What caused the industrial revolution to appear in Europe, clearly in full swing after 1800, yet never before anywhere else in the world? Since causes precede effects, one simple way to try to answer this question is to ask: What is the earliest thing that happened only in Europe that seems plausibly along a causal path to later produce an industrial revolution? For example, there was the scientific revolution in the mid 1600s, the exploration of new continents in the 1500s, and the printing press in the late 1400s. I just came across a plausible earlier candidate: rapidly changing clothing fashion starting in the mid 1300s:
The sociocultural phenomenon called “fashion,” that is, styles being widely adopted for a limited period of time, was not part of dress in the ancient world.
Fashion in 15th-century Europe was characterized by a series of extremes and extravagances. … It is in this time period that we begin to see fashion take on a temporal aspect. People could now be dated by their clothes, and being in “out of date” clothing became a new social concern.
The craze for change year after year took some time to become really established. … The further back in tome one goes, even in Europe, one is more likely to find the still waters. .. The general rule was changelessness. Until toward the beginning of the twelfth century costumes in Europe remained entirely as they had been in Roman times. … The really big change came in about 1350 with the sudden shortening of men’s costume, which was viewed as scandalous by the old, the prudent, and the defenders of tradition....MORE
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
"Industry Via Fashion?"
From Overcoming Bias, June 9, 2015:
