Which non-European nation had the potential to industrialize first?

[Lord High Executioner]

That's not what I've seen. Buddhism by the Edo period had deeply penetrated all walks of Japanese society. Just because Neo-Confucianism was a thing among Japanese monks doesn't mean they weren't deeply Buddhist: that's like arguing that Europe wasn't deeply Christian because of Enlightenment-era philosophy.

It wasn't just "a thing among Japanese monks" - it's an example of how Japan wasn't quite as Buddhist as one are lead to believe.
The European equivalent would go something like:
Churchmen arguing morality, proper behaviour and how society should work by referencing 13th century interpretations of
Roman law rather than church doctrine and theologians.
The temporal nobility and actual rulers referencing the same interpretations of Roman law, while occasionally glancing at Machiavelli and
looking to chivalric romances for guidance on how to be proper Knights.
Meanwhile the urban classes have started doing their own thing, combining the juicy bits of Calvinism with concepts from Roman law
(like pater familias and caveat emptor) and bits and pieces from other Christian denominations and folk traditions.*
BUT!
They all go to church on sunday, get baptised and confirmed, learn the catechism, and all the other things expected of good Christians.
WHILE ALSO
Paying respect to the local folk saints and any unreconstructed pagan gods that may still be around, and whose shrines can often
be found on church grounds and being tended to by the local clergyman.

So, deeply Christian, but not only Christian and them being Christians doesn't explain everything.

*The Japanese original here is Shingaku, which is among the things people point to as part of the cultural foundations of Japan's industrialization.
What I have read about it is admittedly a little unclear on the metaphysics, but it tends to come across as more worldly and practical, and
not being very much into the "everything is suffering"-bit of Buddhism.

 

[Aluma]

I mean, isnt that kind of OTL?
Europe was all about your local saints and Roman Law & philosophy as the standard of how things should be

 

[Tanc49]

The societal pressure is partially military and knowledge based. Alexandria was focused heavily on acquiring new knowledge. They also did a lot of experiments. One of Ctesebius inventions was a pneumatic ballistae which failed. Also about this time, we have the experience of water wheels for grinding grain and similar things. There is a whole series of things which could develop once you have the water wheel and piston. A larger population needs more flour for bread. Also, they need more metal for forging things. The piston bellows could be improved with pneumatics. There could be an effect where a lot of the water wheel, bellows, and pneumatic technology advance more quickly. This is partially about more efficient food processing and better military technology. There also might be a greater desire to expand and get new knowledge. Maybe they might build a wheeled ship earlier.

I get that things were possible from a technical point of view but I don't get why they'd bother unending their whole economy, beliefs, and society, when they can just raid the next country over for slaves. It's probably cheaper that way no?

 

[Metempsychosis]

It wasn't just "a thing among Japanese monks" - it's an example of how Japan wasn't quite as Buddhist as one are lead to believe.
The European equivalent would go something like:
Churchmen arguing morality, proper behaviour and how society should work by referencing 13th century interpretations of
Roman law rather than church doctrine and theologians.
The temporal nobility and actual rulers referencing the same interpretations of Roman law, while occasionally glancing at Machiavelli and
looking to chivalric romances for guidance on how to be proper Knights.
Meanwhile the urban classes have started doing their own thing, combining the juicy bits of Calvinism with concepts from Roman law
(like pater familias and caveat emptor) and bits and pieces from other Christian denominations and folk traditions.*
BUT!
They all go to church on sunday, get baptised and confirmed, learn the catechism, and all the other things expected of good Christians.
WHILE ALSO
Paying respect to the local folk saints and any unreconstructed pagan gods that may still be around, and whose shrines can often
be found on church grounds and being tended to by the local clergyman.

So, deeply Christian, but not only Christian and them being Christians doesn't explain everything.

*The Japanese original here is Shingaku, which is among the things people point to as part of the cultural foundations of Japan's industrialization.
What I have read about it is admittedly a little unclear on the metaphysics, but it tends to come across as more worldly and practical, and
not being very much into the "everything is suffering"-bit of Buddhism.

But that's exactly what Christian priests and laity did. Have you seen the Renaissance?

 

[durante]

Does Turkey count?

 

[Lalli]

Does Turkey count?

Do you mean Ottoman Empire? Not sure. It of course depends what regions OE would has but I don't know if it has enough of resources in Anatolia or Caucasus. And you would need pretty stable society which is bothering too with internal development instead endless wars of expansion.

If you mean Byzantine you should stabilise the country greatly and get authorities to be intrested about industrialisation.

 

[RexSueciae]

So I don't think I've seen anyone list out all the factors that I think are relevant -- and I'm not the originator of most of these ideas -- but for the Industrial Revolution to happen IOTL in Great Britain specifically, you have a confluence of factors:

First, the island was substantially deforested over the medieval era (because wood is highly important for fuel, both in cooking and in crafts like metalworking, not to mention its use in construction and specifically in building large fleets of ships).
Second, there is plenty of coal in Great Britain, so that whatever polity which controls that isle would eventually attempt to exploit it as an alternate source of fuel.
Third, when the steam engine is invented -- a highly inefficient prototype that requires lots of fuel to produce much less power than modern engines -- it has an immediate use case (pumping water out of flooded coal mines) (because now the British are going deeper and deeper for coal, as coal deposits that would have once been uneconomical to exploit are now worth the trouble -- also, since it's a coal mine, the initial inefficiency isn't a problem because there's plenty of fuel available right there).
Fourth, continual improvements to steam engines are possible (obviously they're being used in coal mines often enough that people have the incentive to improve them, but it is possible because European powers have been spending the last couple centuries developing better and better cannon, and now have suddenly realized that they know how to put metal tubes under high pressure without them bursting).
Fifth, the British had other economic ventures besides coal mining that could be easily industrialized via the steam engine (textile manufacturing, which was hugely prominent in Britain pre-Industrial Revolution, and then the invention of the spinning jenny allowed great factories to be built in making textiles -- there's a reason that Blake referred to those "dark Satanic mills" in his poem).

I don't think factors like supply of labor, competition with neighbors, or vague cultural factors surrounding innovation are themselves particularly relevant, or at least, not individually decisive. But if we do something to stop industrialization in whatever state controls the island of Great Britain -- whether by messing with its politics, or blasting the place out of existence via ASB technology -- where else would have the wherewithal to do all that?

My best guess would be China for the simple reason that they had some of the precursor technologies -- they did use coal (sometimes), they were the first to develop cannons (and thus had the most experience at putting tubes of metal under pressure, something that's relevant in developing steam engines), and they did have economic ventures that could theoretically be industrialized -- but when would that have happened? If a state is at a stable equilibrium, they're not going to pour resources into a boondoggle with no known benefit (even if we know with hindsight that steam engines are badass) -- the Roman Empire had tremendous productivity (mostly in agriculture, but also in other economic areas) and even had a prototype steam engine, but there was never a chance of a Roman Industrial Revolution.

 

[Aluma]

or blasting the place out of existence via ASB

Dont tempt the other members

 

[Lord High Executioner]

I mean, isnt that kind of OTL?
Europe was all about your local saints and Roman Law & philosophy as the standard of how things should be

Yes...
Well... I think by the time industrialization began there weren't all that much veneration of folk saints
(i.e. not officially canonized ones), especially not in the European country that industrialized first, and
that country that was very much not about Roman Law, being the go-to example of common law
(the second one was, though, I've been lead to believe, not to mention the German states).

But that's exactly what Christian priests and laity did. Have you seen the Renaissance?

Well, sort of. The thought did cross my mind. It might even have been part of the point.
I was tempted to write "Meanwhile, the urban classes are becoming protestants", but that would be
inaccurate both for the European situation and as an analogy for the Japanese one.
(As Shingaku is not a branch of Buddhism.)

Based on what I've read on Edo period Japan*, Japan was more culturally Buddhist than practising Buddhist,
and especially when compared to the position of Christianity in Europe.
In short and again, the general impression is that the Buddhist idea that "existence is suffering" does not appear to
have loomed all that large in Japan, at least not among the classes that were more interested in and directly involved
in subsequent industrialization.
In turn, this is arguably more a difference of degrees from "general Europe" - the Buddhist hierarchy in Japan wasn't
quite as with the administration as the church was in many parts of Europe.

*I confess to the standard negligence of not having researched the same/equivalent period of Europe to the
same extent.

Of course, this all becomes irrelevant if someone who has looked into it properly refutes the claim that
the "westerners [thought] that the world is inherently good and humans are what's wrong with the world" at
the time of western industrialization...

 

[Workable Goblin]

I get that things were possible from a technical point of view but I don't get why they'd bother unending their whole economy, beliefs, and society, when they can just raid the next country over for slaves. It's probably cheaper that way no?

By the Hellenistic period, probably not, depending on where you were. Certainly Egypt would have a hard time of it, the only real targets were the Kushites and Libyans, both of whom were quite militarily powerful and not at all trivial to raid. That being said, Egypt also had a ready supply of local laborers, so there wouldn't be a lot of reason to do this.

If a state is at a stable equilibrium, they're not going to pour resources into a boondoggle with no known benefit (even if we know with hindsight that steam engines are badass)

Er, but we see states do that all of the time? The Pyramids are an obvious example (sure, they thought that they had some religious benefit, but there was certainly nothing concrete) or, sticking to just China, we have the example of Zheng He's voyages. There might be a question of whether they would persist long enough to get anywhere--neither pyramid-building nor particularly Zheng He stuck around all that long in the greater scheme of things--but that's different.

Also, in China specifically from what I recall merchants were often allowed a fair amount of latitude in their business, partially because of their low social status, so it's always possible one of them decides to pick up an idea without any kind of state sanction or support. There are innumerable examples of private investors spending money on crazy ideas (which once in a while panned out), so this is hardly implausible.

 

[RexSueciae]

Er, but we see states do that all of the time? The Pyramids are an obvious example (sure, they thought that they had some religious benefit, but there was certainly nothing concrete) or, sticking to just China, we have the example of Zheng He's voyages. There might be a question of whether they would persist long enough to get anywhere--neither pyramid-building nor particularly Zheng He stuck around all that long in the greater scheme of things--but that's different.

Also, in China specifically from what I recall merchants were often allowed a fair amount of latitude in their business, partially because of their low social status, so it's always possible one of them decides to pick up an idea without any kind of state sanction or support. There are innumerable examples of private investors spending money on crazy ideas (which once in a while panned out), so this is hardly implausible.

Hmm. Speaking just to Zheng He, it's important to note that those voyages were very much a one-off -- a single emperor pushed it through (partly as a prestige project, partly to investigate rumors that his nephew had escaped and was building support elsewhere to reclaim the throne), nothing like it was seen before, and nothing like it happened afterwards. No other emperor seems to have really had the need. But as for what your say about merchants and their latitudes...are you reading my mind? Because I've got an update for a TL ready to go in a day or so, and merchants getting up to hijinks will be a major plot point.

As for the pyramids -- my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that for a lot of Bronze Age societies, labor was super important for agriculture (why you see so many victory steles boasting about how king [insert name here] captured X thousand prisoners -- presumably these would be subjugated populations put to work on farms) but at the same time, the nature of agriculture led to a large number of farmers being available in the "off-season" with nothing much to do, and for any prosperous ancient society that didn't have a more useful application for all those people, well, might as well have the farmers go stack blocks of limestone into a giant pile. And then after the initial burst of pyramid construction in the Old Kingdom and the late revival during the Kushite period, that's pretty much it. The pharaohs got bored and moved onto something else.

I don't mean to diminish the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptian engineers who designed the pyramids -- even though we have archaeological evidence that during the reign of Sneferu they managed to fuck up two different pyramids before they built him one that didn't have problems (I assume that was the trial-and-error phase) -- but if I might clarify my earlier comments, yes, stable societies do occasionally indulge in boondoggles, oftentimes to make use of a modest surplus in resources (usually labor), but once the king gets bored, focus moves to something else, and you don't usually see progress in leaps and bounds unless a myriad of prerequisites are already in place. So we get curiosities, like Heron of Alexandria's steam "engine," and then it's dropped as a dead end. The Industrial Revolution happened once, and then due to a bunch of factors that all had to exist before industrialization could really happen. I'm not sure if it would happen again elsewhere.

 

[Tanc49]

Hmm. Speaking just to Zheng He, it's important to note that those voyages were very much a one-off -- a single emperor pushed it through (partly as a prestige project, partly to investigate rumors that his nephew had escaped and was building support elsewhere to reclaim the throne), nothing like it was seen before, and nothing like it happened afterwards. No other emperor seems to have really had the need. But as for what your say about merchants and their latitudes...are you reading my mind? Because I've got an update for a TL ready to go in a day or so, and merchants getting up to hijinks will be a major plot point.

As for the pyramids -- my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that for a lot of Bronze Age societies, labor was super important for agriculture (why you see so many victory steles boasting about how king [insert name here] captured X thousand prisoners -- presumably these would be subjugated populations put to work on farms) but at the same time, the nature of agriculture led to a large number of farmers being available in the "off-season" with nothing much to do, and for any prosperous ancient society that didn't have a more useful application for all those people, well, might as well have the farmers go stack blocks of limestone into a giant pile. And then after the initial burst of pyramid construction in the Old Kingdom and the late revival during the Kushite period, that's pretty much it. The pharaohs got bored and moved onto something else.

I don't mean to diminish the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptian engineers who designed the pyramids -- even though we have archaeological evidence that during the reign of Sneferu they managed to fuck up two different pyramids before they built him one that didn't have problems (I assume that was the trial-and-error phase) -- but if I might clarify my earlier comments, yes, stable societies do occasionally indulge in boondoggles, oftentimes to make use of a modest surplus in resources (usually labor), but once the king gets bored, focus moves to something else, and you don't usually see progress in leaps and bounds unless a myriad of prerequisites are already in place. So we get curiosities, like Heron of Alexandria's steam "engine," and then it's dropped as a dead end. The Industrial Revolution happened once, and then due to a bunch of factors that all had to exist before industrialization could really happen. I'm not sure if it would happen again elsewhere.

Pyramids are also a prestige project that is about stability.
In a way, it's like ironclads and dreadnoughts of the XIXth century, or the Exposition Universelle, as big money sinks for the state. What it projects is important.

Now doing infrastructure project that might upend social mores? If you're a pharaoh, that doesn't sound like a good idea

 

[Domz]

Egypt was a proto-industrial state in 1800, according to "Africans: The History of a Continent" by John Iliffe (an r/askhistorians recommended book), thanks to a command economy.

Any non-European country in Victoria 2 with a large population could have feasibly colonized.

 

[Sian]

Japan in the 19th century.

Even before the opening of Japan they had a significant proto-industrialization, specially within silk production, sake brewing and slowly starting with mining.

Also they had already at thid point a rapidly growing sub-group of rich, risk-willing, peasants dipping their finger in every pie, and being in a growing natural opposition towards specially the higher class, but land and money poor samurais and to a less acute extend the stagnant land rich, but low/middling money wealth, nobility