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Even without the overseas Empires Europe probably would’ve been the birth of the revolution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise, the silicon valley boom happened via massive ecological damage to the surrounding environments. The linked article seems to argue against itself in places, a surplus of labor is argued to be both good and bad. I've seen arguments that the Roman empire never underwent an industrial revolution because they had slavery, and thus never needed to automate. The Romans did the resource extraction part right, but n…
The Romans never had access to coal , which was the energy-dense fuel that made the Industrial Revolution possible. Bret Devereaux has a (long) post on this, which I recommend: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. We have plenty of examples of past civilizations experiencing similar economic conditions, slavery, etc. So why didn't e.g. the Romans have an industrial revolution of this scale? Coal (and exploitation of fossil fuels more generally) is the singular factor that differentiates the industrial revolution from everything before it.
The Romans had coal [1]. The Greeks had even come up with a design that (remotely) resembles a steam engine [2]. What they didn’t have was the rest of the “tech tree” leading up to a usable steam engine, mostly metallurgy and the physics of work/energy. We can point to the first industry to truly mechanize as the beginning of the revolution but the technologies that got us there were legion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedi…
Great Britain was an island. By about 1500, its residents had denuded most of its forests for fuel for cooking and heating. So, they turned to using coal. This spurred the need to pump water out of coal mines. The Industrial Revolution represents the uses of these steam-driven pumps for other tasks, such as textile manufacture and steam trains.
"[M]ost of Great Britain’s forests seem to have been cleared for agriculture in antiquity; by 1000 only about 15% of England (as a geographic sub-unit of the island) was forested, a figure which continued to decline rapidly in the centuries that followed (down to a low of around 5%). Consequently wood as a heat fuel was scarce and so beginning in the 16th century we see a marked shift over to coal as a heating fuel for things like cooking and home heating. Fortunately for the residents of Great Britain there were surface coal seems in abundance making the transition relatively easy; once these were exhausted deep mining followed which at last by the late 1600s created the demand for coal-powered pumps finally answered effectively in 1712 by Newcomen." https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
There was a fascinating article about 6 months ago on 'why no roman industrial revolution?' which dove into the convergence of requirements - and almost coincidentally convenient technological advances - that led to this happening when and where it did - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32607187
The 'we can't run counter-factuals' comment in the opening paragraph of TFA is the crux of course, though Bret Devereaux's article (via HN link above) provides some highly compelling arguments about the key 'causes'.
As far as I know, the Industrial Revolution started with coal mining. As shafts got deeper there was a need to pump in water and air, and then to lift product out. These steam engines at the site could run on low quality coal allowing all of the good stuff to be sold. The Industrial Revolution really started with these mines in the UK. As regards slavery and other factors, once the steam engines were invented and beg…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Romans had coal [1]. The Greeks had even come up with a design that (remotely) resembles a steam engine [2]. What they didn’t have was the rest of the “tech tree” leading up to a usable steam engine, mostly metallurgy and the physics of work/energy. We can point to the first industry to truly mechanize as the beginning of the revolution but the technologies that got us there were legion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedi…
So did Ancient China, prior to the Romans.
As far as I know, the Industrial Revolution started with coal mining. As shafts got deeper there was a need to pump in water and air, and then to lift product out. These steam engines at the site could run on low quality coal allowing all of the good stuff to be sold. The Industrial Revolution really started with these mines in the UK. As regards slavery and other factors, once the steam engines were invented and beg…
It was the profits from the slave trade that financed the initial capital investments in mining, factory, railroads, etc.
As far as I know, the Industrial Revolution started with coal mining. As shafts got deeper there was a need to pump in water and air, and then to lift product out. These steam engines at the site could run on low quality coal allowing all of the good stuff to be sold. The Industrial Revolution really started with these mines in the UK. As regards slavery and other factors, once the steam engines were invented and beg…
Exactly. We have plenty of examples of past civilizations experiencing similar economic conditions, slavery, etc. So why didn't e.g. the Romans have an industrial revolution of this scale? Coal (and exploitation of fossil fuels more generally) is the singular factor that differentiates the industrial revolution from everything before it.