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A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

economist.com

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Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#41

Post by rayiner »

viburnum wrote: post #27
BirAdam wrote: post #12

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.

But those profits would have been bigger without slavery. Slavery persisted not because it made the south richer overall (it made the south poorer overall) but because it concentrated profits in a handful of political elites. Northern banks and industries, however, would have preferred a richer south with more potential customers.

You can see the non-effect of slavery on overall American wealth by looking at the graph of GDP per capita over time: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/US_Gross_Domestic_Product_(G.... If slavery made America richer, you’d see a drop in GDP per capita after the civil war. But you barely see even a blip.

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#42

Post by krona »

Centuries of political stability before and after the Glorious Revolution (1688) (constraints on the monarchy by parliament and strong political institutions) led to a large merchant and wealthy landowner class. Property rights and unique legal framework (common law) enabled many economic and legal innovations that created the conditions and incentives for industry, and allowed inventors and entrepreneurs to operate and cooperate freely.

Without the unique legal, political, financial frameworks and enlightenment philosophy, the revolution wouldn't have happened in Britain. Technological developments were an emergent property of the fundamental structure of the country at the time.

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#43

Post by adventured »

Retric wrote: post #36
onos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. One comment though: a 30 year gap between uk and USA outlawing slavery doesn’t seem very significant on the 200k year timescale of human existence.

We are talking about a much longer change than just 30 years. Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400 long before the American revolution or steam power. As to slavery “no legislation was ever passed in England that legalised slavery. In the Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be…

> Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400

You're of course only talking about local slavery in the UK. They were among the primary slave traders outside of their home territory. The British Empire and its prominent subjects traded in millions of slaves between 1400 and 1800. Centuries of profit from that slave trade helped fuel investment into industrialization across the UK.

This is a common escape for European apologists of slavery (whether in North or South America). Europe has largely gotten to avoid the consequences of their slave trade (they properly owe many trillions of dollars in reparations). The US history of slavery has nothing on the scale of European slavery - 12+ million slaves across the Americas (and that's merely the first generation number).

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#44

Post by ska »

runsWphotons wrote: post #28
goatlover wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did Ancient China, prior to the Romans.

China had steam engines?

Sort of; so did Egypt - but these were more steam devices not engines per se. I think the limiting factor was metallurgy & pressure vessel design before you can do something like Watt did.

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#45

Post by barry-cotter »

viburnum wrote: post #27
BirAdam wrote: post #12

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.

Then how did countries with de minimis involvement in the slave trade like Germany, Italy or Austria-Hungary do so much better economically than Brazil? Four to six times as many slaves went to Brazil as to all of the modern USA. The Trans Saharan slave trade where Arabs enslaved Sub Saharan Africans started earlier, lasted longer and enslaved more people than the Trans Atlantic trade too. If slavery was the reason for the Industrial Revolution why aren’t we discussing this in Arabic?

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#46

Post by [deleted] »

BirAdam wrote: post #12

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…

[deleted]

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

Retric wrote: post #36
onos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. One comment though: a 30 year gap between uk and USA outlawing slavery doesn’t seem very significant on the 200k year timescale of human existence.

We are talking about a much longer change than just 30 years. Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400 long before the American revolution or steam power. As to slavery “no legislation was ever passed in England that legalised slavery. In the Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be…

> Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400

The UK didn’t exist before 1922. Or 1801, depending on how picky you want to be.

In Scotland it was still around till nearly 1800 (oddly, the last serfs were coal miners); in England it started its decline just before 1400 and was largely eliminated by 1500 and totally by 1600.

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#48

Post by Retric »

adventured wrote: post #43
Retric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about a much longer change than just 30 years. Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400 long before the American revolution or steam power. As to slavery “no legislation was ever passed in England that legalised slavery. In the Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be…

> Serfdom was rare in the UK by 1400 You're of course only talking about local slavery in the UK. They were among the primary slave traders outside of their home territory. The British Empire and its prominent subjects traded in millions of slaves between 1400 and 1800. Centuries of profit from that slave trade helped fuel investment into industrialization across the UK. This is a common escape for European apologist…

I actually mentioned that: “English merchants where happy to participate in the American slave trade”

The point was slavery was economically and politically viable in the American south far longer than Europe. It’s a reasonable argument to suggest Europe outsourced and profited from slavery, but it also wasn’t in peoples faces just as few people consider the working conditions of the 3rd world today when they buy stuff.

Anyway, the slave trade wasn’t that profitable for England. Profits where mostly split between Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark with no country having a massive advantage. Divide 12.8 million people across 400 years and then further split profits between multiple countries and it was a tiny rounding error for the European countries involved. It wasn’t even that profitable for the merchants due to the long trips and high risks involved.

PS: I don’t mean this to be apologist, more pointing out how minimal the gains required before people would inflict horrific amount of suffering.

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#49

Post by julianeon »

BirAdam wrote: post #12

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…

> As far as I know, the Industrial Revolution started with coal mining.

I don't think that's correct. If you are looking for a one-sentence "how did the Industrial Revolution start" summary, I wouldn't use this.

My recollection was that things kicked off with the first mechanized mills, locating along streams which used hydraulic or steam power for their energy.

EDIT: The book describing this is called Behemoth: The History of the Factory by Freeman. You can read read relevant pages in the book preview online.

https://www.amazon.com/Behemoth-History-Factory-Making-Moder...

Checking Wikipedia, that seems mostly accurate:

> Rapid industrialization first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s,[21] with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800.

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

Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution

#50

Post by barry-cotter »

pffft8888 wrote: post #3

Huge catalyst: massive colonialist profits from India (est. $1 trillion), Africa and later on the Middle East (oil, prior to nationalization)

That would predict Germany being much richer than Austria-Hungary or Britain being much richer than Sweden, or Spain being much richer than Italy. Industrialisation led to enormous power imbalances that made colonisation possible. Northwest Europe was pulling away from the rest of Europe starting in the 1300s.

> This ‘Little Divergence’ is the process whereby the North Sea Area (the UK and the Low Countries) developed into the most prosperous and dynamic part of the Continent. Studies of real wages – the classic paper is by Robert Allen (2001) – and of GDP per capita (e.g. Broadberry et al 2011, Van Zanden and Van Leeuwen 2012, Alvarez-Nogal and Prados de la Escosura 2012) charting the various trajectories of the European countries in detail, demonstrated that the Low Countries and England witnessed almost continuous growth between the 14th and the 18th century, whereas in other parts of the continent real incomes went down in the long run (Italy and Spain), or stagnated at best (Portugal, Germany, Sweden and Poland). This ‘Little Divergence’ is also quite clear from data on levels of urbanization (De Vries 1981), book production and consumption (Buringh and Van Zanden 2009) and agricultural productivity (Slicher van Bath 1963a, Allen 2000).

http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/CGEHWP46_depleijtvanz...

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