Research Proposition; Westphalianism & the Industrial Revolution
On the topic of the Westphalian state/treaty + the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, to what extent the latter made the former stick & were their
For context: pre-industrial market dynamics were localized; value creation didn't cumulate within the market's topology and entirely stayed local; borrowing the idea that tech isn't merely additive but cumulative, since the entire structure rewires how markets inputs/outputs information & forms nested paths where info can improve previous methods quicker.
That topology was within the grasp of kingdoms that can make cumulative changes; finance departments within royalty fund war campaigns, armor creation and innovations in tech.
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informational scale: the records of workers, buildings registered for industrial production and the amount of capital invested and profitted throughout.
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Capacity scale: The Industrial Revolution made mass-output possible than ever before; goods can quickly manifest for any need and changes the cost-earning ratios of past initiatives; now u just need to worry about raw material input; the goods are now in abundance.
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centrality scale: the emergence of the aforementioned. This also brings about a new class of elites that aren’t tied to Royalty. They run the industries and because the costs of having that centrality before meant working under the crown. Not anymore.
But this model can manifest in different ways. It was an open-ended model, and it just happened that the model made way for privatization without massive state intervention initially. There’s also the possibility that Westphalian treaty could not be enforced, if capacity scaling is now possible, who’s to say a nation can’t just invade another and take their capacity?
Ofc the cost-earning ratio would tilt MASSIVELY in raw materials (something nations back then didn’t understood) it would’ve made invasions a lot more likely. That itself depended on other factors which is too deep in the weeds to talk about (has this been talked about)