Dr Anton Howes

@antonhowes

Historian of innovation. Writing my next book. Historian-in-residence at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

London, England
Vrijeme pridruživanja: studeni 2008.

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  1. Prikvačeni tweet
    5. lis 2019.

    I've started a newsletter to stay updated on my research into the history of innovation. So that you don't miss a single fun fact about an inventor of the British Industrial Revolution:

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  2. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    21. sij

    Did you know the Romans knew cloves? They didn't know that they came all the way from Indonesia, but Pliny describes them to great detail.

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  3. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    Odgovor korisniku/ci

    Thought this would be right up your street!

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  4. prije 11 sati

    A lot of historians have lately been focused on the Atlantic, but it's the history of the Indian Ocean that's increasingly fascinating to me. So many connections and conquests, so early on. Apparently, for example, in 758 a force of Arabs and Persians ransacked Guangzhou!

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  5. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    prije 19 sati

    “What Matthew Baker did in the 1570s was to take the design process out of the shipyard& onto paper. He drew his ships, to scale..& opened up grand new possibilities for design.” Age of Invention: To the Drawing Board-Age of Invention, ⁦

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  6. 1. velj

    NB: a critical perspective via a very thorough review of the book (I’m only a few chapters in):

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  7. 1. velj

    There’s loads of competitive pressures for China e.g. from dynastic changes, which could take generations to compete. It’s only really in the late 18thC that it is fully stably unified (also a brief period c.1450-1550). And Korea, Japan, and SE Asia had similar competition.

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  8. 1. velj

    I’m a big fan of the “competitive states” hypothesis - that competition among fragmented European states drove them to better military tech, while unified China had no such pressures. But he shows China had way more competition than it appears from looking at maps.

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  9. 1. velj

    I’ve started reading Tonio Andrade’s The Gunpowder Age, and it’s immediately overturned some major assumptions of mine. China invented gunpowder, but like many I thought it soon fell behind Europe in military tech. Not true! Turns out it was about equal until as late as 1760s!

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  10. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    30. sij

    Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in Britain? In 1600, it wasn't the only place in the world that seemed a candidate for an acceleration of innovation. Here's a thread on two of the other promising locations, one of which might surprise you...

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  11. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    31. sij
    Odgovor korisnicima

    Galor & Co. have a similar paper / strategy in their labor emancipation paper. Mobarak also has a great paper on Brazilian electrification (hydropower) using precisely that idea, more in development.

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  12. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    31. sij
    Odgovor korisniku/ci

    Crafts and Wolf (2013) use flow data to check whether water power preceded steam in Lancashire

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  13. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    31. sij
    Odgovor korisnicima

    Caprettini Voth use the discharge volume of the river times the slope (or something similar) as a proxy for water power and early industrialization.

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  14. proslijedio/la je Tweet
    31. sij

    Age of Invention: The Forgotten Golden Age by . Great newsletter- always thought-provoking and based on solid sources and analysis.

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  15. 30. sij

    I've seen plenty of economic historians use access to rivers in their regressions. But I don't think I've seen them use river rapidity. According to a 16thC source I'm reading right now, this was extremely important for trade - there was a sweet spot, neither too slow nor rapid.

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  16. 30. sij

    So what went wrong? Just as with the Low Countries, it's still not fully clear. But if we're to understand why Britain's efflorescence didn't fizzle out, we need to also understand why the Saadi Empire's forgotten golden age did. More detail here:

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  17. 30. sij

    And it was a centre of learning. Its rulers amassed one of the major surviving collections of Islamic manuscripts on literature and science (though it was captured in a war in the 17thC and is now in Spain). Here was a city that was wealthy, populous, commercial, and educated.

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  18. 30. sij

    It had 400 vast, working watermills, and a complex system of water supply, serving almost the whole population via 600 conduits. Its inhabitants were known for their commerce and industry, manufacturing clothes of wool, silk, and cotton.

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  19. 30. sij

    According to foreign observers it was in Fez, Morocco, the chief city of the Saadi Empire, that commerce, industry, and learning also flourished. It was a city of marble and alabaster, adorned with great lamps of brass, with hundreds of schools, inns, and colleges.

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  20. 30. sij

    The list of pre-industrial efflorescences isn't long: the famous ones include ancient Greece and Rome, Song Dynasty China, Renaissance Italy, Tokugawa Japan, and the Islamic world of the 7th-13thC. Yet in 1600 there was another apparent efflorescence that nobody ever mentions:

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  21. 30. sij

    Yet it eventually stagnated. Its northern half, the Dutch Republic, might be famous for its Golden Age, but it was one of many such occurrences throughout history: "efflorescences", or temporary bubblings up of innovation and economic growth, which ultimately fizzled out.

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