[ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution

 

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"We need to stop thinking that Britain invented industrialism because
it had an especially laissez-faire government or because it had a
unique entrepreneurial genius or culture,” Satia says.
“Let’s acknowledge the fact that Britain was involved in a lot of
wars, and in order to pursue those wars the government needed arms.

 

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>…The Roman Empire was involved in even more wars than the British were, so why didn't the industrial revolution happen then?  John K Clark

 

It did.  The ancient Romans developed plenty of war stuff way advanced for its time, chariots, armor, iron works, all kindsa stuff, and it came out of the necessities of war.

Had the ancient Romans discovered chemistry, then gun powder, they would have done all the stuff Europe did later, for all the same reasons.

This was something we who studied engineering at a pacifist school had to deal with: we were tech geeks, and we had to admit that war really does drive tech.  Now we can pretend that markets drive tech (and they do) but markets are economic warfare, in a sense.

spike

 

 


 

 

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