Could Eastern Europe have had an industrial revolution before the Western Europe?
I have seen the industrial revolution always as
paper -> printing press -> better paper -> newsletters -> more reading & books -> more inclusive institutions -> ...
I can't see industrial revolution without large number of books and reading just before it.
Acemoglu & Robinson have pointed out that the eastern and western Europe were almost identical in institutions in the middle ages but then Western Europe developed just slightly more inclusive institutions.
In Russia print office was established by Fedorov in Moscow and printing was heavily censored. I think Russia had long time only 4 printers. Meanwhile tiny Scotland had something like 7-8 printers at the beginning of 1700's and many Scottish inventors followed. Germany, France, England, Portugal etc. had printers in every major city.
There's no consensus on why the Industrial Revolution started in England. Some common theories include:
* It could have happened other places, but started in England by pure dumb luck.
* English legal structure (common law and property ownership rules)--note that the Glorious Revolution took place before the Industrial Revolution, unlike, say, the French Revolution.
* English economic situation (holding a large mercantile empire).
* English natural resources (the loss of the forests to make charcoal, prompting the need to dig deeper to get coal).
As I said, there's certainly no consensus on why it occurred in England. Generally, the more interesting question is not why it occurred in England and not France, but why it occurred in Europe and not China, which after all had access to things like the printing press long before Europe.
To actually answer your question, one feature of Western Europe in the Early Modern is that serfdom was effectively abolished. Russia and Poland did not abolish serfdom until the 1800s (in the case of Poland, after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist). Slavery is generally considered to retard the development of technology, and serfdom is similar enough to slavery that it would have a similar effect if such an effect exists. In that vein, it's dubious to think the Industrial Revolution could have developed in Eastern Europe.
The romans were producing a huge amount of lead and other metals at levels not achieved again until the 18th century. The graph is pretty striking. And it's a logarithmic graph so doesn't give the full perspective of just how ahead of their time they were.
So what I gather is it would appear academics are arguing over semantics to describe an otherwise unerring narrative of historical events they otherwise agree upon again. Did Rome have an industrial revolution? Well it depends on how you define industrial revolution, but we all agree... Stuff happened.
there needs to be scarsity and demand for an economy to work. and free time is needed for tech advancement. those who had free time did not have scarsity. they could get anything they wanted.
compare with today we have many people with free time who create a huge demand for stuff.
This fails to explain a lot of things, such as why there was no "industrial revolution" in China, for example, which was technologically far more advanced than Europe up until the 17th century.
Anyway, the answer is not so complicated: capitalist production is not a question of markets or wealth, but of a set of social relations between owners of capital and each other, and owners of capital and laborers, where laborers depend upon owners of capital for their subsistence, and where capitalists are set in a situation of compelled competition, where they must extract constantly increasing productivity from their laborers in order to maintain their status. That is, the conditions for the emergence of the industrial revolution come about when participation in a competitive market is, on the whole, compulsory rather than optional, and where competition between capitalists is compulsory, such that the livelihoods of both capitalists and laborers is contingent upon technological improvements in productivity. This turns into a self-reinforcing cycle, and before you know it we have airplanes, iphones, empires of working poor, and global warming.
Throughout most of history, participation in market society was generally an optional thing. The small landholding peasant brought goods to market when they could but they did not depend on markets to live. Now we require markets to live. At some point in England in the early modern period, this cycle of market dependence and competition emerged, grew out of control, and spread out conquering the world.
. . . That's an example of being told bullshit in history.
The Dark Ages generally (to historians) connote the time between the end of the Roman Empire to around the end of the Viking Age and the rise of feudalism in the High Middle Ages, or about ~400s-1000s. The term mostly refers to the lack of comprehensive written records caused by the collapse and general loss of effective bureaucracy.
Originally, the term was used during the Enlightenment era to distinguish the "enlightenment" of modern times with the "backwardness" of the past. The association with the Catholic Church being the cause of backwardness was part of a general attack on Catholicism by Protestants for getting everything wrong.
In reality, the Catholic Church was pretty much the only surviving institution of the former Roman Empire in the Dark Ages. Virtually every record in Western Europe that survives from the Dark Ages is a result of the Christian monks or other church officials, being the only institution capable of producing the durable written record we desire. The church was also one of the heaviest sponsors of science during these times, basically being one of the only institutions that could afford to have people doing such work.
The Dark Ages were named such, in retrospect, because of the loss of knowledge and recording of history of that period. Western Europe suffered from a split or break in government (the Eastern Empire was significantly more wealthy), a collapse of civil authority (Germanic tribal migration into Western Empire territory forced by Hunnic invasions to the east, withdrawal of Roman authority and eventual military collapse), and looting and destruction of knowledge centers. Thank the Irish monks for preserving Western Civilization until the Carolingian Renaissance.
We're at risk for creating a new dark age (mid-to-late 20th century onward) though the use of excessive encryption, proprietary file formats, abandoned digital storage media. and abuse of copyright.
[+] [-] nabla9|8 years ago|reply
I have seen the industrial revolution always as
paper -> printing press -> better paper -> newsletters -> more reading & books -> more inclusive institutions -> ...
I can't see industrial revolution without large number of books and reading just before it.
Acemoglu & Robinson have pointed out that the eastern and western Europe were almost identical in institutions in the middle ages but then Western Europe developed just slightly more inclusive institutions.
In Russia print office was established by Fedorov in Moscow and printing was heavily censored. I think Russia had long time only 4 printers. Meanwhile tiny Scotland had something like 7-8 printers at the beginning of 1700's and many Scottish inventors followed. Germany, France, England, Portugal etc. had printers in every major city.
[+] [-] jcranmer|8 years ago|reply
* It could have happened other places, but started in England by pure dumb luck.
* English legal structure (common law and property ownership rules)--note that the Glorious Revolution took place before the Industrial Revolution, unlike, say, the French Revolution.
* English economic situation (holding a large mercantile empire).
* English natural resources (the loss of the forests to make charcoal, prompting the need to dig deeper to get coal).
As I said, there's certainly no consensus on why it occurred in England. Generally, the more interesting question is not why it occurred in England and not France, but why it occurred in Europe and not China, which after all had access to things like the printing press long before Europe.
To actually answer your question, one feature of Western Europe in the Early Modern is that serfdom was effectively abolished. Russia and Poland did not abolish serfdom until the 1800s (in the case of Poland, after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist). Slavery is generally considered to retard the development of technology, and serfdom is similar enough to slavery that it would have a similar effect if such an effect exists. In that vein, it's dubious to think the Industrial Revolution could have developed in Eastern Europe.
[+] [-] Houshalter|8 years ago|reply
The romans were producing a huge amount of lead and other metals at levels not achieved again until the 18th century. The graph is pretty striking. And it's a logarithmic graph so doesn't give the full perspective of just how ahead of their time they were.
[+] [-] camelCaseOfBeer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|8 years ago|reply
* Commentary, same piece: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15690293
* No comments, author who inspired this piece: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15840705
[+] [-] z3t4|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efficax|8 years ago|reply
Anyway, the answer is not so complicated: capitalist production is not a question of markets or wealth, but of a set of social relations between owners of capital and each other, and owners of capital and laborers, where laborers depend upon owners of capital for their subsistence, and where capitalists are set in a situation of compelled competition, where they must extract constantly increasing productivity from their laborers in order to maintain their status. That is, the conditions for the emergence of the industrial revolution come about when participation in a competitive market is, on the whole, compulsory rather than optional, and where competition between capitalists is compulsory, such that the livelihoods of both capitalists and laborers is contingent upon technological improvements in productivity. This turns into a self-reinforcing cycle, and before you know it we have airplanes, iphones, empires of working poor, and global warming.
Throughout most of history, participation in market society was generally an optional thing. The small landholding peasant brought goods to market when they could but they did not depend on markets to live. Now we require markets to live. At some point in England in the early modern period, this cycle of market dependence and competition emerged, grew out of control, and spread out conquering the world.
[+] [-] jcranmer|8 years ago|reply
The Dark Ages generally (to historians) connote the time between the end of the Roman Empire to around the end of the Viking Age and the rise of feudalism in the High Middle Ages, or about ~400s-1000s. The term mostly refers to the lack of comprehensive written records caused by the collapse and general loss of effective bureaucracy.
Originally, the term was used during the Enlightenment era to distinguish the "enlightenment" of modern times with the "backwardness" of the past. The association with the Catholic Church being the cause of backwardness was part of a general attack on Catholicism by Protestants for getting everything wrong.
In reality, the Catholic Church was pretty much the only surviving institution of the former Roman Empire in the Dark Ages. Virtually every record in Western Europe that survives from the Dark Ages is a result of the Christian monks or other church officials, being the only institution capable of producing the durable written record we desire. The church was also one of the heaviest sponsors of science during these times, basically being one of the only institutions that could afford to have people doing such work.
[+] [-] pythonistic|8 years ago|reply
We're at risk for creating a new dark age (mid-to-late 20th century onward) though the use of excessive encryption, proprietary file formats, abandoned digital storage media. and abuse of copyright.
[+] [-] GistHive|8 years ago|reply
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