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A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
61–70 of 152 posts
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#62Earlier 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…
My rough model was always simply that all the Western powers practiced African slavery in that period, in the regions in which it was useful (hot, humid, agricultural ones). The same dynamics that led America to have slavery in Mississippi but not Boston led the English/UK to have it in Kingston but not London
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#63As 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…
I think the causality on slavery is backwards, and the article agrees... Shortages of low-skilled labor encourage automation, because then the (very expensive) automation process becomes cheap relative to labor. The article argues that labor shortages coinciding with excess capital paved the way for automation, which in turn reduced dependence on slavery in the long term.
In this sense, cheap labor is cheap, but also a bit of a trap: it doesn't scale into undreamt of use-cases the way that truly scalable automation tends to.
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#64Chattel slavery not only fueled the industrial revolution but laid the foundation for our modern world.
Capital accumulation, investment of capital, private ownership of the means of production (people), high levels of wage (free) labor and efficient (non-paid) use of the factors of production (people) - are all mechanisms of capitalism that reach their maximum potential under the conditions of chattel slavery.
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#65Apparently it was Elon Musk who deserves the credit, at least he says so.
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#66Earlier 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.
Bret C. Devereaux's wrote a very interesting article on this topic in his blog. See: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... His central observation is that the Industrial Revolution involves "coal, steam engines, textile manufacture and above all the harnessing of a new source of energy in the economy", but that "each innovation in the chain required not merely the discovery of the principle,…
So, coal-mining needed (and had) coal to power steam-engines which helped them produce more coal more cheaply.
In other words there was a feedback loop: More coal meant more coal could be mined. A virtuous cycle, that kicked off the industrial revolution.
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#67As 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…
Not really, the first steam engine was used in 1606 to drain a coal mine in Spain but they didn’t catch on til the early 1700’s. England really industrialized via multiple waves transitioning cottage industry and water power driving drop hammers and other equipment to ever more industrial factories. It’s a surprisingly smooth transition where individual inventions like the spinning wheel just keep compounding and dri…
According to Wikipedia, steam engines did go "mainstream" with the coal mine use case, at least to an important part:
The first commercially successful engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine was the atmospheric engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen around 1712. It improved on Savery's steam pump, using a piston as proposed by Papin. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and mostly used for pumping water. It worked by creating a partial vacuum by condensing steam under a piston within a cylinder. It was employed for draining mine workings at depths originally impractical using traditional means, and for providing reusable water for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable "head".
Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#68As 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…
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Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#69As 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…
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Re: A flurry of new studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
#70Earlier 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...
Incredible post, thanks! I'll no repeated the incorrect assertion that the Romans could have had any hope of their own industrial revolution!