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Why the Industrial Revolution Originated in Europe

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Submitted By rollan
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Alexander Roussos SID: 40058831

GE2224 – Assignment 2

With the article “The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Din Not Originate in China”, Justin Yifu Lin examines several reasons for why China, with its greater population and technological advancements in premodern times was not able to beat Europe into the industrial age. The author starts off his analysis by criticizing the hypothesis ‘The High-­‐Level Equilibrium Trap’, first proposed by Mark Elvin, while continuously lifting forward his own ideas and theories regarding the matter. I will start off by explaining the main parts of the High-­‐level Equilibrium trap, address how Dr. Lin disagrees from the hypothesis and conclude with my viewpoints on Dr. Lin’s statements. The ‘High-­‐Level Equilibrium Trap’ originates in the old supply and demand analysis where an economy is trying to stabilize around a certain equilibrium. In this case, Mark Elvin argues that labour, due to the rising man-­‐to-­‐land ratio was so cheap relative to resources and capital, that there was no demand for new technologies, implying that the economy had stabilized around the level of technology that was already in place. An improved technology implies that the same amount of input will yield an increased output and for new technologies to emerge there must be some kind of incentive for research and also for capital allocation. These incentives were, according to Mark Elvin, missing in imperial China. The economy was big and well integrated, labour was cheap and excessive and trade networks generated large profits and alleviated local supply shortages, thus there was no demand for further technological improvements. Dr. Lin on the other hand points out that “the fact that the industrial revolution failed to occur in China… is not because the lack of demand for new technology.” He argues that if the man-­‐to-­‐land ratio was the valid explanation for the burst of labour-­‐saving innovations up to the twelfth century, then the ratio should have been higher in the fourteenth, fifteenth and mid-­‐seventeenth century. He instead argues for the reason that China fell behind was “because China did not make the shift from the experience based process of invention to the experiment cum science-­‐ based innovation, while Europe did so through the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century.” To validate his theory, the author presents a stochastic model of technological invention, which he later uses to analyse the historical development in China and Europe. A stochastic model is a model that uses random variables in order to predict the probability of an event occurring. For example, the author tries to compare the probability of new technologies emerging in Europe and China and reaches the conclusion that the likelihood of inventing a better technology is a positive function of the number of trials and a negative function of the highest productivity of previous draws from the invention distribution. The model used assumes that inventions are outcomes of trial and error and more particularly two types are distinguished: experience based and experiment based. The difference is crucial in the analysis and experience-­‐based refers to the spontaneous activity that a peasant, artisan or anyone performs in the course of production whereas experiment-­‐based refers to deliberate activity of an inventor for the only purpose of inventing.

The author notices a shift from premodern to modern times in the way innovations are made. After the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century the experiment based way of inventing became more and more dominant. In previous times the single most determining factor in how many inventions were made was the population size. A bigger population meant more trials and errors and therefore more inventions. When the experience based method lost ground to the experiment based the population size lost its importance as a constraint on technological innovations. Moreover scientists who deliberately seek to invent something might account for hundreds or even thousands of trials over one year where as farmers or peasants who only invent based on experience might account for one. What this concludes is that a rightward shift of the invention curve that was brought on by the scientific revolution in Europe induced a transfer of technological supremacy from China to Europe. China’s political system at the time could be seen as a retardant factor to the growth of technological innovations. The system was built around bureaucracy which in a way hindered the development of mercantilistic values, the independent states of Europe on the other hand were built on aristocratic feudalism and this created a favourable environment for scientific development. The gifted in China also had fewer reasons to acquire the human capital needed for technologic research than their Western counterparts. As Dr. Lin points out, government service was the most honourable and most worthwhile occupation in China, the gifted sought these jobs and therefore spent their time in studying and preparing for them. In conclusion, fewer of the gifted in China were interested in doing scientific research or acquiring the human capital needed for scientific research, combined with the scientific revolution in Europe and the relatively stabile political system in China the leader of technological research shifted from China to Europe. Personally I would lift forward the stability of China as one of the main reasons to why China lost its position as the technological hub of the world. Together with war and uncertainty comes risk and countries therefore need to always be on their toes and outperform their competitors. This also creates governmental induced incentives for gifted and talented people to be drawn into research. Agreeing with Dr. Lin, the independent feudalistic states of Europe created the perfect platform for such development and history has shown that the aftermaths of war and the time periods which wars span over are often related to technological development. Times of stability creates less incentives for research, if a country isn’t exposed to any risks or threats there is less reason for it to invest time and money on experiments which most of the time will lead to unsuccessful results.

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