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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?

#281

Post by jleyank »

jcranberry wrote: post #242
jleyank wrote: post #213

LoTR had an industrial revolution. It was called Isengard and people didn’t like how it turned out. Elves were anti technology so there would be downward pressure until they upped and left. Dwarves probably reproduced slowly and were recovering from being orc and dragon chow. Numenorians reproduced slowly and they were also recovering from the plagues and wars. This leaves hobbits who were idyllic. Oh, and the wizard…

The Numenorians actually also had a technological revolution, although I don't know whether it was industrial. They unfortunately faced the setback of being almost entirely wiped out when their continent was sunk by Illuvatar.

Both the Elvish and Numenorian comments discussed hand-made, almost magical creations similar to what we imagine pre-industrial. So I think we're all in agreement that there were some amazing things created, but not at scale (perhaps aside from weaponry, but that's probably a long, slow accretion) and not for consumption.

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

#282

Post by manceraio »

Modern science differs from Middle Earth knowledge in having the willingness to admit ignorance. No scientific law, concept, theory or idea is sacred.

I don't think Middle Earth Christianity, Islam or whatever other premodern traditions of knowledge would agree in those two views. Everything that was important to know about the world was already known and written in the Bible, Qur'an or the Vedas.

How on earth there was going to be any secret of the universe yet to be discovered by mere immortals?

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

#283

Post by MH15 »

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…

This is covered in the article, comparing population density with several real world cities pre-industrial revolution.

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

#284

Post by p_l »

HelloNurse wrote: post #156
hef19898 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because during the time of the musket there were no pump guns neither. EDIT: It took quite some time between the early days of the industrial revolution and the first semi-automatic guns. Ignoring LOTR for a minute, if in story taking place in the 17th century the question of "why didn't X use a colt .45" is easily answered, because it wasn't invented yet.

But many parties are sparsely but explicitly described as making and using fantastically advanced marvels of somewhat magical technology in ancient times, some of which are still around like Sauron's Rings. Probably the most honest reason to not have guns in Middle-Earth is that only stupid orcs, not the elves and dwarves who could easily develop them as school projects, would be interested in such tasteless weapons.

Easily accessible guns require tools that were absent, like screw making machines etc.

There were weapons, powerful weapons at that, but they depended heavily on artisanal production even if certain groups managed to reach manufacturing scale.

Also, Middle Earth is still licking wounds from the great wars with Melkor, which took away most of the advanced regions, and what Gondor and Arnor tried to rebuild got heavily whacked down by wars.

Random subsistence farmers spread across small hamlets do not make for industrial base, whereas Saruman and Sauron could use force to speedrun the development to provide resources for their forces (as both had knowledge of how to do it, even if we only take into account their experiences during wars of Beleriand - meanwhile the wizards other than Saruman stick to their oath of non-interference)

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

#285

Post by npongratz »

vidarh wrote: post #231
fallingknife wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars and plagues every couple hundred years or so. So what you are saying is that wars and plagues are significantly less frequent then they were in pre-industrial Earth.

"Wars and plagues" can vary in scale from having next to no impact to being world-changing events, so in isolation it tells you nothing. One of the more common last names in Norway is still "Ødegaard", literally "Deserted farm", reflecting families who were residing on farms which still had not gotten a proper name by the time the tradition of using your fathers first-name as a last time started dying out. This even…

> I also don't recall running into Nazgul and Orcs while growing up near Oslo, and imagine facing that might have been a rather severe deterrent to growth.

But you did have trolls, right? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollhunter

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

#286

Post by peeters »

sircastor wrote: post #71
peeters wrote: post #62

Interesting read. This caught my attention: > Middle Earth is framed, explicitly, as an account of the history of our world. That is, the world of the Lord of the Rings is one and the same as our world, just at a very different point in its history. Thus, while Middle Earth may possess resources that we do not, such as Mithril, unless the resources of our world were deposited later, they must have been available to t…

> I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. My immediate thought was “What about King Arthur?!” But then I begin to wonder how much Arthurian legend has been enriched purely in the 20th century. “The once and future king” -where a lot…

Tolkien actually addressed Arthurian legend immediately after that quote I posted:

> Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.

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

#287

Post by peanut_worm »

danjac wrote: post #238
timoth3y wrote: post #190

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

How is that different from real world history? Grow some crops? An invading army will come and steal and trample them. Mine for coal? A coal heap will bury your town or you'll die in a collapse. Start a trading enterprise? Your ship will get raided by pirates or you die of tropical diseases.

Yeah but in Middle Earth you have all of those problems plus giant spiders, balrogs, wizards, orcs etc

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

#288

Post by peeters »

chx wrote: post #90
peeters wrote: post #62

Interesting read. This caught my attention: > Middle Earth is framed, explicitly, as an account of the history of our world. That is, the world of the Lord of the Rings is one and the same as our world, just at a very different point in its history. Thus, while Middle Earth may possess resources that we do not, such as Mithril, unless the resources of our world were deposited later, they must have been available to t…

Funnily enough, this is also a myth. You are quoting Letter #131. But you are likely quoting secondary or tertiary sources and forgot the rest. Here's what you quote: > Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient)…

I was quoting directly from my copy of the Silmarillion. But I don't agree that that later paragraph invalidates the premise that the lore of LoTR has its roots in an attempt to create English mythology. This letter was written after LoTR was written (but not yet published), and it was inspired and written under the very effort that he later give up. That he didn't end up publishing the entire mythos doesn't mean that it's not a valid lens under which to interpret his work. Indeed, it's a necessary lens.

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

#289

Post by p_l »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #233
samus wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cheap, but probably also quite unsophisticated. They can make basic stuff, but they also don't need to produce finer things. The Orcs make up for it with their numbers, and Sauron cares about power, not about wealth.

Right but I mean, that's not exactly the right conditions for industrialization. Who designs and builds the machines? Who does the research? Sauron solo?

Yes - Sauron is one of the remarkably few people in Middle-Earth who have not lost knowledge over time - the others are majorly proscribed from such actions (Wizards, including Saruman before he turned), or crushed into depression by what they lived through - depopulated Lindon where small remnants mostly builds ships for further movement west, the small settlement of Rivendell which doesn't have enough resources to spend on industrialization, the elves of lothlorien are in similar condition to Lindon, Arnor is so ruined that AFAIK there are no more cities that aren't ruins, and Dwarves are too harassed to expand much, though they have major win at Lone Mountain (but haven't recovered Moria).

Generally in the Middle-Earth, the parts we see, are post-apocalyptic environment constantly wrecked by wars and depopulated so hard most people are too busy raising crops to survive.

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

#290

Post by samus »

lordnacho wrote: post #91
BarryMilo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another explanation: maybe they dont want to bring children into that dangerous world (and are all experts at the pull-out method).

Don't people make more kids in more dangerous places, the logic being that you need to spread your risk of not having descendants?

Unless mandated by ideology, people don't think that way about getting children. If a place gets too dangerous, people either die, take countermeasures, or flee.
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