Does the climate affect industrial development?

Question

I mean, take Africans. No reason to suppose they are any less intelligent than white people but living in a parched climate is hardly conducive to industrial development and innovation. Hardly surprising the industrial revolution started in Britain and not in Botswana! The weather is cooler and you don't have to saunter around all day swaggering and trying to stay (and look?) cool.

Answer 1

yes, if you look backwards,

and take Egypt for example, the population was limited to stay near the nile, and their work was limited to what this area of the nile could offer them.

the rest was a deserted desert.

some places will have certain resources that other places dont have. many resources are a direct result of climate in the area they are present.

so if that same industry is leaning on certain resources, you could say that industrial development is affected by climate.

it affected by many more factors, say for example your country is rich with a certain resource, but the world's market has no demand at all for this resource, then you wont build industry around it and based on it, you will only lose money.

on the other hand, make that resource oil for example, you will have a lot of industry around it.

resources are also in need according to the time in history or future, before we knew how to use oil for our needs, places with oil would be poor, and as we finally learnd how to use it, these places are very rich and developed.

so to sum it up,

YES, i think climate is ONE factor that affects industrial development, but its nothing more than another factor amongs many

Answer 2

There is a book called "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond that answer the vary question as to why some nations are wealthier than others, of the many answers climate is one of them(for example certain plants only grow in certain climates, limiting some nations to crops that don't produce as much food per effort as plants that grow in other climates)

Answer 3

30 Degrees Latitude, in both the Northern & Southern Hemispheres (The Four Seasons), is the magical climatic zone, which not only gave birth to the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago, but also the Industrial Revolution 300 years ago...