This is a very broad question - apologies if it's too broad - but do people here think that it's plausible, or even at all possible, for societies to go through an industrial revolution without experiencing radical changes in politics, social structure, and intellectual outlook? For example, would it be possible for western civilization to develop the technology of, say, the mid-20th century while in most other respects having changed only a little since the 18th or even the 17th century?
Industrial Revolution without political/social/intellectual revolutions?
- Thread starter Paul Spring
- Start date
Sorry, but this sounds almost impossible. The Industrial Revolution didn't just affect how much of something was produced and where it was produced, it completely changed the lives of the people involved in the whole production process. With industrialisation, farming will become more efficient and less labour-intensive. Farmhands will be put out of work. And the only alternative is the City. The industrial revolution also brought forward an unprecedented wave of advancement in medicine and treatment. This completely changes the thought process to some of the most fundamental choices we as people can make, like "How long do I expect I will have to live, when will I expect to retire?", "How many children will we have, how many will survive to become adults?"
I'll have to agree with Drunkrobot. Industrial and scientific progress will provoke social and political changes. While those changes can be wildly different from our own, they will happen. The process of industralization changes forever the people involved in them, in a way that other technical discoveries did not.
The development of the factory owner class, urbanization, changes in the scientific perspective of the world, mass population growth, the movement and creation of new social classes, those are in my opinion either inevitable or very likely on any kind of industrial revolution. The responses may change, but the conditions for social change ill be there.
We can have alternate industrial revolutions outside Europe. We can have a different result to the political upheavals of OTL 19th century. But the social order will be changed, in some way or the other.
The development of the factory owner class, urbanization, changes in the scientific perspective of the world, mass population growth, the movement and creation of new social classes, those are in my opinion either inevitable or very likely on any kind of industrial revolution. The responses may change, but the conditions for social change ill be there.
We can have alternate industrial revolutions outside Europe. We can have a different result to the political upheavals of OTL 19th century. But the social order will be changed, in some way or the other.
This is true, the Industrial Revolution isn't entirely due to us Brits being the smartest bunch of buggers on the planet
Japan is a fairly likely candidate for a non-European start to industrialisation, if the self-imposed isolationism could be brought to an end before the West comes a-knockin'. Centuries of stability produced a huge literate population, and Korea next door has large reserves of iron and coal. There was also contact with Europe even during the self-isolation period, so Japan kept abreast of the latest scientific theories.