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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?

#141

Post by samus »

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)…

Tolkien's work is a solution in search of a problem though. It's unsurprising to conclude that English has so few stories if he discards all its Germanic and Skandinavian heritage!

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

#142

Post by samus »

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 have simply been left out or summarized as "magic". No point detailing them if there's nothing in the daily lives of your audience that is comparable.

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

#143

Post by alpaca128 »

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…

> lower birth rate in the numenorians who obviously have reproductive issues as mentioned in the books

I wonder if Elden Ring's lore took a bit of inspiration from this:

> The Numen are a race of beings descended from otherworldly travelers. Long lived and seldom born, Queen Marika the Eternal is the primary member of this race.

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

#144

Post by TravelPiglet »

raducu wrote: post #130
gostsamo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mordor was starting an industrial revolution which couldn't have been older than 60 years. Nothing explains the lack of development the previous few millemnia.

> Nothing explains the lack of development the previous few millemnia. But it also took many, many thousands of years for us to get to the industrial revolution. And we did not have magic, we did not outsource stuff to elves and dwarves, we did not have wars with orcs and dragons and other monsters and no extremely powerful transcedental/imortal beings actively involved/shaping the development of history. And we only…

The church lost a lot of their influence as well.

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

#145

Post by comex »

kqr wrote: post #76
nostrademons wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the industrialists are literally right there in the form of Saruman and the Orcs of Isengard: "Together, my lord Sauron, we shall rule this Middle-earth. The old world will burn in the fires of industry. Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fist of the orc." The orcs could be looked at as an allegory of the faceless, dehumanized, i…

As is common, fantasy stories depict individual heroes overthrowing bureaucracies. (Harry Potter is an obvious exception where it's the other way around.)

> (Harry Potter is an obvious exception where it's the other way around.)

It is? Harry spent a lot of time contending with bureaucracy, whether in the form of overbearing schoolteachers or a corrupt Ministry of Magic. One of the series’ major villains, Dolores Umbridge, is sort of a personification of bureaucracy.

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

#146

Post by xg15 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The industrial revolution is in the book, it's the actual antagonist of the story. Tolkien was a devout Catholic distributist and Hobbingen was his ideal Catholic community of self reliant Hobbits who answer to wizards and kings, not to factory floor managers and administrators.

This. Also, there are a few moments scattered throughout the book where the hobbits get to eavesdrop on conversations between Sauron's orcs and we gatch a few glimpses of Mordor's internal organisation.

The tone of those conversations always struck me as surprisingly "modern" compared to the "epic medieval" style of the rest of the book: Orcs apparently have ID numbers, they complain about arrogant bosses, at some point talk about one of the Nazgul's winged beasts like requesting a helicopter flight, talk about setting up on their own, etc.

The talk sounds more like that of a frustrated and cynical foot soldier in a modern millitary or an employee in a megacorp would sound than some medieval thug.

Sauron's and Saruman's architecture is also very clearly industrial - the book is much more explicit about that than the movie: Isengard is described as full of technology, while buildings in Mordor (and later in occupied Shire) are described as barracks and huts made out of bricks, connected by a regular network of roads. And then there is the "new mill" in the Shire...

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

#147

Post by nindalf »

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…

“Only one war 60 years ago” underestimates the impact that goblins/orcs have. It’s not wars alone that cause depopulation, it’s the constant raids. The orcs have secure holds in the Misty Mountains that allow them to raid all surrounding areas at will. This keeps these areas thinly populated. The exceptions are places like Lake Town, which are highly defensible.

It’s not really possible to attack the orcs in their mountain homes for anyone except Dwarves. And even Dwarves understood their limits. In the War of the Dwarves and Orcs (TA 2793-2799) they sacked every orc stronghold from “Gundabad to the Gladden” but even then did not dare to enter Moria, where orcs remained secure and continued to multiply.

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

#148

Post by nindalf »

alpaca128 wrote: post #143
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…

> lower birth rate in the numenorians who obviously have reproductive issues as mentioned in the books I wonder if Elden Ring's lore took a bit of inspiration from this: > The Numen are a race of beings descended from otherworldly travelers. Long lived and seldom born, Queen Marika the Eternal is the primary member of this race.

George RR Martin wrote the lore for Elden Ring. He is intimately aware of Tolkien’s work. It’s not surprising to see such a homage.

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

#149

Post by nosianu »

nindalf wrote: post #147
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…

“Only one war 60 years ago” underestimates the impact that goblins/orcs have. It’s not wars alone that cause depopulation, it’s the constant raids. The orcs have secure holds in the Misty Mountains that allow them to raid all surrounding areas at will. This keeps these areas thinly populated. The exceptions are places like Lake Town, which are highly defensible. It’s not really possible to attack the orcs in their mo…

But there were not many orcs and goblins for a long time in many areas, as we learned from the books. They only came back and multiplied with the slow return-growth of Sauron.

I would be more interested in the period of when Moria was thriving - when they wrote the password for the back door right above it. Meaning, those must have been one of the most peaceful periods in the wider regions history. How dense was the population at that time?

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

#150

Post by actionfromafar »

yyyk wrote: post #87
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…

>however, Tolkien does not provide a good reason for the other human nations, the orcs or even the hobbits. Hm.. Orcs are easy to explain. I doubt Sauron or Saruman care at all about their lives. As the animated adaption put it: "When there's a whip there's a way". add in constant external warfare (and possible internal warfare too) and you end up with a low population. Hobbits are implied to have a very different pa…

I don't think the Shire had enough hobbiton population for an industrial revolution. Estimates I have seen are below 200 000, maybe much fewer. Britain had about 10 million in the 18th century.
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