But what caused the feedback loop that triggered industrialisation?
I think you do need a stable society where people and companies have the confidence to invest in developing speculative technologies, because most of them don't go anywhere.
And a society which is flexible enough to cope with the resulting technological change and disruption to people
And access to a large market to sell the resulting increase in production (eg. urbanisation with farmers moving to the cities and/or foreign trade)
When I looked at it before, I really do think that China in the 19th century was in a high-level equilibrium trap, where demand and supply were balanced, because the economy was largely closed to the outside world.
And escaping the trap would have required external trade and also somewhere for excess peasants to go.
So imagine if China had continued the Zheng He voyages back in the 15th Century and established a trading network in Asia and also in California, before the Europeans arrived.
Or if China had colonised Australia in the 19th Century, before the British arrived.
Australia and California would have had lots of land, but very few Chinese settlers.
- That would have driven high wages in Australia and California
- They would also provide an outlet for surplus Chinese peasants because a) lots of land is available b) technological change in China is causing a population boom, but there aren't enough jobs in the cities nor enough land for more farmers.
