Talk:Industrialisation

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Contents 1 US/UK spelling 2 sustenance standards 3 unreferenced quotation 4 NPOV

[edit] US/UK spelling

Quick search on google: There are 106 wikipedia article that use the american spelling "industrialization", but 46 with the british spelling "industrialisation", please consider moving this article.. (unsigned)

It doesn't really matter with a redirect yeah it doesn't.. do whatever you like, just mentioned most articles will link to "industrialization" (I will try to wikify them myself). And it seems like a much needed article (especially for history articles).. (unsigned)

BTW about half of the articles with the 's' are in french (le'industrialisation) and german (Industrialisation) etc. , so the numbers are much lower for the british spelling.. (unsigned)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) - all national standards of English spelling are acceptable on the English-language Wikipedia, both for titles and content. American spellings need not be respelled to British standards nor vice-versa; for example, either Aeroplane or Airplane is acceptable. (unsigned)

The article started out as Industrialisation, and this is where it should stay. SpNeo 22:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sustenance standards

Instead of just taking out that paragraph (which happens to be true for most pre-industrial societies most of the time) on the Hobbesian nature of pre-industrial society you could have added another one qualifying it and stating the nature of the exceptions or you could have done an amalgalm. Right now, you have just impoverished Wikipedia. If you do not have the time to explain why there are or were exceptional pre-industrial societies with regular food surpluses and how they manage (the ones I know about had extensive canal systems and ingenious manpowered equipment in addition to exceptional pre-industrial agricultural techniques) the right thing to do is to put back exactly what you took out. AlainV 06:12, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can certainly understand your being upset, and I shall briefly explain my reasoning for removing said paragraph from Industrialisation.

"Pre-industrial economies generally rely on sustenance standards of living, whereby the population focuses collective resources on producing only what can be consumed by the population, though there have also been quite a few pre-industrial economies with trade and commerce as a significant factor."

As far as I know it is entirely common for pre-industrial societies to produce far beyond sustenance standard, ie. Italy, Netherlands, Britain, Spain, China, India, +others all knew prosperous pre-industrial periods of great abundance. I did not feel like adding a caveat saying, that pre-industrial economies generally rely on sustenance standards of living, but quite often do not. It seems like we can't make up our mind if we say that. Which is it? Do they or don't they? Seems to me that some do, and some don't, just as some industrialized countries suffer from lack of food (N. Korea?). It doesn't seem to me that living at a sustenance standard is a mark of a pre-industrialized country, but maybe that depends on your definition of industrialisation?

Peregrine981 06:25, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

There are many debatable issues around industrialisation and around the industrial revolution, which started in England in the 18th century and is still going on around us. But the question of chronic famine and scarcity in pre-indutrial societies is not one of those. Specialists in the History of Technology agree that pre-industrial societies (like the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries, and certain parts of China for certain centuries here and there, and a few others) who managed to beat the cycle of famines were rare exceptions. Like wise, they agree that industrialised economies who have regular famines like present-day North Korea (or Stalinist Russia and a few others) are extremely rare exceptions. If you know economic historians or historians of technology who hold the opposite view please put them in the references, and state their views in the body of the text. And while you are at it please put back the paragraph you have taken out (or rephrase a better one taking into account the nuances which, I agree, are missing from the original) because it represents the view of most (if not all) the specialists in this domain, such as Bernal, Derry, Hobsbawm, Kranzberg, Landes, Pursell (whose references you will find at the bottom of the artcile) and many others. AlainV 05:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

allright, I shall soon rewrite the paragraph to suit your concerns. Almost all of these societies faced famines periodically, I still do not think that constitutes living at a subsistance level. Perhaps some elements of the society did, but some of these societies as a whole were more than capable of producing more than they needed. Ronald Seavoy's book, Famine in Peasant Societies seems to argue, to me, that pre-industrial societies do not necessarily live at a subsistance, level, rather pre-commercialised societies do. However, his book is far from universally acclaimed, so perhaps we should not base an encyclopedia article on his theory. Still, I will, when I get a moment, soon rewrite the offending paragraph.

Peregrine981 23:46, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] unreferenced quotation

The quotation in the second paragraph needs a source or something attached. There's just a quotation with no source.

[edit] NPOV

See the last paragraph. It has scare quotes and is not worded neutrally. Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 16:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)