5 ms·

This realization hit me after spending a few weeks in Italy seeing the remains of the Roman Empire. I had a building sense that they were awfully close to the i

• cwkoss 5y ago
  What were the main factors that prevented the roman empire from having an industrial revolution? Is there a single technology, that if sent back in time, would have sustained their empire? (Steam engine? Hydropower improvements? Standardized measurements for tighter tolerances?)
  • Kalium 5y ago
    I've seen the argument made that the major factor was slavery. In general, they had a cheap source of unskilled labor. Major advances in industrialization were often driven, in no small part, by high labor costs.
    • lovemenot 5y ago
      The British Empire too had relied on slavery until well into the nineteenth century. By which time the Industrial Revolution was already underway.
      • JetSetWilly 5y ago
        There were some significant differences. For one thing, slavery was not legal within Britain itself, which is where the industrial revolution occurred. While no doubt slavery abroad meant that some luxury goods like sugar or tobacco were cheaper than they otherwise have been, there weren't slaves working the fields to make food and weave clothes in Britain itself. There's a whole lot of research to show that the cost of labour in Britain in the 18th century was far higher than that of continental Europe - several times higher. And that this high cost of labour is what spurred on innovation.
    • usrusr 5y ago
      I see a strong counter-argument in their advanced knowledge (and industrial-scale use) of hydro power. Are you familiar with the Barbegal mills? What I think could have been a considerable factor that is rarely discussed is how "cosmopolitan" power structures appear in the late empire: someone makes an exceptional military career, gathers loyalty in the legions currently stationed in whatever corner of the empire he happens to serve, a few years later he's one of the contenders for emperor in the next civil war. But the economic development of the regions the "players" are associated with (if they even are associated with some specific region) doesn't seem to be a factor at all in that game. A few centuries later feudalism and successors had military power (and with it political power) tied much closer to actual land and its economic power. This certainly did not directly lead to politics trying to foster industrial progress, but I can easily imagine how one form of stability (some hierarchy of lords stable for generations) could set up the prerequisites in a way the other form of stability (one seemingly eternal super-state but in an endless state of internal strife as the only form of meaningful achievement) would not.
  • SapporoChris 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Requirem... I found this a fascinating read. Below that section is a list of technological developments.
    • cwkoss 5y ago
      Interesting. "natural resources such as [...] waterfalls"? Is this a typo? Or is it talking about small waterfalls for hydro power? -- Which of those six factors was the roman empire lacking? I feel like they could have had all six, but I don't know much about roman history.
• svachalek 5y ago
  Check out some of the research on how the terra cotta army in Xi'an was produced. There were some very modern (20th century) mass production techniques in place. It's pretty fascinating to see how differently history could have gone.
• topper-123 5y ago
  A fun alternative time line to think about would be if the romans had progressed, had depleted all coal and oil resources, leaving us today in a postapocalyptic wasteland, having the knowledge how to build an advanced society, but lacking the ressources…
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    I would read that book.
    • nitrogen 5y ago
      Anathem by Neal Stephenson has some of that vibe. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend reading it without even glancing at the Wikipedia page or plot synopses to avoid conceptual spoilers.
      • psd1 5y ago
        It doesn't have tone in common with post-apocalyptic fiction. I'd call it "alternative future", not that it's easy to pigeonhole! It absolutely is germane to this conversation and thanks for reminding me of it. I think HN would enjoy it very much. It's an astonishing novel. Read it!
    • dflock 5y ago
      "A mote in god's eye", by Niven & Pournelle covers a very similar setup, although not on earth. It's also quite good.
  • elihu 5y ago
    Presumably it would have happened more slowly, as the world population was less then. Though, maybe that wouldn't have actually made that much difference, as the rapid population growth of the last few hundred years is probably largely the result of technological progress (specifically, increases in farm output and modern medical technology). If there had been a population boom during the Roman empire, they might have been able to consume the world's fossil fuel resources pretty quickly, and with predictable results.
• Baeocystin 5y ago
  Not an accident. Energy. Rome as a meta-organism was limited by available energy- trees weren't enough, and denudation of forests was already a limiting factor. Meanwhile, Britain had plentiful coal in easily-accessible abundance. No point in developing steam and a theory of thermodynamics when you can't use the results.
  • wbl 5y ago
    Italy does have some coal and Rome at one point had the coal seams of the UK.
    • Baeocystin 5y ago
      Yup. The Romans in Britain did use coal for their hypocausts. But too far away, too little, too late for the Empire at large.
  • sideshowb 5y ago
    I thought denudation of forest was a limiting factor in the UK too, indeed a motivating factor for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Darby_I https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Darby_I
    • Baeocystin 5y ago
      It absolutely was. It has been everywhere! The difference being that the UK had coal to fill the need.
• marcosdumay 5y ago
  They had nothing like the Modern age's science. I can't imagine any reason for it not appearing there given enough time, but they didn't have the dispassionate questioning of every theory and total submission to empiricism that are fundamental to science today. Math advanced a huge amount during the Medieval age. They simply didn't have good tools for calculations, and nearly all of the Modern Age's math was based on questions that they didn't even consider to ask by then. There were huge advances on material handling during the Medieval and Modern ages. Not only the obvious ones on metallurgy, but on glass working and ceramics too. All of those were important. And let's not underestimate the individuals. Had Newton not been born, our Industrial Revolution could be delayed for many decades too. Anyway, it's no accident that when he appeared, he was at England, there was basically no other place on the world where somebody like him could do what he did.
  • xyzzyz 5y ago
    You are giving way too much credit to science in the early phase of industrial revolution. Science has been extremely important in technological development from late 1800s onwards, but the most critical leaps of late 1700s and early 1800s had little to do with Newton-style science. Instead, they mostly about engineering improvements, combined with a newly widespread social attitude that technology actually can be significantly improved. Flying shuttle has not been based on some theoretical scientific model, but rather on experience with making looms and ingenuity in improving them. Similarly, Watt didn’t create his engine based on theory of thermodynamics, instead he just observed that repeatedly heating and cooling the cylinder is wasteful, and came up with a technique to avoid that. If you follow the development Industrial Revolution, you’ll see that it’s mostly thanks to ingenious engineers, not smart scientists. The scientists did occasionally deliver something valuable, often in fact paradigm-changing, but importantly, this only became very relevant around the turn of 20th century.
    • marcosdumay 5y ago
      Having forces defined as a quantifiable concept that you can easily predict is quite important for tooling and creating reproducible machines. The Mechanics is quite important for mechanical engineering. Yes, those engineers were inventing most things by themselves, but they didn't work in a vacuum.
• thewarrior 5y ago
  They did not have the printing press or free markets. The combination of the wider dissemination of ways of knowing and acting in a free market of ideas combined with a free market of individuals and firms that applied the knowledge is what set it all off. The ancient Greeks had a steam engine. There were no mass printed books so barely anyone knew about it. Even if you knew you couldn’t exactly start a company.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  L. Sprague De Camp had the same opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
  • bsenftner 5y ago
    Although other books claim the title today, for a few decades "Lest Darkness Fall" was considered the first distinctly science fiction novel.
• billiam 5y ago
  Priority was given to running an empire, which didn't require too much mechanical ingenuity, just political ingenuity.
• peter303 5y ago
  These were slave societies. Buckminster Fuller enunciated the concept of 'energy slaves', that is each modern person vampires off the energy of certain number of fossil fuel human equivalents. One calculation in the Wikipedia article has 400 energy slaves backing each developed world resident. The most most slave-ridden ancient societies never exceeded 10:1, with most like 3:1. Social progress would need to go in hand with technological progress.