the songs of creation, there was discord. Melkor, the mightiest of them, wanted to create something of his own, which was the root of all evil. The world they created was flawed. Within the world, the minds of those who seek to cre…

Presumably also the Numenoreans had it. The description of latter-day Numenor reads like they were technologically very advanced. The question is how far, but it seems fair to assume there was a sharp drop after the Fall because of the colonies not being self-sufficient enough to maintain their tech level. If we consider the stories in the Silmarillon to be handed down orally, the most advanced technologies could hav…

Numenor always sounded like a reference to the United States; virgin land blessed with immense resources, ideal conditions for a centralized power to grow wealthy materially and dominate the rest of middle earth.

I doubt if they had “industry”; they probably had “advanced feudalism” with large capacity for shipbuilding and manufacturing arms. But that was because of the large continent and population. In a sense, its more similar to the Roman Empire.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#202

Post by gostsamo »

wongarsu wrote: post #188
gostsamo wrote: post #68

Something not mentioned in the article: Middle Earth is depopulated. Without large market, it does not make sense to produce at scale, nor you will have the capital to do it. The main characters travel hundreds of kilometers down the biggest river around and they don't encounter other vessels or a populated settlement until they reach Minas Tirith. And I'm not even mentioning the missing cities and villages in the in…

> Aragorn is able to defend most of the north with a few hundred irregulars, while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. Which might be a good reason why the don't have a population boom: long periods of stability with low threat from war, low infant mortality and high food security seem to cause low birth rates (at least in our world). If your children are unlikely to…

Middle Earth has no contraception (Tolkien is catholic) and the only way to stop multiplying is to stop doing... math. LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. So, you are expected to have high birthrate until you occupy all the good lands and then some. After that you either rediscover Malthus or you start innovating to get more out of what you have.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#203

Post by jollybean »

gostsamo wrote: post #68

Something not mentioned in the article: Middle Earth is depopulated. Without large market, it does not make sense to produce at scale, nor you will have the capital to do it. The main characters travel hundreds of kilometers down the biggest river around and they don't encounter other vessels or a populated settlement until they reach Minas Tirith. And I'm not even mentioning the missing cities and villages in the in…

It's not that it 'doesn't make sense' it's that you can't get to economies of scale, which are necessary in some conditions.

The other thing is fossil fuels. Industrial Revolution is about harnessing Coal and Oil.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#204

Post by smallerfish »

> But uh, prehistoric biomass, raises a bit of an issue. We have the entire history of Middle Earth written down and I… didn’t notice the part where Tolkien mentioned dinosaurs?

Misconception. Coal doesn't come from dinosaurs; primarily it comes from plants (algae, trees) and plankton. It was formed in the carboniferous period, during which the evolution of plants had preceded the evolution of microbes that were able to digest lignin and cellulose; thus, vast piles of carbon-containing material piled up, got compressed, and formed the coal (and oil) deposits we see today. Yes, of course sometimes animals fell into the bogs and became part of the deposits, but trying to explain the scale of carbon deposits with mass graves of dinosaurs is a little silly.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#205

Post by andsoitis »

An industrial revolution (or, more generally, other scientific developments) are not necessary to the story and not typical of the fantasy genre.

Paraphrasing from Wikipedia: Unlike science fiction and horror, works in the fantasy genre are distinguished in that they typically don't include scientific or macabre themes. Fantasy typically features prominently settings the emulate earth but with a sense of otherness. Magic and supernatural elements are common as main plot elements, theme, or setting.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy)

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#206

Post by LordHeini »

I would say Middle Earth just lacks fertilizer.

That fertilizer would be needed to free a lot of people from menial field work and allow them and their children to dig for coal or toil in factories.

Imho coal is not all that necessary for an industrial revolution. To run factories, one could use water power for the textile industry for example.

And i would recommend to make charcoal out of Lóriens forests for the smelteries (which actually would be quite good due to the low sulfur content of charcoal).

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#207

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

hef19898 wrote: post #139
wetpaws wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read Tolkien notes, industrialisation and Mordor as a industrial empire was seriously considered as a major plot at some point.

>> was seriously considered as a major plot at some point So the very out-of-universe answer is: Because Tolkien decided against it. So the better question, and also the one we can use some source material to answer, would be why Tolkien decided against it and wrote a classic fantasy story.

Because he was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and not a historian of the 18th/19th centuries.

There's no Industrial Revolution in Anglo-Saxon mythology. Including it would have jarred in a dyschronistic way.

More than that, fantasy is based on nostalgia for heroic simplicity and straightforwardness, with a dash of magic to instil some child-like wonder.

The Industrial Revolution operated on a completely different narrative and moral basis. It was more about colonisation at home, using mechanisation to organise forced labour.

It's hard to be a brave Romantic hero in that kind of setting.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#208

Post by rendall »

smallerfish wrote: post #204

> But uh, prehistoric biomass, raises a bit of an issue. We have the entire history of Middle Earth written down and I… didn’t notice the part where Tolkien mentioned dinosaurs? Misconception. Coal doesn't come from dinosaurs; primarily it comes from plants (algae, trees) and plankton. It was formed in the carboniferous period, during which the evolution of plants had preceded the evolution of microbes that were able…

Ah, you missed the author's footnote to your excerpt.

> Yes, strictly speaking dinosaurs aren’t needed for coal as coal mostly is made of plant biomass, you fun ruining hack of a pedant.

https://featherlessbipeds.substack.com/p/why-didnt-gandalf-o...

Commenters beware, the article is filled with such gotchas for the careless reader.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#209

Post by zwirbl »

samus wrote: post #172
gostsamo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mordor expansion should've started one-two generations ago. No mentions of recent ruins and the more likely reaction of the population on the best communication pathway in the local part of the continent should've been building walls and armies, no fast desertion of their homes.

Maintaining walls and supplying armies requires a fair amount of population though. Middle Earth is very thinly populated. The former Realm of Arnor is so thinly settled that the Northern Kingdom of the Dunedain had to be dissolved, and its people were reduced to a nomadic lifestyle. Sort of what happened to the crvilizations in the Amazonas basin in the 16th century.

> Sort of what happened to the civilizations in the Amazonas basin in the 16th century.

Got any good sources on that? Sounds very interesting

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#210

Post by nathias »

"It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help."
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