It's not like you can't have machines, they'd just be handmade by artisans.
Probably last longer but cost more and take much much longer to make.
Highest tech level possible without industrial revolution?
- Thread starter TerranGames
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Probably last longer but cost more and take much much longer to make.
It arose in UK because it was the first place it arose, and the European economy was too integrated for it having time to arise in isolation elsewhere.
This is from a paraphrased from quinine's Wikipedia page, so, grain of salt.
It looks like the bark of the cinchona tree contains enough quinine so that it would have enough presence to have an effect in the human body, the Quechua people taught the Jesuits how to use the bark in the form of a tea back in 1500s, it was used to treat the "shivers".
The tea was observed to help with malaria caused shivers by Jesuit Agostino Salumbrino in Lima, he lived between 1564–1642.
I stopped reading there.
Assuming that quinine can survive the premodern extraction process (prolonged boiling) then there is no reason they couldn't try. It probably won't be as effective and the doctors won't know why it works, but I see no reason why they couldn't eventually pull it off (again assuming quinine can survive being extracted in this way).
If someone is more knowledgeable about this subject than me, please correct me.
So as I understand it, to get back to the original subject, basically, that the for the industrial revolution to take off, you need people to invest in factories, and new machines and the like, so the big thing here that needs to be nerfed is the arrival of modern banking and stock markets, right? (As well as maybe the scientific revolution as well?)
I don't think banking or the like is the source so much as it just happen to emerge at the same time. As it is, what made it 'easier' was the obscene amounts of wealth brought in from the 'New World' and overseas colonialism. Without the obscene degrees of wealth such stuff would take longer to happen without some wild happenstance because most resources would go into stuff like infrastructure, armies, ETC. But with excessive amounts of money, more than any nation could reasonably spend (Or at least would not spend on their colonized territories) there was an excess of resources rarely seen before.
I would agree, banking is not the source of industrialization, not by a long shot.
However, it does look like one of the main vehicles of the revolution part. The two are not necessarily linked. (Which is how I took the OP question.)
In fact, a TL without modern banking (assuming ceteris paribus for the moment) I would expect to have industrial centers. They would just be on much more local scales as they would be entirely dependent on the what is more beneficial in the local areas. I would also be unsurprised if the level of industry I'm these areas waxes and wannes very frequently, as it to is very dependent on the local economy even being effected by things such as a few years of bad harvest, etc.
I'm less sure myself, I dunno but it just low key feels like that "Capitalism leads to invitation" thing when actually business leaders don't want innovation they wanted maximum profit for minimum cost and more often than not that means cutting corners, not investing in things that won't yield instantaneous results and not wanting to change "What works" because change costs money. The exception to the above also isn't any better cos they don't generally care about useful invocations in the now but some vague concept of innovation for their space faring descendants, hence pouring billions into murdering pigs and monkeys with computer chips and then being unable to articulate what these things would even be able to do.
I mean, unless I misremember my recent reading the main thing that made people go from "Ooh neat novelty" to "Oh useful tool" to "Hot damn!" Was basically a water pump that took well over a century to reach the "Hot damn" level that required no horses or the like.
Pretty sure we are talking about two different things, which is part of the disagreement.
It sounds like you are talking about the creation of new ideas, advancement of technologies, and existence of entrepreneurs. (And for such, I agree with you.)
But what I'm referring to is the shift in culture and the commonality.
In most places, in OTL these two things moved together, this is not going to necessarily be the case in an ATL scenario. And I see banking as only one attributing factor, but a linchpin factor.
(Believe it or not, I actually live in an area of the USA were these lagged significantly behind the rest of the country and if you know were to look you can still see it. For example family farms are all we have here, no corporate farms, and we still have a harvest break end of September beginning of October.
And while this is more of a theory, the seem like during the USA's industrial period the Anglophone banks didn't like working with the predominantly Francophone Catholic inhabitants, and this stayed until the introduction of credit unions.
I did try to do a paper on this back in college but there wasn't enough sources to make a conclusion either way. So theory it remains.)
In terms of firearms, I could see cap and ball revolvers for pistols and single shot breachloader rifles.
I could also see paper/cardboard cartridges being a thing. Maybe paper cartridge-fired revolvers could be a thing too, but who knows.🤷♂️
Pretty much anything that was developed during the first half of the 19th century (the earlier the better) could probably be developed with advanced pre-industrial techniques. It would probably take longer to develop, but by the 2020s they'd very likely be a thing.