Steam engines have been around forever. The limiting factor was the metallurgy and chemistry needed to contain pressures high enough to get useful amounts of work out of them, not the idea of using steam to spin stuff. It wasn't until metallworking improved to the point they could get closely fitted joints and chemistry came up with vulcanized rubber than could make seals and gaskets that could survive the heat and pressure that steam really became viable.
Yeah, the ancient Greeks had steam engines, they considered them to be no more than a curiosity.
Yeah, also because for a long time the limiting factor to steam engines was not the fact that we didn't know we could extract work from boiling water, but that we didn't have good enough metallurgy to build any kind of decent pressure vessel.
Besides, we're Marxists. A large part of the reason why the steam engine took off when it did was because the material conditions of western Europe favored improving efficiency in extracting surplus value from workers, when previously it wasn't necessary or particularly well rewarded.
There's a lot of things like that where some technology or other is really, really, really old, but they didn't have the right combination of materials, worksmanship, and material needs for it to take off like it did at some other place or time in history. Like everyone in the Americas knowing how wheels and axles work, but not bothering with carts because they weren't useful enough when they didn't have large draft animals to pull them, along with like the Inca having roads that go straight up and down mountains that were navigable for people on foot and llamas, but would never accomodate horses. Meanwhile they were making fiber bridges far in excess of anything seen in Europe because of those same mountains.
There’s a lot of things like that where some technology or other is really, really, really old, but they didn’t have the right combination of materials, worksmanship, and material needs for it to take off like it did at some other place or time in history.
Haha, like fusion! :deeper-sadness:
it's insane that the bicycle was invented like a solid 10 years after the goddamn train, even going by the original model by drais which was more of a balance bike. It's basically the wheels and a plank between them, I feel like anywhere after the invention of the cart you could've gotten there
Also the social conditions and desire for something that would mechanize that style of work to such a high extent. We needed a globalized economy with systems of financial capital to give anyone a reason to do an industrial revolution.
It wasn't the invention of the steam engine alone that propelled the industrial revolution. It was the invention of the steam engine coinciding with the discovery and exploitation of close-surface coal seams, and propelled by the cheap labor provided by enclosure of the commons.
Incidentally, do you happen to know of any good sources to read about the historical process (rather than just theory) of the enclosure of the commons?
I couldn't find it, but I was looking for the book that was written on the process that was recommended by both Chapo and Trashfuture by one of their guests who studied the phenomenon. If I find it, I will let you know.
Considering the Armenian genocide was done by the ottoman empire, I'd say that a theoretical world of Turkish world colonialism would be different only in who is the genocidal imperialist.
It was done by the same broad movment that destroyed the empire. Its a liberal movment aping european ideas. So its very disingenuos to conflate the kemalists and the young turks with the otommans.
That being said colonialism would have the same material forces behind it. Wich are likley to produce similar outcomes. Those conditions both demografic and geografical did not exsist in turkey thats why turkey did not industrialize until much later.
That being said. Northern europeans lack a tradition of empire. And the institutions that such a tradition implies. The most bloththirsty aspects of western imperialism result from an atempt to do empire without yhese institutions. Trying to fit the world into an institutional procrustean bed. We can even say the young turks and the kemalists are an example of these.
If industrialization had started in an area of the world with an old tradition of empire like china or persia or the otoman empire, things may have been diferent. Maybe these institutions would have enabled more eficient and ruthles explotation, while preserving more of the ethnic makup of the world.
That being said. Northern europeans lack a tradition of empire. And the institutions that such a tradition implies. The most bloththirsty aspects of western imperialism result from an atempt to do empire without yhese institutions. Trying to fit the world into an institutional procrustean bed. We can even say the young turks and the kemalists are an example of these.
The way I've seen this articulated is that the old school empires like the Chinese dynasties and the Abbasid caliphate were feudal land empires, meaning there's an understanding that you can't just completely strip the land of resources since it would mean your populace would starve as well as the fact that you can't just continuously expand because there's a limit to how much territory you could directly control. For China at least, the frontier of the empire had little interference from the capital outside of garrisoned troops and appointed bureaucrats. Beyond the frontier are tributary states that at least de jure recognize the emperor as the Son of Heaven. Obviously, the further away the tributary state is from the capital, the more nominal the recognition is. As an example, Vietnamese emperors, who also style themselves as Sons of Heaven, simply address themselves as kings as a matter of diplomatic protocol concerning relations with China but otherwise continue to use the title of emperor for everything else.
Many pre modern empires were of course agrarian empires. Because prior to 1860 england. Most of the economy was agrarian. That being said the abasids are a poor example of a feudal empire since the abassid revolution was in many ways alinged with the interests of urban elites and mercantile acumulation. But thats another topic.
What i was comenting on was the institutional forms of empire wich depend on the disparity of power. Most imperialusm in history was constrained by the fact that there was not a significant technological gap between eurasian regions. Chinise and middleastetn colonies in indonesia could only go so far.
So large land empires were constrained by their goverment systems. Wich are more nuanced than a feudal heirachy. These empires often had to rule people in situations were there was a significant varaety of ethnic ecological anf productive conditions. These conditions imply diferent material interests that have to be balanced because again there is not a significant gap in power betwen the core and perifery.
These institutions evolved in competition with each other. So that there is a growth trend in the size and complexity of the largest emires at any given time up until the middle ages. In contrast the northern europeans had a tradition of small homogenous kingdoms so institutions of empire did not develop. And when they made their empires thre was a technological gap so their institutions are stunted. This is why liberalism is parrochial and insestous. And why unless it remains ideological untempered by materialism, it will decay into facism.
compare the constitution of medina wich is legaly pluralistic in order to acomodate all these varied interests with modern legal systems.
A good example haplened in parts of mughal india there were complicated arrangments in order to mantain agricultural infrastructure. Once the british arrived and changed these institutions in favor of more british ones, things like irrigation systems decayed.
It came to me as a multicolored flash in my third eye right before I posted this
That one actually sounded like something I'd try, fried potatoes are always good and I like peas but I just can't abide by the very British tradition of learning something in another part of the world exists then making something that isn't even remotely the same thing and calling it by the same name
If it isn't cooked on a stick or skewer then it cannot be a kebab
The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry.
