If China or Rome would have been at: no choice but coal + need to pump the coal mines out faster than humans can - they likely would have gone IR. - Agricultural innovation that need only 10% of farm workers did not take off earlier, as farm workers were NO bottleneck before the IR.
In fact, the genesis of Industrial Revolution was in the plunder of the colonies of the European nations. Specifically, India and Africa. Brooks Adams (grandson of John Quincy Adams) writes in his book "Law of Civilization and Decay" in 1895 about how the plunder of Battle of Plassey (1757) funded the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Have written in detail about the opulence of Britain and the plunder in India. https://www.drishtikone.com/drishtikone-newsletter-360/
I think the simplest answer is just that people got cleverer.
National IQ today is the single best predictor of per capita gdp, it seems logical modern rates of growth would coincide with modern levels of intelligence.
Your viewpoint that the IR was far more than coal, that it was far more than energy is spot on. Today our machine amplify human power and human accuracy but the origin of those machines is derived from coherent electrical signals in a human brain. The clarity with which we interpret nature allows us to assemble molecules in an the service of our ideas. That we have the freedom to do so is the Industrial Revolution.
Wider...and deeper!
I appreciate the wider look. Still, the IR was indeed born by coal & steam engine, with a distant third place to spinning jenny ( with flying shuttle) and ever more distants (but important!), ie all the rest you mention https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/
If China or Rome would have been at: no choice but coal + need to pump the coal mines out faster than humans can - they likely would have gone IR. - Agricultural innovation that need only 10% of farm workers did not take off earlier, as farm workers were NO bottleneck before the IR.
In fact, the genesis of Industrial Revolution was in the plunder of the colonies of the European nations. Specifically, India and Africa. Brooks Adams (grandson of John Quincy Adams) writes in his book "Law of Civilization and Decay" in 1895 about how the plunder of Battle of Plassey (1757) funded the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Have written in detail about the opulence of Britain and the plunder in India. https://www.drishtikone.com/drishtikone-newsletter-360/
I think the simplest answer is just that people got cleverer.
National IQ today is the single best predictor of per capita gdp, it seems logical modern rates of growth would coincide with modern levels of intelligence.
Hopefully that's not too contentious a theory.
Your viewpoint that the IR was far more than coal, that it was far more than energy is spot on. Today our machine amplify human power and human accuracy but the origin of those machines is derived from coherent electrical signals in a human brain. The clarity with which we interpret nature allows us to assemble molecules in an the service of our ideas. That we have the freedom to do so is the Industrial Revolution.