Why did the First and Second Industrial Revolutions start in Europe?

I WOULD SAY, that the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in Europe had to do with European domination of India. India from about 200-1750A.D. represented 1/3 of the world's GDP. The rise of European colonialism ended this scenario, and started a long term economic and political slide in India. Europeans stepped up and came up with ways to do what India did with much less manpower. The flying shuttle was the main invention that allowed textiles to become automated.

The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, and notably, Britain was surpassing other Europeans around the same time in the colonization of India, and arising as a global maritime power in general. The later Industrial Revolution, or the 19th century, happened under the political clout of "Pax Brittanica".

The Second Industrial Revolution, which had a lot to do with the momentum of the first, no doubt started in Europe because of the invention of steel. The Germans excelled at steel production more than anyone else, and this revolution was very German in character, with the British struggling to keep up.

Notably, the Tamils had produced steel for 2,000 years in southern India.

Economic History of India Wikipedia:

India experienced deindustrialisation and cessation of various craft industries under British rule,[9] which along with fast economic and population growth in the Western World resulted in India's share of the world economy declining from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950,[10] and its share of global industrial output declining from 25% in 1750 to 2% in 1900.[9]

During the period 1780–1860 India changed from an exporter of processed goods paid for in bullion to an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[91]

...the efficient Mughal tax administration system was left largely intact, with Tapan Raychaudhuri estimating revenue assessment actually increased to 50 percent or more, in contrast to China's 5 to 6 percent

After the decline of the Mughal Empire, Mysoreans embarked on an ambitious economic development program that established the Kingdom of Mysore as a major economic power, with some of the world's highest real wages and living standards in the late 18th century.

I would argue that a major reason that the industrial revolution kicked off in the UK, rather than China, and the second industrial revolution thrived in Germany and the United States, was social, not geographic.

China, like most Asian nations of that time, had a fairly disciplined society that did not encourage independent initiative. After all, while the Chinese invented gunpowder, it took Europeans to show what could really be done with it... for better or for worse.

That same regimented society was prevalent in England in the 1600's, with the English nobility acquiring and holding wealth and power based on heritage, not ability.

At that time, it was virtually impossible for an Asian person to change their social status substantially during their lifetime... which by coincidence was also the situation in England at that time. Once a common laborer, always a common laborer.

In the 1600's, those that did not toe the line with English society and swear allegiance to the Church of England were labeled Dissenters, and had many of their civil rights taken away. They didn't lose the ability to engage in commerce, considered beneath the dignity of the English nobility, so the Dissenters moved away from the highly populated southern England (where they were forbidden to assemble in groups or organize independent churches), and towards northern England, where they weren't subject to as many restrictions, and an abundant supply of raw materials could be found.

It was these Dissenters that were to form the core of the first industrialists. They had no social barriers to success. One could be as successful as their ability and intelligence made possible.

A Quaker (and Dissenter), Abraham Darby, was probably the first major industrialist. He developed a method of producing very pure iron at a fairly low cost, using coke as fuel, plus the reverberating furnace that had been developed for glass production. Glassmaking had become quite popular in that area, as the Little Ice Age and its lower temperatures had created a huge demand for glass to let light (and heat) into buildings.

Also, a college in Scotland, the University of Glasgow, was to play a major role in the understanding of heat transfer (to help the distillers), and especially the improvement of the early steam engines that powered the first industrial revolution. James Watt was an instrument maker at that university, and got his idea for a separate condensing chamber when investigating a working model of an early Newcomen engine... working models being the 18th century version of film or video. Watt's early work was financed by another Dissenter, Matthew Boulton, who had made his fortune working with the metals that Darby was producing at a relatively low cost.

Ironically, by the time of the second industrial revolution, the Dissenters had become the proper British society that had rejected them... not because they had sworn allegiance to the Church of England, but because they had become fabulously wealthy.

One major player in the second industrial revolution was Germany. A parallel element can be found there in the casting off of centralized religion (the Catholic Church being essentially a second form of government at that time), led by Martin Luther, who capitalized upon the then new printing press to spread his ideas. Oddly enough, it was the Church's use of those printing presses to print up indulgences for sale that led Luther to write (and print) his 95 theses.

This breaking of tradition, combined with the lack of strict social castes in Germany in general, is a close parallel to the Dissenters, in terms of a critical ingredient in both industrial revolutions: a lack of intellectual restrictions. By the late 1800's, Germany had developed the concept of admitting people into universities and trade schools based on merit, not nobility.

A good deal of the second industrial revolution didn't even occur in Europe, but the United States. The US was the first nation to implement widespread distribution of electric power, once the problem of sending that power over great distances was solved by Nicola Tesla and his AC power, and built on an industrial scale first by Westinghouse. Tesla emigrated to the US to pursue his ideas, for the greater opportunities and lower level of government interference and rigid social expectations there... a lesser version of the situation that motivated the Dissenters.

But, that wasn't enough. It was JP Morgan who provided the financing to implement electric power on a large scale in New York City, and prove its economic viability. Morgan had bought out the Edison Electric Company when Edison stumbled by sticking with DC power, and renamed it General Electric. Happenstance also played a role in the electrification of the US before other nations... in the 1930's, Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority as a project to put people back to work, and tasked it with building dams in Appalachia to generate electric power.

The assembly line was pioneered by Henry Ford, when previously automobiles had essentially been hand built, resulting in the first inexpensive, mass produced auto: the Model T. Ford built on the work done by Eli Whitney in the late 1700's, who had come up with the concept of standardized, interchangeable parts produced on machines, to create standardized rifles. Ford had to break the patents on the automobile held by ALAM, but he was aided by another leader unconcerned with tradition: Theodore Roosevelt, who had overseen the breakup of Standard Oil and its monopoly on oil production.

There were many factors involved both industrial revolutions. One element common to both, and quite probably a major factor in where the revolutions emerged, was the absence of rigid social castes or other intellectual restrictions in the groups involved in both revolutions: the Dissenters, the Germans, and the United States in general.

There's no consensus here.

Guns, Germs and Steel argues it's all due to geography. Some countries, like Japan, lacked metal, others lacked crops. But China's geography led to its being an anti-competitive society that didn't favor progress:

Diamond also proposes geographical explanations for why western European societies, rather than other Eurasian powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers, claiming Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer nation-states, bordered by natural barriers of mountains, rivers, and coastline. Threats posed by immediate neighbors ensured governments that suppressed economic and technological progress soon corrected their mistakes or were out-competed relatively quickly, whilst the region's leading powers changed over time. Other advanced cultures developed in areas whose geography was conducive to large, monolithic, isolated empires, without competitors that might have forced the nation to reverse mistaken policies such as China banning the building of ocean-going ships. Western Europe also benefited from a more temperate climate than Southwestern Asia where intense agriculture ultimately damaged the environment, encouraged desertification, and hurt soil fertility.

But others may disagree.