Industrial Revolutions required many things that Frodo's world lacked:
1) Abundant and cheap coal (heat, steel making, steam engines, etc). We know this didn't exist, for why should Saruman rely on the comparatively bad fuel of green wood to power his engine of war?
2) International demand for goods via global trade networks. The societies are clearly fragmented with little interchange...polar opposite of Europe in the 1750-1900 period.
3) Abundant laborers and innovators to create necessary machines. England had a number of innovative entrepeneurs who needed steam engines to pump water out of the mine so the miners could get the coal that was slightly deeper.
4) Scientific progress on metals, machining, and scientific method. Starting with Francis Bacon, Newton, and others, England saw a very strong burst of scientific progress right before industrialization.
5) Governmental support of industry (e.g. tariffs/regs in USA/Germany). This one is perhaps the hardest to study, we don't know much about governmental policy in LotR, but it seems to be monarchical and/or authoritarian, maybe war-lord driven...not what you need for an economic-technological revolution.
LotR in Frodo's Day is a sparsely populated world that used to be grand. If the Elves and Numenorians of old, with all their splendor, didn't start a revolution, then how could the ghost-towns of men and elves?
1) Abundant and cheap coal (heat, steel making, steam engines, etc). We know this didn't exist, for why should Saruman rely on the comparatively bad fuel of green wood to power his engine of war?
2) International demand for goods via global trade networks. The societies are clearly fragmented with little interchange...polar opposite of Europe in the 1750-1900 period.
3) Abundant laborers and innovators to create necessary machines. England had a number of innovative entrepeneurs who needed steam engines to pump water out of the mine so the miners could get the coal that was slightly deeper.
4) Scientific progress on metals, machining, and scientific method. Starting with Francis Bacon, Newton, and others, England saw a very strong burst of scientific progress right before industrialization.
5) Governmental support of industry (e.g. tariffs/regs in USA/Germany). This one is perhaps the hardest to study, we don't know much about governmental policy in LotR, but it seems to be monarchical and/or authoritarian, maybe war-lord driven...not what you need for an economic-technological revolution.
LotR in Frodo's Day is a sparsely populated world that used to be grand. If the Elves and Numenorians of old, with all their splendor, didn't start a revolution, then how could the ghost-towns of men and elves?