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Comment by otabdeveloper4 | Hacker News Reader

There's no such thing as a "pre-industrial" economy.

Sweden and Russia had a military-industrial complex, in the modern sense of the word, back in the Northern War.

The Bronze Age required global supply chains and massive mining of rare earth minerals to function. (And before that, going back to the Neolithic we have the same for flint or jade.)

Europe's medieval economy was a specific reaction to Rome's supply chain collapse, not a default state of humanity.

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>The Bronze Age required global supply chains and massive mining of rare earth minerals to function.

I want to see your source or citation for this claim. (Unless you're using "rare earth minerals" to mean something other than the current meaning.)

Strictly speaking, tin is less abundant than many rare earths, although rare earths isn't meant to refer to their abundance in Earth's crust.

Those two things are not exclusive: one can have near-global supply chains without modern industry. And one can have modern industry without global supply chains.

I was questioning the "rare earth" part, not the supply chain part.

Which makes much more sense.

Yes, tin is a rare earth mineral. (In the sense that it is rare and mined from the earth. Not in the akshually technical sense.)

Prospecting and mining tin was a very serious and complicated business in the 20th century. (Maybe still is, I'm not up to date to current events.)

Copper, tin, gold, flint, jade - this isn't stuff that was just lying there on the ground for the taking. Mining it poses immense technical and social challenges even for today's mining industry.

> this isn't stuff that was just lying there on the ground for the taking.

Bronze age tin mining in Cornwall and Devon literally kicked off 4,500-5 kyears back chasing extensive cassiterite surface deposits on Bodmin Moor.

Neither the element tin nor the mineral tin have been classed as rare earth minerals and while 49 or 50 down the abundancy list they are good examples of highly clumped deposits .. tin regions have plentiful tin and picking it up off the ground lead to trade and to the birth of mining chasing veins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterite

The most common reference is the book 1177bc that discusses ancient trade routes and how bronze age collapse disrupted them. It has been mentioned here in HN and the author has a good somewhat academic presentation on youtube

No, Russia certainly did not "had a military-industrial complex, in the modern sense of the word" back then because back then, labour was not a commodity (that's the main innovation of the capitalism, after all). The Demidovs' manufakturs in the Ural mountains were using state-provided serfs as the workers. Industrialization, in the modern sense of the world, hasn't happen in Russia until the very late of the XIX century.

Commodity labor is not a necessary characteristic of industrialization. In fact, most cases of industrialization in history involve forced labor.

The standard definition of "industrial revolution" is about the switch to steam from hydropower.

(I don't agree with the standard definition, but what you're saying here is even more "out there".)

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