Also I don't think there's very much special about Britain being the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Well, special yes, but not special in the sense that it could have only started in Britain. Things like the canal system, commercial culture being honoured instead of held in contempt, the creation of the factory production system, early-modern banking and investment, a restrained ruling class which doesn't just seize wealth at whim, research institutes and universities and urbanisation are all things which other civilisations have had or have had an analogue for in the past, or else rapidly industrialised a century or two later when these institutes were adopted. Britain was just the first; I don't like the material determinism which says Britain had to be the first. For all we know ancient Egypt might've pulled it off had they not been wrecked by the sea peoples, China or Persia might have done it had they not been rendered to the sword in the mongol conquests, or some other island nation like Japan or Java had they reached the right conditions first
Hmm. I feel like people love to talk about the relationship between politics and economics in producing [x result]. The social factor tends to be downplayed; understandably, as for the medieval period it's by far the least tangible. Keep in mind that most historians trace industrialism's impetus back at least as far as 1351, before the printing press and its associated explosion of cultural texts.
So, you are correct. Various nations have possessed the raw political and economic ingredients for an 'industrial revolution.' But the very ways in which people approached labour were distinct.
Before the Black Death, England's labouring force was controlled through seignorial dues and ancient customs. Each manorial demesne was responsible for maintaining itself. Each section of society was to labour according to its estate for spiritual reward. Poverty and labour were indications of moral integrity, typically that of the ploughman or agricultural labourer.
Then the Black Death killed half the working population, meaning demand for labour skyrocketed. Subsequent labour legislation made idleness a crime against the collective, the 'Community.' It was no longer a personal issue. One statute forbade spending leisure time in taverns, but demanded that labourers engage in 'productive' activity. Other European states issued similar legislation, but England's was by far the most extensive and socially interventionist, intervening on an imaginative and imagistic level.
The quoted word is significant. The Paston Letters (a series of letters written by the Paston family in the mid-fifteenth century) includes a description of an idle son as a 'drene' (drain) who, as such, would be excluded from the collective surplus. His crime was a lack of productivity. Further, the letter makes it plain that a concept of labour based on its productivity (and not the fact of labouring itself) was filtering into family units and was not a mere flourish of legislative enactments.
So the social perception of labour underwent rapid changes. Pre-Black Death, it was socially expected (through customary dues) and spiritually advantageous. Post-Black Death, its absence was a temporal crime punishable through local and royal courts. Leading from this, by the fifteenth century the focus had moved, specifically, to
productivity.
So in addition to the incredibly specific geographic, economic and political conditions underlying industrialism, there was a deeply nuanced and very particular English approach to labour.
Other places had access to the same ingredients as England, but conceived of labour in distinct ways.
Edit: Oh hey Max also mentioned social factors.
I should have read ahead before replying
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14558206 times)