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It’s incredible to realize how foundational the Roman Empire was to what we now commonly consider Western civilization. Rome certainly was a highly advanced so

by fosk 8y ago

It’s incredible to realize how foundational the Roman Empire was to what we now commonly consider Western civilization. Rome certainly was a highly advanced society in its time, but what a shame to think that because of vast abundance of slaves the Roman society never pushed further with technological innovations, effectively preventing the human race from having mobile phones by the year 1000, if not earlier. Some argue that with less slaves an industrial revolution might have triggered much earlier, and Roman society was certainly ingenious enough to push the boundaries if there ever was a need to do so.

steve19 8y ago
Very interesting idea. But I am not sure the Roman's could have skipped 1,000 of slow technological progress. I would say we might have reached mobile phones a little earlier if the Mongels had not laid waste to a lot of the world's population, specifically the very scientifically advanced Islamic world. But even then, how much could we have skipped? The Roman's would probably never have had any desire to explore the sea leading to the invention of the naval chronometer, and all the important advances that brought about (edit: towards the end they could barely manage the land empire they had, and they were not seafarers)
- loggedinmyphone 8y ago
  Islamic civilization was never very curious about the outside world other than militarily. There is a famous story about Galileo's telescopes being sent as a gift to a Muslim ruler to observe the planets. They didn't see any point in this but were excited about being able to use them to spot and attack other ships. Islamic culture did preserve some of the old Greek scholarship, but real science didn't get started until after their Golden age was past.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    There were excellent scholars in the early Islamic culture (700 - 1000) before the religious dogmatists started dominating the intellectual sphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna Etc. We who've read our history form western sources just aren't generally aware of them because we usually write the names of the most famous ones in latin form (e.g. Avicenna).
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Was it in Islamic or, was it in Middle-Eastern culture? What particularly about Islam, or the particular individuals faith/religious practice made their science a part of religious development? It's fascinating to see the interplay of science from different geographies - that Al-Kindi started by learning and translating Greek science and then that we primarily know him through others translation of his works to Latin. Al-Kwarizmi is a well known name in the West from the same Persian scientific community (I think he was perhaps head of the House of Wisdom whilst Al-Kindi was there).
      - Cyph0n 8y ago
        It is referred to as Islamic science because: a) Scientists came from a wide variety of backgrounds, but were usually of Muslim faith. For example, the term "Middle East" would not be accurate since many scholars were Persian and West Asian. b) Scholars were typically funded by patrons who were associated with the Muslim empire/caliphate. c) To a lesser extent, many of the prominent scholars first learned Islamic science and philosophy -- typically at a young age -- before delving into the natural sciences.
        pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        It's interesting we don't [in the UK nor in English language sources online] refer to the likes of Kepler as being part of Christian science, despite the characters often being trained priests in one denomination or another [Copernicus, say, was a doctor of canon law], often being funded by Church patrons. There's an interesting divergence in the perceptions; I'm interested in whether that's a modern issue or if it represents something inherent in the mode of the science being performed? Wikipedia mentions scientists who were historically - and are elsewhere - known for their Christian faith, priests and such but without mentioning that they were Christian believers but with scientists who were living in Islamic countries [I don't know the history to know if they, for example were Imams or wrote religious treatise] they're flagged as Muslims. Copernicus/Kepler/Brahe [I didn't check further] aren't claimed to be Christian, Al-Kindi is claimed in the first sentence as a Muslim amongst Muslim scholars, in a Muslim World, etc.. Any input on historic differences, IYO, that lead to these different characterisations?
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    This is a very Orientalist view of history, and is factually wrong. Islamic scholars advanced not only in medicine, astronomy and physics but also geography, history, journalism etc... Not only this, but also if you think from Kuhn-ian perspective it would be wrong to expect Islamic science to converge to the same point Western science converged (and if you disagree, I'd like to hear how you argue against Kuhn). So "anything outside of military" is a very wide range not even Westerners were curious of e.g. the whole computational way of thinking was only developed in early 20th centuries even though some really cool algorithms (leasy squares/Gauss/Newton's algorithm, graph theory, sieve of Erathotenes etc...) hinted computation could be fun. Why didn't Western world invent computer science until Turing/Church/Godel? I don't know, but it's certainly not strange Muslims didn't invent that too.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
      The West was also not very interested in the rest of the world except to conquer, prior to the development of the modern worldview between Bacon and Newton. This was a singular event that marks the sudden rise of the West in power and knowledge.
  - Cyph0n 8y ago
    There are a number of theories for why science flourished in the Muslim world, but this is not one of them.
  - jhanschoo 8y ago
    This statement seems very ignorant to me. Medieval Islamic developments were manifold. Off the top of my head, the preeminence of Islamic ideas are fossilized in words like algebra, algorithm and alchemy. A cursory visit to Wikipedia reveals a good list of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
    - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
      I'm as excited about the achievements of the Islamic Golden Age as the next guy. It certainly helped lay the foundation for the scientific method, just as the achievements of Classical Greeks did. It's just that it was over before the scientific revolution started.
muro 8y ago
The number of slaves steadily decreased as the Rome stopped expanding. Additionally, by the time Rome turned into an empire, freeing of slaves became a show of magnanimousity and so frequent, Augustus (= around 0AD) had to put extra laws limiting it. Thus, the Roman empire had a shortage of slaves and couldn't just "count on the slaves" for everything.
pjmlp 8y ago
I think the biggest reason was the fall of the imperial. Outside what is now known Italy, many Roman outposts only had a glimpse of Roman technology and as they got conquered by their enemies, everything got destroyed and the knowledge was lost in that part of Europe. It is impressive to read books like Herodotus and realizing Greek students that could afford it where doing "internships" in Egypt, where the idea of specialized doctors was already a thing.
simonh 8y ago
Most of Rome's engineering achievements were not performed using slave labour though. They were largely executed by the army. Slaves worked in plantations and mines, but tended to die out after a generation because slaves having babies and raising children were unproductive, so the slave economy relied on a constant influx of new slaves from conquests. Once the Empire largely stabilised it's borders, the supply lines ran dry and the population of slaves dwindled away. The idea of a Dark Ages is largely a north-western European one because we got largely cut off from Rome for a few centuries. In Italy and France, and especially in the Byzantine Empire there was no Dark Age. Technological progress didn't stop and slavery was no longer a major sociological or economic factor.
- loggedinmyphone 8y ago
  There was a Byzantine Dark Age in the 7th and 8th Centuries where perfume lived under the rubble of previous cities hiding from Arabic and other invaders. The Roman aqueducts went into disrepair and people went back to drinking from wells. There was a major population collapse. They did make some cool devices though like clocks and mechanical lions, as well as Greek fire. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/06/the-byzantine-dark-ages http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/06/the-byzant...
  - simonh 8y ago
    I wasn't aware of that, thanks!
- fsloth 8y ago
  "slavery was no longer a major sociological or economic factor." Slavery was still an important economic factor in the early middle ages ("Dark ages"). "By ...(741–752), Venice had established a thriving slave trade, buying in Italy, and selling to the Moors in Northern Africa. .. Caravans of slaves traveled from Eastern Europe, through Alpine passes in Austria, to reach Venice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe
  - 8y ago
coldtea 8y ago
>Rome certainly was a highly advanced society in its time, but what a shame to think that because of vast abundance of slaves the Roman society never pushed further with technological innovations, effectively preventing the human race from having mobile phones by the year 1000, if not earlier. Thank god for that!
fsloth 8y ago
I don't think there are that many examples of roman technical innovations or scientific development. They were ultimately practical, but not overtly imaginative. They adapted, what they found practical, and could scale up what worked due to their organizational skill. I think the main impediment to progress in the ancient world was the tendency not to share discoveries but to keep them secret. No patents, but your schoolmates will kill you if you share the discoveries taught to you. Academies were not universities - more like a dude with a few disciples. If your disciples just don't get your invention it will just be forgotten. I'm sure greek went past Euclid in all sort of ways but we just never heard from them.
loggedinmyphone 8y ago
Rome had slaves but it wasn't the cornerstone of their economy. The idea that the life in each generation should be more advanced and efficient than in the previous simply hadn't been invented then.
- Balero 8y ago
  Slaves were the cornerstone of the Roman economy, especially between 100bce and 100ce. The impact of all of the slaves from the conquest of Gaul was what Ceaser used as a platform for his politics. You are right on your second point. There was an account of a person coming up with a labour saving device for cleaning streets. However they were not allowed to use it as it was taking needed jobs away from people in the city.
fsloth 8y ago
Industrialism had lot of preconditions that had to be in place. The late 18th century europe was much more complex and developed place than the roman empire ever was in several ways. 1. Science (had been picking up steam for a few centuries) 2. Capital (wealth from the colonies had been piling up for centuries as well) 3. Public demand for goods (you're not just selling to the prince, you are selling to everyone). 4. Several countries with legal systems and professional courts that upheld the law and facilitated binding legal agreements. 5. Political system that did not overrule the courts just because the king needed a bit more money After these preconditions were in place, I think one of the triggers in the industrialized age was the expanding market demand for goods. If the demand is low, there is very little incentive to move beyond human artisanal labour (ahem, artisanal mining, ahem).
- Retric 8y ago
  The largest factor was simply population size largely from gradual improvements in farming. Global population in year zero was estimated at 200-300 million. That jumpted to 700-800 million in 1700 and 900M to 1 billion in 1800. Sure the city of Rome hit 1 million people early, but that took an empire to sustain. At the start of the industrial revolution several cities where about that large. PS: The Roman Empire covered a lot of land, but it's population was somwere between modern day South Korea and Germany. And all that distance dramatically slowed down communication.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    6. Development of more productive and less labour intensive agricultural methods which increased population and released labour to other endevours. :) Thanks for the reminder!
tuomosipola 8y ago
Classical antiquity, along with Judaeo-Christian tradition and the Enlightenment, form the foundation for the Western civilization. You could throw in others but those three are the big ones, I think. The Greeks and the Romans have had a huge influence on what we have become.
maxerickson 8y ago
I think in the long view we are either still in or have just recently left the first era of human civilization, so it isn't surprising that there would be echoes of an early empire. The demarcation can be technical or social (How long has it been that we've had a shared global knowledge of history? That's a significant transition.).
enitihas 8y ago
Just curious, was Rome even at its peak bigger than the contemporary Chinese empire? Now if only the Chinese empire wasn't so self sufficient.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  not really. in 117 AD, the roman empire controlled about half the total area of contemporary china (5 million km^2 vs 9.6 million km^2). the estimated population at this time was 70 million, two orders of magnitude off china's 1.4 billion today. the only way you could consider rome to have been "bigger" is to consider what fraction of the world's population fell within its borders. about 21% of the world's population lived in the roman empire versus china's 18.4% share today. [1][2] edit: or did you mean china contemporary to rome haha? most relevant figures are for the han dynasty. area was 6.5 million km^2 in 100 AD, and population was 57.6 million in 2 AD, making the two empires roughly comparable in size. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty
lkrubner 8y ago
Slavery overlaps with the Industrial Revolution by at least 100 years, and even longer in the colonies, such as India and Kenya. The resources needed for industrialism were dug up by slaves. It is tough to make the case that slavery impeded industrialism, when there are many cases where slavery seems to have helped industrialism. I think its best to look elsewhere for the roots of industrialism. Descartes and Newton helped form certain intellectual foundations, and the willingness of English peasants to fight and die for their religious beliefs lead to the end of the witch burning and heresy trials. That's important because a few years later Jethro Tull and Charles Townshend begin the Agricultural Revolution. Jethro Tull was 26 years old when he started working on his machines, in 1701. He was not necessarily smarter than all previous farmers, but he belonged to the first generation in history that had a guarantee that they could violate tradition and they would not be burned at the stake for it.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > It is tough to make the case that slavery impeded industrialism Compare the free states of the Union vs the slave states of the Confederacy. The free states rapidly industrialized from 1800-1860, the slave states did not and pretty much did not advance economically at all.
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    If you read about the economics of this period you'll find that, as with most of history, the reality isn't this simple. A lot of Southern capital went into financing Northern industry, for example. It's difficult to neatly divide the nation's economy in this way as if they were two separate spheres, as much they as they may have want to think of themselves that way.
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      Not one southern city industrialized. Investors tend to invest in things they know about and can keep an eye on, which tends to be local. Investment capital uniformly fleeing the slave states to the free ones suggests that investing in slave states was a bad investment. In those days, different states were like different countries today.
Zardoz84 8y ago
You could get a big surprise if you think that the romans get stagnated about technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology#Technologies_developed_or_invented_by_the_Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology#Technologies_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/ http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/ What pushed or stagnated tech development not was slavery. What push us quickly since the modern age, was the free movement of ideas and knowledge (thanks to the printing press and paper making the books affordable) and the scientific method.
nradov 8y ago
You might enjoy the alternate history novel "Kingdom of the Wicked" by Helen Dale. It takes place in the Roman Empire where the industrial revolution arrived 2000 years early partly due to abolishing slavery. https://www.ligatu.re/book/rules/ https://www.ligatu.re/book/rules/
WalterBright 8y ago
Foundational as well is the printing press. Rome didn't have one, and perhaps went as far as it could without it. While the printing press is probably required for industrialization, it is not sufficient. Your point about slavery holding it back is a good one.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Further support for this notion comes from the fact that in the southern US slave states, it was illegal to teach the slaves to read. It would be pretty hard to industrialize when the workforce is forcibly kept ignorant.
- Balgair 8y ago
  Part of what made the printing press work was the metallurgy required. You needed quality iron and steel for the screws and the typefaces, brass and bronze would not endure the stresses. Those metallurgic advancements largely came out of war and the need for metals that could handle black-powder explosions.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    Even Gutenberg's primitive press, which was built out of a wooden wine press, was revolutionary. It used cast lead type. The Romans had lead technology.
    - Balgair 8y ago
      Thanks for the clarification!
VLM 8y ago
Not slavery so much. As with many large scale trends there are many large scale reasons. Massive income and wealth inequality kicked in around a hundred BC or so and poverty prevents a mass production consumer economy so right there you're limited to mass production of industrial goods, meanwhile if you have millions of times the wealth of a peasant there's nothing to spend the money on so you don't care about 0.1% rate of return vs 10% rate of return if there's not enough cool stuff to spend even 0.001% rate of return on. Their financial capital markets, nascent as they were, were essentially non-functional. If you know how to make a nationwide railroad, thats nice, but theres simply no way to finance it. There were no business/financial paths to wealth and anyone who became wealthy or powerful via trade was noteworthy and extremely rare; essentially all the people with money got it by sophistry or military skill, not by being intelligent stewards of their wealth, so expecting intelligent investment is overly optimistic. (edited in, lack of existing transport infrastructure means no commodities market, so flooding the local tin market just means you sell more tin for the same total revenue...) So in England at the start of the industrial revolution you had professional-ish mine managers who saw their only way to squeeze out that next percent of revenue was crazy coal powered steam engine water pumps... If a tin mine owning Roman wanted more tin, he'd just take over another province with some legions or legally wheel and deal his way into stealing a mine from a fellow Roman. Later on Diocletian codified central economic control, communist style, see the link. If you could make a steam locomotive engine, thats nice, but it would be illegal for anyone to work for you, especially the skilled craftsmen you'd need to assemble your locomotive. Have a small economic collapse now, or patch over things to produce a much bigger one later. Guess what option we selected this century for the last couple decades, LOL, the future for us is going to be almost as exciting as the Romans declining years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#Social_and_professional_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#Social_and_professi... Making a handwavy argument their civilization had reached and exceeded the scaling limit of an operational empire even for the most skilled emperors, and of course most emperors were not skilled. The point of that is increasing complexity increases fragility; a ridiculously complex economy based on silicon refined semiconductor computer technology would have collapsed much sooner, not later, and certainly not result in mobile phones in 1000 AD or whatever. If you thought Aurelian had problems with currency reform, imagine if that poor bastard had additional challenges of fractional reserve banking, high frequency trading, derivatives markets, financial alchemy such as mortgage based securities, if he had to put up with all that the poor guy would never have even tried...

by fosk 8y ago

steve19 8y ago

Very interesting idea. But I am not sure the Roman's could have skipped 1,000 of slow technological progress. I would say we might have reached mobile phones a little earlier if the Mongels had not laid waste to a lot of the world's population, specifically the very scientifically advanced Islamic world. But even then, how much could we have skipped? The Roman's would probably never have had any desire to explore the sea leading to the invention of the naval chronometer, and all the important advances that brought about (edit: towards the end they could barely manage the land empire they had, and they were not seafarers)

loggedinmyphone 8y ago
Islamic civilization was never very curious about the outside world other than militarily. There is a famous story about Galileo's telescopes being sent as a gift to a Muslim ruler to observe the planets. They didn't see any point in this but were excited about being able to use them to spot and attack other ships. Islamic culture did preserve some of the old Greek scholarship, but real science didn't get started until after their Golden age was past.
- fsloth 8y ago
  There were excellent scholars in the early Islamic culture (700 - 1000) before the religious dogmatists started dominating the intellectual sphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna Etc. We who've read our history form western sources just aren't generally aware of them because we usually write the names of the most famous ones in latin form (e.g. Avicenna).
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Was it in Islamic or, was it in Middle-Eastern culture? What particularly about Islam, or the particular individuals faith/religious practice made their science a part of religious development? It's fascinating to see the interplay of science from different geographies - that Al-Kindi started by learning and translating Greek science and then that we primarily know him through others translation of his works to Latin. Al-Kwarizmi is a well known name in the West from the same Persian scientific community (I think he was perhaps head of the House of Wisdom whilst Al-Kindi was there).
    - Cyph0n 8y ago
      It is referred to as Islamic science because: a) Scientists came from a wide variety of backgrounds, but were usually of Muslim faith. For example, the term "Middle East" would not be accurate since many scholars were Persian and West Asian. b) Scholars were typically funded by patrons who were associated with the Muslim empire/caliphate. c) To a lesser extent, many of the prominent scholars first learned Islamic science and philosophy -- typically at a young age -- before delving into the natural sciences.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        It's interesting we don't [in the UK nor in English language sources online] refer to the likes of Kepler as being part of Christian science, despite the characters often being trained priests in one denomination or another [Copernicus, say, was a doctor of canon law], often being funded by Church patrons. There's an interesting divergence in the perceptions; I'm interested in whether that's a modern issue or if it represents something inherent in the mode of the science being performed? Wikipedia mentions scientists who were historically - and are elsewhere - known for their Christian faith, priests and such but without mentioning that they were Christian believers but with scientists who were living in Islamic countries [I don't know the history to know if they, for example were Imams or wrote religious treatise] they're flagged as Muslims. Copernicus/Kepler/Brahe [I didn't check further] aren't claimed to be Christian, Al-Kindi is claimed in the first sentence as a Muslim amongst Muslim scholars, in a Muslim World, etc.. Any input on historic differences, IYO, that lead to these different characterisations?
- gnulinux 8y ago
  This is a very Orientalist view of history, and is factually wrong. Islamic scholars advanced not only in medicine, astronomy and physics but also geography, history, journalism etc... Not only this, but also if you think from Kuhn-ian perspective it would be wrong to expect Islamic science to converge to the same point Western science converged (and if you disagree, I'd like to hear how you argue against Kuhn). So "anything outside of military" is a very wide range not even Westerners were curious of e.g. the whole computational way of thinking was only developed in early 20th centuries even though some really cool algorithms (leasy squares/Gauss/Newton's algorithm, graph theory, sieve of Erathotenes etc...) hinted computation could be fun. Why didn't Western world invent computer science until Turing/Church/Godel? I don't know, but it's certainly not strange Muslims didn't invent that too.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
    The West was also not very interested in the rest of the world except to conquer, prior to the development of the modern worldview between Bacon and Newton. This was a singular event that marks the sudden rise of the West in power and knowledge.
- Cyph0n 8y ago
  There are a number of theories for why science flourished in the Muslim world, but this is not one of them.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  This statement seems very ignorant to me. Medieval Islamic developments were manifold. Off the top of my head, the preeminence of Islamic ideas are fossilized in words like algebra, algorithm and alchemy. A cursory visit to Wikipedia reveals a good list of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
  - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
    I'm as excited about the achievements of the Islamic Golden Age as the next guy. It certainly helped lay the foundation for the scientific method, just as the achievements of Classical Greeks did. It's just that it was over before the scientific revolution started.

muro 8y ago

The number of slaves steadily decreased as the Rome stopped expanding. Additionally, by the time Rome turned into an empire, freeing of slaves became a show of magnanimousity and so frequent, Augustus (= around 0AD) had to put extra laws limiting it. Thus, the Roman empire had a shortage of slaves and couldn't just "count on the slaves" for everything.

pjmlp 8y ago

I think the biggest reason was the fall of the imperial. Outside what is now known Italy, many Roman outposts only had a glimpse of Roman technology and as they got conquered by their enemies, everything got destroyed and the knowledge was lost in that part of Europe. It is impressive to read books like Herodotus and realizing Greek students that could afford it where doing "internships" in Egypt, where the idea of specialized doctors was already a thing.

simonh 8y ago

Most of Rome's engineering achievements were not performed using slave labour though. They were largely executed by the army. Slaves worked in plantations and mines, but tended to die out after a generation because slaves having babies and raising children were unproductive, so the slave economy relied on a constant influx of new slaves from conquests. Once the Empire largely stabilised it's borders, the supply lines ran dry and the population of slaves dwindled away. The idea of a Dark Ages is largely a north-western European one because we got largely cut off from Rome for a few centuries. In Italy and France, and especially in the Byzantine Empire there was no Dark Age. Technological progress didn't stop and slavery was no longer a major sociological or economic factor.

loggedinmyphone 8y ago
There was a Byzantine Dark Age in the 7th and 8th Centuries where perfume lived under the rubble of previous cities hiding from Arabic and other invaders. The Roman aqueducts went into disrepair and people went back to drinking from wells. There was a major population collapse. They did make some cool devices though like clocks and mechanical lions, as well as Greek fire. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/06/the-byzantine-dark-ages http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/06/the-byzant...
- simonh 8y ago
  I wasn't aware of that, thanks!
fsloth 8y ago
"slavery was no longer a major sociological or economic factor." Slavery was still an important economic factor in the early middle ages ("Dark ages"). "By ...(741–752), Venice had established a thriving slave trade, buying in Italy, and selling to the Moors in Northern Africa. .. Caravans of slaves traveled from Eastern Europe, through Alpine passes in Austria, to reach Venice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe
- 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>Rome certainly was a highly advanced society in its time, but what a shame to think that because of vast abundance of slaves the Roman society never pushed further with technological innovations, effectively preventing the human race from having mobile phones by the year 1000, if not earlier. Thank god for that!

fsloth 8y ago

I don't think there are that many examples of roman technical innovations or scientific development. They were ultimately practical, but not overtly imaginative. They adapted, what they found practical, and could scale up what worked due to their organizational skill. I think the main impediment to progress in the ancient world was the tendency not to share discoveries but to keep them secret. No patents, but your schoolmates will kill you if you share the discoveries taught to you. Academies were not universities - more like a dude with a few disciples. If your disciples just don't get your invention it will just be forgotten. I'm sure greek went past Euclid in all sort of ways but we just never heard from them.

loggedinmyphone 8y ago

Rome had slaves but it wasn't the cornerstone of their economy. The idea that the life in each generation should be more advanced and efficient than in the previous simply hadn't been invented then.

Balero 8y ago
Slaves were the cornerstone of the Roman economy, especially between 100bce and 100ce. The impact of all of the slaves from the conquest of Gaul was what Ceaser used as a platform for his politics. You are right on your second point. There was an account of a person coming up with a labour saving device for cleaning streets. However they were not allowed to use it as it was taking needed jobs away from people in the city.

fsloth 8y ago

Industrialism had lot of preconditions that had to be in place. The late 18th century europe was much more complex and developed place than the roman empire ever was in several ways. 1. Science (had been picking up steam for a few centuries) 2. Capital (wealth from the colonies had been piling up for centuries as well) 3. Public demand for goods (you're not just selling to the prince, you are selling to everyone). 4. Several countries with legal systems and professional courts that upheld the law and facilitated binding legal agreements. 5. Political system that did not overrule the courts just because the king needed a bit more money After these preconditions were in place, I think one of the triggers in the industrialized age was the expanding market demand for goods. If the demand is low, there is very little incentive to move beyond human artisanal labour (ahem, artisanal mining, ahem).

Retric 8y ago
The largest factor was simply population size largely from gradual improvements in farming. Global population in year zero was estimated at 200-300 million. That jumpted to 700-800 million in 1700 and 900M to 1 billion in 1800. Sure the city of Rome hit 1 million people early, but that took an empire to sustain. At the start of the industrial revolution several cities where about that large. PS: The Roman Empire covered a lot of land, but it's population was somwere between modern day South Korea and Germany. And all that distance dramatically slowed down communication.
- fsloth 8y ago
  6. Development of more productive and less labour intensive agricultural methods which increased population and released labour to other endevours. :) Thanks for the reminder!

tuomosipola 8y ago

Classical antiquity, along with Judaeo-Christian tradition and the Enlightenment, form the foundation for the Western civilization. You could throw in others but those three are the big ones, I think. The Greeks and the Romans have had a huge influence on what we have become.

maxerickson 8y ago

I think in the long view we are either still in or have just recently left the first era of human civilization, so it isn't surprising that there would be echoes of an early empire. The demarcation can be technical or social (How long has it been that we've had a shared global knowledge of history? That's a significant transition.).

enitihas 8y ago

Just curious, was Rome even at its peak bigger than the contemporary Chinese empire? Now if only the Chinese empire wasn't so self sufficient.

leetcrew 8y ago
not really. in 117 AD, the roman empire controlled about half the total area of contemporary china (5 million km^2 vs 9.6 million km^2). the estimated population at this time was 70 million, two orders of magnitude off china's 1.4 billion today. the only way you could consider rome to have been "bigger" is to consider what fraction of the world's population fell within its borders. about 21% of the world's population lived in the roman empire versus china's 18.4% share today. [1][2] edit: or did you mean china contemporary to rome haha? most relevant figures are for the han dynasty. area was 6.5 million km^2 in 100 AD, and population was 57.6 million in 2 AD, making the two empires roughly comparable in size. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty

lkrubner 8y ago

Slavery overlaps with the Industrial Revolution by at least 100 years, and even longer in the colonies, such as India and Kenya. The resources needed for industrialism were dug up by slaves. It is tough to make the case that slavery impeded industrialism, when there are many cases where slavery seems to have helped industrialism. I think its best to look elsewhere for the roots of industrialism. Descartes and Newton helped form certain intellectual foundations, and the willingness of English peasants to fight and die for their religious beliefs lead to the end of the witch burning and heresy trials. That's important because a few years later Jethro Tull and Charles Townshend begin the Agricultural Revolution. Jethro Tull was 26 years old when he started working on his machines, in 1701. He was not necessarily smarter than all previous farmers, but he belonged to the first generation in history that had a guarantee that they could violate tradition and they would not be burned at the stake for it.

WalterBright 8y ago
> It is tough to make the case that slavery impeded industrialism Compare the free states of the Union vs the slave states of the Confederacy. The free states rapidly industrialized from 1800-1860, the slave states did not and pretty much did not advance economically at all.
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  If you read about the economics of this period you'll find that, as with most of history, the reality isn't this simple. A lot of Southern capital went into financing Northern industry, for example. It's difficult to neatly divide the nation's economy in this way as if they were two separate spheres, as much they as they may have want to think of themselves that way.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    Not one southern city industrialized. Investors tend to invest in things they know about and can keep an eye on, which tends to be local. Investment capital uniformly fleeing the slave states to the free ones suggests that investing in slave states was a bad investment. In those days, different states were like different countries today.

Zardoz84 8y ago

You could get a big surprise if you think that the romans get stagnated about technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology#Technologies_developed_or_invented_by_the_Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology#Technologies_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/ http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/ What pushed or stagnated tech development not was slavery. What push us quickly since the modern age, was the free movement of ideas and knowledge (thanks to the printing press and paper making the books affordable) and the scientific method.

nradov 8y ago

You might enjoy the alternate history novel "Kingdom of the Wicked" by Helen Dale. It takes place in the Roman Empire where the industrial revolution arrived 2000 years early partly due to abolishing slavery. https://www.ligatu.re/book/rules/ https://www.ligatu.re/book/rules/

WalterBright 8y ago

Foundational as well is the printing press. Rome didn't have one, and perhaps went as far as it could without it. While the printing press is probably required for industrialization, it is not sufficient. Your point about slavery holding it back is a good one.

WalterBright 8y ago
Further support for this notion comes from the fact that in the southern US slave states, it was illegal to teach the slaves to read. It would be pretty hard to industrialize when the workforce is forcibly kept ignorant.
Balgair 8y ago
Part of what made the printing press work was the metallurgy required. You needed quality iron and steel for the screws and the typefaces, brass and bronze would not endure the stresses. Those metallurgic advancements largely came out of war and the need for metals that could handle black-powder explosions.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Even Gutenberg's primitive press, which was built out of a wooden wine press, was revolutionary. It used cast lead type. The Romans had lead technology.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    Thanks for the clarification!

VLM 8y ago

Not slavery so much. As with many large scale trends there are many large scale reasons. Massive income and wealth inequality kicked in around a hundred BC or so and poverty prevents a mass production consumer economy so right there you're limited to mass production of industrial goods, meanwhile if you have millions of times the wealth of a peasant there's nothing to spend the money on so you don't care about 0.1% rate of return vs 10% rate of return if there's not enough cool stuff to spend even 0.001% rate of return on. Their financial capital markets, nascent as they were, were essentially non-functional. If you know how to make a nationwide railroad, thats nice, but theres simply no way to finance it. There were no business/financial paths to wealth and anyone who became wealthy or powerful via trade was noteworthy and extremely rare; essentially all the people with money got it by sophistry or military skill, not by being intelligent stewards of their wealth, so expecting intelligent investment is overly optimistic. (edited in, lack of existing transport infrastructure means no commodities market, so flooding the local tin market just means you sell more tin for the same total revenue...) So in England at the start of the industrial revolution you had professional-ish mine managers who saw their only way to squeeze out that next percent of revenue was crazy coal powered steam engine water pumps... If a tin mine owning Roman wanted more tin, he'd just take over another province with some legions or legally wheel and deal his way into stealing a mine from a fellow Roman. Later on Diocletian codified central economic control, communist style, see the link. If you could make a steam locomotive engine, thats nice, but it would be illegal for anyone to work for you, especially the skilled craftsmen you'd need to assemble your locomotive. Have a small economic collapse now, or patch over things to produce a much bigger one later. Guess what option we selected this century for the last couple decades, LOL, the future for us is going to be almost as exciting as the Romans declining years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#Social_and_professional_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#Social_and_professi... Making a handwavy argument their civilization had reached and exceeded the scaling limit of an operational empire even for the most skilled emperors, and of course most emperors were not skilled. The point of that is increasing complexity increases fragility; a ridiculously complex economy based on silicon refined semiconductor computer technology would have collapsed much sooner, not later, and certainly not result in mobile phones in 1000 AD or whatever. If you thought Aurelian had problems with currency reform, imagine if that poor bastard had additional challenges of fractional reserve banking, high frequency trading, derivatives markets, financial alchemy such as mortgage based securities, if he had to put up with all that the poor guy would never have even tried...