Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
Not for a while. I only have enough time to work on 1.2 projects at a time. Into The White Planet is the 1, continuing LoRaG is the 0.2. I plan on finishing ITWP, at least the main body, before moving on to the second part of the trilogy, Peril of Andra. Megafauna will be third.
Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #11: A Most Industrious Christmas
Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #11: A Most Industrious Christmas
This chapter is another of the multitudinous and occasionally even accurate holiday specials which have haunted Lands of Red and Gold since the early days. It features something which was posted on the allohistory.com message board on Christmas Day, 2015. As with all holiday specials, it should not be considered as entirely serious in its intent. Though it is a reminder that not every thread on allohistory.com devolves into an endless argument.
This thread is inspired in general terms by the various discussions on alternatehistory.com and soc.history.what-if about alternative industrialisation, but it is not a copy of any specific thread or post.
* * *
Taken from a discussion thread posted on the allohistory.com message board.
Note: all dates are in the Gregorian calendar. All message times are listed in what would be the equivalent of North American Eastern Standard Time.
Thread Title: WI Alternate Industrial Revolution
Original Post
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 25 December, 3:11 AM
Seasons’ greetings, happy holidays, merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and great yahoo... did I miss anything?
This is a general topic which has interested me for a while, long before I (recently) joined AH.com. Assume that the Industrial Revolution as we know it – wool, spinning machines, weaving machines, Yorkshire, canals, turnpike roads, and ultimately the wool mill – does not happen, for whatever reason. What is the next most plausible place and process for the Industrial Revolution?
According to Intellipedia (I know, I know), the Industrial Revolution required a large combination of factors that just happened to arise in eighteenth-century England. No-one seems to agree on what all of them are, but there were a lot. What main ones could happen elsewhere, and in what timeframe?
And no, this is not a do my homework for me question. I’m well past the stage when I need to worry about essays. Assays, yes. Essays, no.
*
From: Patrician
Time: 25 December, 4:25 AM
The most obvious place for an alternate Industrial Revolution to the OTL one which happened in eighteenth-century England is... an ATL one in eighteenth-century England.
The Industrial Revolution as we know it involved a series of inventions which made woollen textiles more efficiently produced, at the price of requiring them to be concentrated in good water-powered locations rather than cottage industries, and which led to the invention of the mill as the instigator of industrialisation. Many other inventions flowed from that, including some key technologies imported from overseas. Steam engines and ironworking are just the most obvious of those. But the basic techniques of the mill [factory] system, mass production, and power from resource sources rather than human or animal power were worked out and implemented in Yorkshire first, and everything followed from there.
So if you want to get an alternative Industrial Revolution, the best place to look is eighteenth-century England... but with a different fibre being the basis of textile mechanisation.
To do this, you’d need something to interfere with the development of the wool system. Say that some of the key inventors of wool mechanisation get chronic indigestion, or take up holy orders, or emigrate to the colonies, or they or their fathers die in the Second Civil War, or whatever the case may be. Or perhaps the overseas sources of raw wool (which the Industrial Revolution relied on) are unavailable for some reason. Perhaps North America looks rather different for arm-flappy reasons, and is no longer the main source of wool fibre for the expansion of textile production. Regardless of the reason, something nixes the wool system.
So what can fill that gap? The clear answer is cotton. Cotton is clearly an important fibre for the expansion of the Industrial Revolution, as it demonstrated later. Cotton may not have started the Industrial Revolution, but it clearly maintained and promoted it. Knock wool out of consideration, and cotton could step up to replace it as the basis for prime industrialisation. So tweak things to stop wool becoming predominant, or simply find an earlier source of raw cotton fibre for England’s mills, and you could see a cotton-powered Industrial Revolution in England. That’s easy enough – all of the other arguable factors which some historians state are essential for industrialisation are already in England. The Industrial Revolution wouldn’t happen in exactly the same place – Lancashire, or perhaps Cheshire – but it would still happen.
*
From: Hasta la Vista
Time: 25 December, 8:56 AM
Let me just get this out of the way first:
Rome isn’t going to have any industrial revolution. I know the prime poster’s question was about later industrial revolutions, not ancient ones, but it’s worth mentioning as part of an example of many things which were missing.
Rome/Greece knew about a steam engine, kind of. But it was a toy. They had large plantation estates, but they also had a lot of slaves. Labour efficiencies are much less useful when there’s already lots of slaves around, because most of the incremental increases in output are best accomplished by adding another slave or two.
Rome’s metallurgy was behind, their economic structure was behind, their knowledge of finance was behind, and a whole bunch of other things.
Song China came closer, although again there’s lots of arguments about whether it would have gotten any further without the Mongols grinding everything into the dust. It’s academic for the purposes of this thread, of course.
*
From: Kogung Ursid
Time: 25 December, 11:06 AM
Sweden. It had the iron, the timber, some coal. It also had many of the same social and political institutions as England: mass schooling, its own agricultural revolution, and so on. If England lucks out, Sweden can luck in.
*
From: Sword of Allah
Time: 25 December, 12:19 PM
You need somewhere that is free enough of war to accumulate capital over time without it getting plundered. Or more precisely free of siege warfare. Armies moving though a region are not necessarily destructive – cf. the Second English Civil War. Armies which settle in for a siege are destructive, and in the space of weeks can wipe out what has taken a century or more to accumulate.
England had the advantage of a twenty-mile moat that kept invading armies out, while the local civil wars were generally civil enough not to plunder their own citizens. Mostly because of fear of turning them to the other side, but there you go.
Most of continental Europe – indeed, most of the world – lacks that luxury. You need to find a region, even part of a country, where destructive warfare is avoided for a long, long period.
*
From: Lope de Vega II
Time: 25 December, 2:57 PM
One consideration is that you need a surplus of capital to accumulate, and for that you need some form of majorly profitable cash crop being integrated into the economic system of the relevant state/region. In real history, this was driven by the positive cycle of kunduri and sugar production, more or less in that order, and the capital which that allowed investors to accumulate. That, in turn, allowed both the founding capital and the idea of investing in other forms of production. Textiles being the most obvious example. So whichever region you have in mind will need kunduri, or sugar, or some other equivalent cash crops to fund its proto-industrialisation.
Makes it easy for a country with access to colonial territory which can grow kunduri or sugar, preferably both. Good for France, the Netherlands, Spain etc, not so good for Sweden.
*
From: Max Pedant
Time: 25 December, 4:31 PM
It does help to define your terms. What do you mean by an Industrial Revolution? There was more than one of them, after all. Not to mention plenty of historians and economists who’ve argued that there was no Industrial Revolution, only an Industrial Evolution.
*
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 25 December, 4:42 PM
@ Max Pedant
Fair point. It’s tempting to go with an Industrial Revolution is like obscenity: you know it when you see it. But that’s not helpful, I admit. Let’s go with an indigenous development of mass production in a form like the mill system, deriving much of its energy from non-human/ non-animal labour, with export to mass markets driving a cycle of continuous innovation. That’s probably a gross over-simplification, but it will do as a rough guide.
*
From: Dwarf Beer
Time: 25 December, 10:08 PM
France is your best bet. Somewhere in the north, where there’s coal and iron, perhaps? Or maybe in the south, where Lyon had a flourishing silk industry since the fifteenth century?
*
From: Cici
Time: 26 December, 2:43 AM
This thread is rather Anglocentric, to say nothing of Eurocentric. The English Industrial Revolution is not the only one in the world.
There were three Industrial Revolutions, each independent of each other in the key factors. They borrowed from each other later, but not in starting out industrialisation.
The English Industrial Revolution was all about woollen textiles, in its formative stages. Much came later, but that was the critical focus. It was about replacing skilled cottage industry labour with unskilled mill labour.
The Wallonian Industrial Revolution was all about coal, iron and steam engines, and glass shortly thereafter. The steam engine spread from there to England, and was improved there, but the first steam engines came from Liège, not Sheffield.
The Aururian Industrial Revolution was all about silk textiles, high-end desired luxuries that were exported across the Third World and beyond. It was about mechanisation to make more effective use of limited skilled labour.
Too many people look at how England took off with industrialisation and forget that they were not the only ones to invent it. Depending on when you count the start of industrialisation, they weren’t even the first.
*
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 26 December, 2:52 AM
@ Cici
Aururia had an indigenous Industrial Revolution? That’s hard to fathom, given that they borrowed science and technology from Europeans.
*
From: Cici
Time: 26 December, 4:15 AM
Of course Aururia borrowed a lot of knowledge and technology from Europe, and almost as much from Asia. So what? England borrowed a lot of technology from continental Europe, starting with the agricultural technology which made their whole show possible. Aururia did not borrow the specific elements of the English Industrial Revolution into their own, either directly or by inspiration. The Merrilong loom [Jacquard loom] and its predecessors were invented in the Third World, not the Old World.
*
From: Marshal Matteo
Time: 26 December, 6:11 AM
@ Sword of Allah
Yes, this, in spades. Industrial revolutions need resources, and they need innovation, but most of all they need stability. History shows at least two regions which were coming close to industrial revolutions, only to be stomped into the ground by foreign invaders. The Southern Song and the Mongols in China have already been covered. Honourable mention goes to North Italy, which was also edging close to an industrial revolution before the combined forces of Austria, France and the Papal States devastated the peninsula. The neutrality of Sicily throughout so much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a big part of the reason it did so well in adopting industrialisation early, even without native coal reserves.
*
From: Special Jimmy
Time: 26 December, 6:42 AM
I see that this thread, like most before it, is focusing on the English Industrial Revolution, and forgetting the others. Cici is a valuable counterpoint, but so far she is a lone voice.
It’s easy to talk about there being one path to industrialisation when all you look at is one case. There were at least two Industrial Revolutions, in England and Aururia. Whether the Wallonian one also counts depends on how you define industrial revolution, though certainly many of the elements were there.
England demonstrates that with the right social, economic and organisational conditions, an industrial revolution can occur with unskilled labour. Aururia demonstrates that with the right social, economic and organisational conditions, an industrial revolution can occur with skilled labour. Two distinctly different paths, and while they have many of the same elements in common, they help to clarify what is and what is not essential in an industrial revolution.
Look at each in more detail, for preference with sources that are actually familiar with reach rather than just applying an anglocentric lense to Aururia, then draw your own conclusions.
*
Note: The thread continued after this, but it ceased to be posted in Christmas in any time zone, so the rest ceased to be part of the Christmas special.
* * *
Thoughts?
This chapter is another of the multitudinous and occasionally even accurate holiday specials which have haunted Lands of Red and Gold since the early days. It features something which was posted on the allohistory.com message board on Christmas Day, 2015. As with all holiday specials, it should not be considered as entirely serious in its intent. Though it is a reminder that not every thread on allohistory.com devolves into an endless argument.
This thread is inspired in general terms by the various discussions on alternatehistory.com and soc.history.what-if about alternative industrialisation, but it is not a copy of any specific thread or post.
* * *
Taken from a discussion thread posted on the allohistory.com message board.
Note: all dates are in the Gregorian calendar. All message times are listed in what would be the equivalent of North American Eastern Standard Time.
Thread Title: WI Alternate Industrial Revolution
Original Post
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 25 December, 3:11 AM
Seasons’ greetings, happy holidays, merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and great yahoo... did I miss anything?
This is a general topic which has interested me for a while, long before I (recently) joined AH.com. Assume that the Industrial Revolution as we know it – wool, spinning machines, weaving machines, Yorkshire, canals, turnpike roads, and ultimately the wool mill – does not happen, for whatever reason. What is the next most plausible place and process for the Industrial Revolution?
According to Intellipedia (I know, I know), the Industrial Revolution required a large combination of factors that just happened to arise in eighteenth-century England. No-one seems to agree on what all of them are, but there were a lot. What main ones could happen elsewhere, and in what timeframe?
And no, this is not a do my homework for me question. I’m well past the stage when I need to worry about essays. Assays, yes. Essays, no.
*
From: Patrician
Time: 25 December, 4:25 AM
The most obvious place for an alternate Industrial Revolution to the OTL one which happened in eighteenth-century England is... an ATL one in eighteenth-century England.
The Industrial Revolution as we know it involved a series of inventions which made woollen textiles more efficiently produced, at the price of requiring them to be concentrated in good water-powered locations rather than cottage industries, and which led to the invention of the mill as the instigator of industrialisation. Many other inventions flowed from that, including some key technologies imported from overseas. Steam engines and ironworking are just the most obvious of those. But the basic techniques of the mill [factory] system, mass production, and power from resource sources rather than human or animal power were worked out and implemented in Yorkshire first, and everything followed from there.
So if you want to get an alternative Industrial Revolution, the best place to look is eighteenth-century England... but with a different fibre being the basis of textile mechanisation.
To do this, you’d need something to interfere with the development of the wool system. Say that some of the key inventors of wool mechanisation get chronic indigestion, or take up holy orders, or emigrate to the colonies, or they or their fathers die in the Second Civil War, or whatever the case may be. Or perhaps the overseas sources of raw wool (which the Industrial Revolution relied on) are unavailable for some reason. Perhaps North America looks rather different for arm-flappy reasons, and is no longer the main source of wool fibre for the expansion of textile production. Regardless of the reason, something nixes the wool system.
So what can fill that gap? The clear answer is cotton. Cotton is clearly an important fibre for the expansion of the Industrial Revolution, as it demonstrated later. Cotton may not have started the Industrial Revolution, but it clearly maintained and promoted it. Knock wool out of consideration, and cotton could step up to replace it as the basis for prime industrialisation. So tweak things to stop wool becoming predominant, or simply find an earlier source of raw cotton fibre for England’s mills, and you could see a cotton-powered Industrial Revolution in England. That’s easy enough – all of the other arguable factors which some historians state are essential for industrialisation are already in England. The Industrial Revolution wouldn’t happen in exactly the same place – Lancashire, or perhaps Cheshire – but it would still happen.
*
From: Hasta la Vista
Time: 25 December, 8:56 AM
Let me just get this out of the way first:
Rome isn’t going to have any industrial revolution. I know the prime poster’s question was about later industrial revolutions, not ancient ones, but it’s worth mentioning as part of an example of many things which were missing.
Rome/Greece knew about a steam engine, kind of. But it was a toy. They had large plantation estates, but they also had a lot of slaves. Labour efficiencies are much less useful when there’s already lots of slaves around, because most of the incremental increases in output are best accomplished by adding another slave or two.
Rome’s metallurgy was behind, their economic structure was behind, their knowledge of finance was behind, and a whole bunch of other things.
Song China came closer, although again there’s lots of arguments about whether it would have gotten any further without the Mongols grinding everything into the dust. It’s academic for the purposes of this thread, of course.
*
From: Kogung Ursid
Time: 25 December, 11:06 AM
Sweden. It had the iron, the timber, some coal. It also had many of the same social and political institutions as England: mass schooling, its own agricultural revolution, and so on. If England lucks out, Sweden can luck in.
*
From: Sword of Allah
Time: 25 December, 12:19 PM
You need somewhere that is free enough of war to accumulate capital over time without it getting plundered. Or more precisely free of siege warfare. Armies moving though a region are not necessarily destructive – cf. the Second English Civil War. Armies which settle in for a siege are destructive, and in the space of weeks can wipe out what has taken a century or more to accumulate.
England had the advantage of a twenty-mile moat that kept invading armies out, while the local civil wars were generally civil enough not to plunder their own citizens. Mostly because of fear of turning them to the other side, but there you go.
Most of continental Europe – indeed, most of the world – lacks that luxury. You need to find a region, even part of a country, where destructive warfare is avoided for a long, long period.
*
From: Lope de Vega II
Time: 25 December, 2:57 PM
One consideration is that you need a surplus of capital to accumulate, and for that you need some form of majorly profitable cash crop being integrated into the economic system of the relevant state/region. In real history, this was driven by the positive cycle of kunduri and sugar production, more or less in that order, and the capital which that allowed investors to accumulate. That, in turn, allowed both the founding capital and the idea of investing in other forms of production. Textiles being the most obvious example. So whichever region you have in mind will need kunduri, or sugar, or some other equivalent cash crops to fund its proto-industrialisation.
Makes it easy for a country with access to colonial territory which can grow kunduri or sugar, preferably both. Good for France, the Netherlands, Spain etc, not so good for Sweden.
*
From: Max Pedant
Time: 25 December, 4:31 PM
It does help to define your terms. What do you mean by an Industrial Revolution? There was more than one of them, after all. Not to mention plenty of historians and economists who’ve argued that there was no Industrial Revolution, only an Industrial Evolution.
*
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 25 December, 4:42 PM
@ Max Pedant
Fair point. It’s tempting to go with an Industrial Revolution is like obscenity: you know it when you see it. But that’s not helpful, I admit. Let’s go with an indigenous development of mass production in a form like the mill system, deriving much of its energy from non-human/ non-animal labour, with export to mass markets driving a cycle of continuous innovation. That’s probably a gross over-simplification, but it will do as a rough guide.
*
From: Dwarf Beer
Time: 25 December, 10:08 PM
France is your best bet. Somewhere in the north, where there’s coal and iron, perhaps? Or maybe in the south, where Lyon had a flourishing silk industry since the fifteenth century?
*
From: Cici
Time: 26 December, 2:43 AM
This thread is rather Anglocentric, to say nothing of Eurocentric. The English Industrial Revolution is not the only one in the world.
There were three Industrial Revolutions, each independent of each other in the key factors. They borrowed from each other later, but not in starting out industrialisation.
The English Industrial Revolution was all about woollen textiles, in its formative stages. Much came later, but that was the critical focus. It was about replacing skilled cottage industry labour with unskilled mill labour.
The Wallonian Industrial Revolution was all about coal, iron and steam engines, and glass shortly thereafter. The steam engine spread from there to England, and was improved there, but the first steam engines came from Liège, not Sheffield.
The Aururian Industrial Revolution was all about silk textiles, high-end desired luxuries that were exported across the Third World and beyond. It was about mechanisation to make more effective use of limited skilled labour.
Too many people look at how England took off with industrialisation and forget that they were not the only ones to invent it. Depending on when you count the start of industrialisation, they weren’t even the first.
*
From: Vapid Explorer
Time: 26 December, 2:52 AM
@ Cici
Aururia had an indigenous Industrial Revolution? That’s hard to fathom, given that they borrowed science and technology from Europeans.
*
From: Cici
Time: 26 December, 4:15 AM
Of course Aururia borrowed a lot of knowledge and technology from Europe, and almost as much from Asia. So what? England borrowed a lot of technology from continental Europe, starting with the agricultural technology which made their whole show possible. Aururia did not borrow the specific elements of the English Industrial Revolution into their own, either directly or by inspiration. The Merrilong loom [Jacquard loom] and its predecessors were invented in the Third World, not the Old World.
*
From: Marshal Matteo
Time: 26 December, 6:11 AM
@ Sword of Allah
Yes, this, in spades. Industrial revolutions need resources, and they need innovation, but most of all they need stability. History shows at least two regions which were coming close to industrial revolutions, only to be stomped into the ground by foreign invaders. The Southern Song and the Mongols in China have already been covered. Honourable mention goes to North Italy, which was also edging close to an industrial revolution before the combined forces of Austria, France and the Papal States devastated the peninsula. The neutrality of Sicily throughout so much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a big part of the reason it did so well in adopting industrialisation early, even without native coal reserves.
*
From: Special Jimmy
Time: 26 December, 6:42 AM
I see that this thread, like most before it, is focusing on the English Industrial Revolution, and forgetting the others. Cici is a valuable counterpoint, but so far she is a lone voice.
It’s easy to talk about there being one path to industrialisation when all you look at is one case. There were at least two Industrial Revolutions, in England and Aururia. Whether the Wallonian one also counts depends on how you define industrial revolution, though certainly many of the elements were there.
England demonstrates that with the right social, economic and organisational conditions, an industrial revolution can occur with unskilled labour. Aururia demonstrates that with the right social, economic and organisational conditions, an industrial revolution can occur with skilled labour. Two distinctly different paths, and while they have many of the same elements in common, they help to clarify what is and what is not essential in an industrial revolution.
Look at each in more detail, for preference with sources that are actually familiar with reach rather than just applying an anglocentric lense to Aururia, then draw your own conclusions.
*
Note: The thread continued after this, but it ceased to be posted in Christmas in any time zone, so the rest ceased to be part of the Christmas special.
* * *
Thoughts?
Very interesting, in OTL Walloonia's industrialisation is not considered a revolution on its own is it? I guess having one in the antipodes might make people ITTL more willing to call other ones revolutions than IOTL, though I also suppose that the Wallon one ITTL might have some distinctions from its OTL counterpart too. Having wool replace cotton is also interesting, are there any major implications from this in terms of development? Finally the Aururian Industrial Revolution has loads of implications for what is going on down under in the later 18th/early 19th (?) centuries, most hard to guess at. I'd bet a lot of dollarydoos though that it starts in the Five Rivers, though I suppose that Atjuntju or maybe even Yadji (sp?) aren't impossible.
Perfect Christmas gift, a LoRaG Christmas special.
Interesting glimpses at the future of the world. I take it that this means some state in Aururia survives colonisation (probably Tjibarr or another in the Five Rivers?), assuming they're inventing Jacquard looms?
Oh, I have to thank you specifically, because this timeline introduced me to and made me utterly desire Tasmannia lanceolata (and its relatives), and now for Christmas my parents bought me some! The taste is definitely something else, so no wonder why European colonialists descend on the peoples of Australia for their spices!
Interesting glimpses at the future of the world. I take it that this means some state in Aururia survives colonisation (probably Tjibarr or another in the Five Rivers?), assuming they're inventing Jacquard looms?
Oh, I have to thank you specifically, because this timeline introduced me to and made me utterly desire Tasmannia lanceolata (and its relatives), and now for Christmas my parents bought me some! The taste is definitely something else, so no wonder why European colonialists descend on the peoples of Australia for their spices!
In OTL, Wallonia is considered as the second place where industrialisation started, having imported a few British experts in the early stages.
ITTL, Wallonia is considered as the place where one kind of industrial revolution happened, and then exported some Walloon experts to England, together with importing a few English experts to incorporate textile mechanisation into their industrialisation.
To unpack things a bit, there were really two "industrial revolutions", not one. The first one was what involved fine, precise, small object mechanisation - and started with textiles. The second one was what involved big, heavy, large mechanised processes - and worked with coal, iron and eventually steam engines and machines of that ilk. There were some cross-synergies as they developed, but fundamentally they did not rely on the other immediately. They happened in the same country in OTL, but my reading of things is that there's no reason why they couldn't have developed in separate countries if conditions were right.
Mainly that the pace of economic growth is more gradual. Cotton textiles were a revolutionary trade good in that they more or less created a new market, being easier to use and keep clean, and desired by the emerging middle classes. Wool textiles were perfectly wearable and useable, but did not create a new market, and so created a slower (though still valuable) positive feedback loop.
The Atjuntja are pretty much screwed by this point, being economically dominated by the VOC / Dutch East India Company, which focuses on resource extraction - not the best way to start an industrial revolution.
The Yadji have a command economy of sorts, which could perhaps be oriented to an industrial revolution if the political system survives. It wouldn't look much like our industrial revolution, but it does have some potential.
The Five Rivers have some obvious potential, but also some drawbacks. The biggest of which is that an industrial revolution does require stability and freedom from warfare. Which is not entirely promising in a region which is the stated target of the Hunter. Or which is sometimes noted for vigorous internal disputes (Tjibarr).
If you want stability and freedom from warfare, the Nuttana have good internal stability at least, but are also in the Hunter's path, albeit being delegated to some of his generals rather than acquiring his personal attention.
It's been mentioned in a couple of posts that the Five Rivers have been trying to import silkworms, although they've been encountering problems. (Posts #100 - the summary of history up to 1700 - and post #105 - the first encounter with domesticated bearded dragons was in the context of someone bringing mulberry trees to Aururia, which are the right mulberry trees for silkworms.
The Nuttana have also been importing raw silk for a while, and trading it on.
Either of those regions could potentially end up using silk for mechanisation.
Quite possibly. There's a lot of scope for processing of other crops, once the basic principles of industrialisation and the factory system have been worked out.
But it also depends on the kind of industrial revolution. As was mentioned in the post chapter, the Aururian Industrial Revolution is quite a different beast to the OTL Industrial Revolution. The focus is on the expansion of skilled labour, rather than the unskilled labour which happened in OTL. That doesn't necessarily
(For those who are curious, the closest analogue to the Aururian Industrial Revolution is the silk industry in Lyon. Though parallels should not be drawn too closely, even then.)
Indeed. Although as was stated in the post, Sicily did not have an indigenous Industrial Revolution. What it has is that TTL's Sicily is highly populated, with the sort of labour surplus brought on by Aururian crops, and political stability and freedom from warfare, which allowed it to industrialise very early. Although there's still problems with a lack of native coal reserves.
I thought it appropriate, given that there haven' been many LoRaG posts for a couple of months.
There are different levels of colonisation, and some of them would be much more survivable than others. For instance, a satellite state or protectorate would have much more scope for an internal industrial revolution than a directly-ruled colony.
What is clear is that there is enough economic independence in part of Aururia that they are still able to develop their own form of an industrial revolution. That doesn't necessarily require independence, but it does require some meaningful economic freedom and capacity to adopt their own social systems.
Yes, I love those spices myself, having used both Tasmanian peppers (Tasmannia lanceolata) and Dorrigo peppers (Tasmannia stipitata) - in fact, I have some of each at home right now. I've never been able to get a hold of the "purple peppers" (Tasmannia purpurascens) - I'm told by online sources that it's the hottest, but it's not commercially cultivated as far as I know. I've seen a couple of references to it being cultivated as an indoor plant, but I've not tried to grow any seedlings or anything.
So how many of these guys will still be around
At least some of the giant kangaroos will survive, and if that is meant to be Thylacoleo feeding in the centre, that survives too. The thylacine survived human arrival anyway, so that's still around.
Megalania (giant goannas), well, that depends what they actually fed on in OTL. There's considerable disagreement about that. If they were genuine apex predators who fed on diprotodon, they might survive. If they weren't, then probably not.
The thunder birds are probably gone, alas.
Interesting post! The wool-rather-than-cotton industrial revolution rather strongly implies there's nothing analogous to the OTL cotton-and-slave powered economy of the US southeast at the time the Industrial revolution is picking up steam, while somewhere else in North America [1] there's an (OTL) Australia-NZ sheep economy on a massive scale. Gives a hint at how different patterns of settlement and development might be.
Strikes me that the Aururian silk-based industrial revolution is going to be the smallest scale of the three, if still of some historical importance - a luxury product produced by a small population pool (in spite of recovery from the plagues, surviving Aururian states are likely to be small ones by European standards in the 18th and early 19th centuries [2]) and it's a long trip for goods to major markets.
[1] The Olde South does not strike me as particularly good sheep country, although of course just IMHO.
[2] Assuming the timing of the industrial revolution isn't too far off from OTL.
Strikes me that the Aururian silk-based industrial revolution is going to be the smallest scale of the three, if still of some historical importance - a luxury product produced by a small population pool (in spite of recovery from the plagues, surviving Aururian states are likely to be small ones by European standards in the 18th and early 19th centuries [2]) and it's a long trip for goods to major markets.
[1] The Olde South does not strike me as particularly good sheep country, although of course just IMHO.
[2] Assuming the timing of the industrial revolution isn't too far off from OTL.
It does give a few hints, which I leave to others to try to figure out in depth.
Although I will mention that in some other interlude posts the cotton industry is depicted as developing eventually. And this special made it clear that it was significant eventually, just not in the formative stages.
It's also worth mentioning that even in OTL, cotton from the earlier stages of the Industrial Revolution mostly came from India, rather than North America. When it came from North America, it was the long-staple cotton grown pre-cotton gin, which was a more tropical plant and better suited to the Caribbean than most of the Old South (though it could grow in parts of coastal Georgia and South Carolina).
It's noteworthy that some allohistorical posters didn't appear to have heard of the Aururian Industrial Revolution, although there's several possible explanations for that. One is that it was simply ignorance due to English historiography not recording much, and lack of knowledge of foreign-language sources. A second is that English historiography may simply write off the Aururian Industrial Revolution as being derivative of the English one. A third is that the Aururian one genuinely lacked broader effect. A fourth possibility is that the major markets for Aururian goods were not in Europe - after all, Aururia is much closer to China, India and Southeast Asia than it is to Europe.
Sheep in general can handle heat or humidity, but not both. Most of the Old South has both, though there are a few areas which only have one.
I haven't settled on an exact timeframe, but yes, it's not too far off where it was in OTL. Say a couple of decades either way at most.
Much of OTL Texas does have the right climate, i.e. not too humid. Although those portions are not necessarily the parts with the best access to ports.
IIRC Spain had a pretty decent wool industry prior to the Napoleonic wars wrecking it, with that destruction being part of the reason Australia's wool industry developing as quickly as it did. I could not say though whether the particulars of that industry at all lend themselves towards an industrial revolution, or if it was on a sufficient scale to fuel one.
I understood that the Spanish wool industry had been declining earlier than the Napoleonic Wars, although those probably finished the job.
More generally, it's worth noting that in colonial British North America, there were considerable herds of sheep, despite (British) government efforts to prevent such activities. Washington and Jefferson were both sheep farmers, amongst other things. In an ATL Virginia where tobacco is much less profitable, running flocks of sheep may be a more widespread activity.
In the modern US of A, sheep are raised in all fifty states, I believe. Although if the ever-reliable Genocide can be trusted, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado have the largest flocks.
The particulars of the Spanish economic structure did not lend themselves at all to an Industrial Revolution in OTL, or more precisely not an indigenous one. It'd be more likely taxed out of existence or otherwise appropriated before a sufficient virtuous cycle of innovation could be established.
An ATL Spain with a different economic structure - perhaps provoked indirectly by the introduction of Aururian crops - may have more more success.
I should clarify that I meant whether then Spanish industry could have acted in a similar manner to the Australian one in that it simply was the supply side while the actual manufacturing would still take place in Britain, but I'm not surprised to hear that that is unlikely even in just the primary industry capacity.
Ah, thanks for the clarification.
Yes, as far as I know, the declining Spanish wool industry was not even quite enough to cover English woollen cloth production in OTL. In an ATL where the demand for wool was even higher due to it being the primary fibre for early industrialisation, the Spanish wool industry would not be enough. Though, perhaps, the demand might be enough to stimulate something of a renaissance in Spanish wool production.
Hm well everything seems to be pointing towards North America, though where exactly is hard to pin down. Perhaps I should go through all then allohistorical books and their authors/publications and see if there's one that mentions a department of wool or maybe a sheep dip. Is there a university of woollamaloo?