I've heard the argument before that China being very large without serious, nearby rivals created less drive for innovation than Europe with its smaller countries and frequent struggles. There was also more ability to move to a different country if people in your country didn't like what you had to say. Many European thinkers took advantage of this.
"than Europe with its smaller countries and frequent struggles"
I think old china had actually lots in common with old europe: lots of small kingdoms and warlords battling over their villages. China wasn't really one united nation either, for most of its time.
> China wasn't really one united nation either, for most of its time.
China had some small periods were it was splintered, Europe had some small periods were it was unified after Rome. It is very different. China is more like Rome never fell, it might have lost half some time etc, some rebellion splintering it, but always pulling itself together after a century or two.
China was splintered for a thousand years after the Eastern Han dynasty except for the Tang dynasty and wasn't really unified again until the Qing dyansty [1]. I wouldn't call those "small periods", it's been splintered for the majority of the common era.
I am talking about the past 1500 years. Also to me half of China being under one banner isn't "splintered", that is still an empire with a few belligerents, so your link there doesn't provide an accurate picture.
And if you compare like to like, Europe has never ever been unified since there were always many splinters regardless which period you look at. Some parts splitting off isn't the same thing as the empire not existing.
No matter how you slice it China has been far more unified than Europe, if you made a similar map of European dynasties for the same period it would be orders of magnitude larger.
If you look at the biggest empire on earth for different periods a part of the Chinese empire is almost always among the top, Europe was only there during Rome at its peak and after colonization. China is much closer to a single European country, for example it wasn't as splintered as the German states used to be but its much closer than comparing it to Europe.
'Germany' was under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire for 1000 years, but still deeply splintered. So much so that proper industrialization only happened after unification under the 2nd Reich 1871.
Yeah, as I said I'd argue Germany was more splintered than China, but its closer than comparing the soup of splinters that is Europe to China.
Point is that saying that China wasn't always unified so it is similar to Europe is wrong, Europe was so splintered that typically traveling 60 miles meant you would be in another country, that means it was very easy to flee to another country if your views weren't accepted were you are now, very different from larger countries/empires like China and its splintered factions.
"Point is that saying that China wasn't always unified so it is similar to Europe is wrong"
Good point, I agree. That is why I initially said "lot's in common". But I believe the concept of "flee to another country if your views weren't accepted were you are now" is also quite present in chinese folklore.
So yes, there was the one person you could not flee from in china, which was the emperor and his court. But I would argue that your views also could not really go against the catholic church and the pope in europe for a long time and in most parts of it. (In a point more on topic, I would argue, that the disempowerment of the Inquisition, was the main ingredient in the industrial revolution, see Galilei and co.)
Reformation was most popular in the northern countries of the Hanse trade union.
Freeing themselves from Catholicism also meant freeing themselves from the emperor and the tribute payed to him.
When the Protestant stronghold Magdeburg refused to pay, it was entirely obliterated during the 30 year war, to set an example for other 'rebel' cities
This is true and doesn't apply after 12th century from when on it was unified and which is the period during which the jump to industrialization probably would have been more likely. On top of that it was run by the well-organized Mandarin bureaucracy.
I find myself being cautious when it comes to reading characterizations of China's historical dis/unity, knowing the current government has some rather strong opinions about what narrative it would like to see in the history books.
It made no sense to burn expensive coal to power an engine until you run into the problem of needing to drain coal mines, because you already have so much demand for coal that you have started to need to do that.
Also lack of calculus and newtons equations, almost all useful engineering equations depend on those so without them you can't make the necessary calculations for engines. Without engine calculations it takes way too much trial and error to get things to work well.
The industrial revolution happened pretty soon after those were discovered, I don't think that is a coincidence.
> they also would have been invented a 3. time if necessary
Not sure what you mean? Romans would have had great use of Newtonian physics, they made a ton of machines, but they didn't manage to invent the math/physics to do those calculations at the time. What do you suggest would replace this for making calculations for machines?
Well, they have been invented 2 times, roughly at the same time largely independent from each other. But it needed a general high level of math. The romans lacked many of the more sophisticated math tools I think.
No they weren't invented two times, Newtons physics equations were invented one time, then Leibniz reconstructed calculus after reading Newtons work on physics. Leibniz almost surely wouldn't have invented calculus without having read Newtons work on motion, so they aren't comparable.
The only thing that event proves is that inventing calculus if you have the the formulas of motion is easy, both Newton and Leibniz did that, but it was Newton who invented the formulas of motion that was required to invent calculus.
So I think Newtons equations of motions was a requirement for the industrial revolution, that is a key that unlocks the ability to understand machines on a whole new level.
Also Newtons motion equations are simply just
F = ma
They don't require a lot of mathematical pre work etc. But, nobody solved that properly for a really long time, and that is the basis for classical physics so basically every single thing we did during the industrial revolution. It was the key to modern engineering where we use math to calculate machine properties. I don't think it is just random chance that the industrial revolution happened just a few decades after classical physics was invented.
It is such a ridiculous coincidence otherwise, that the formulas and concepts that are the foundation to all of engineering was invented just before engineering took off for real.
Was it the case that nobody solve the problem, or was it solved many times but since there was no value in the solution at the time we don't remember those solutions? Or maybe it was the industrial revolution getting underway finally made it worth studying at all.
I recently learned, that the pythagorans were more of a cult (who liked secrecy?). I totally can believe that some ancient math nerds solved lots of things already, but with the people around them not understanding. One war could have been enough, to eradicate lots of (semi) isolated thinkers.
My physic courses have been a while, but I would argue with "F = ma" alone, you won't get far, when you want to build high pressure machines and model them before. You do need calculus for that. And quite a bit more I would think.
F = ma leads to calculus was my point, and that is the starting point if you want to think about pressure etc. Once you have F = ma the rest of physics happened pretty fast, getting to F = ma took millennia, getting from there to exploring most of classical physics took a century.
I got a degree in engineering physics, I have a fairly good idea what kind of physics and math is used for machines and structures. Without the concept of force that Newton invented basically all useful calculations are beyond you, so all machines before then were made via rules of thumb as the math wasn't useful. But when you have the concept of force many of the easy things like how to calculate structural integrity or treating pressure as a field of force isn't that far away.
Then you can start designing machines where you know the components will hold without testing, since you have done the calculations. That is what enables complex machines with many parts.
One factor is that Northern Europeans made much more intensive use of animal power than the Chinese (or the Greeks of antiquity) ever did. If you are already using oxen or horses to pump water out of your coal mine, it is less of a leap to start using machinery to do it (because you will probably be able to re-use some of your laws, legal precedents and business practices for using the oxen and horses).
The Northern European's close relationship with the cow goes back about 7,000 years. Other cultures relied on cows for a large fraction of their calories, too, but the Northern Europeans were the first farmers to do it. I.e., they weren't nomads.
Once a farming culture gets good at keeping cows for calories, it is a short leap to using male cows (oxen) to help plow fields. And once you are doing that, it is a short leap to using them for transportation.
But more straightforwardly, the Industrial Revolution started when the Scientific Revolution was well underway. The first generation of European steam engines were inefficient, then they used the new science of thermodynamics to design steam engines that were twice as efficient.
Sailing and its associated warfare drove technology. China started on that path at roughly the same time as everybody else and then pulled back for various reasons.
Note that a lot of the industrial revolution was using clockmakers. Why do you need super accurate clocks? Navigation and ... that's pretty much it. And why do you need navigation? Naval warfare.
The Han Dynasty peaked around 1AD and fell into decline as there were weak Emperors (usually extremely young) and eventually collapsed in terrible internal conflict.
Too many wars, sort of. History book I read explained that as a wrong division of power. Increased iron production failed to increase military strength.
Class that valued industrial production, looked down on warfare as something beneath them.
And warlords preferred feudal society of peasants to squeeze. Industry would threaten them.
