Song China Produces Iron at Industrial Scale

1078

Song iron production reached an estimated one hundred and twenty-five thousand tons per year - a figure Europe would not match until the eighteenth century. Blast furnaces in Hebei used coal and coke as fuel, and the output fed an insatiable demand for agricultural tools, weapons, nails, and the iron framework of Buddhist temples. The scale was proto-industrial, driven by state demand and a free labor market that anticipated patterns historians usually attribute to much later centuries.