OK. I also didn't mean to come off harsh. The author uses Rome largely as a stand-in for "ancient world" in any case. The reason I brought this up is because I

OK. I also didn't mean to come off harsh. The author uses Rome largely as a stand-in for "ancient world" in any case. The reason I brought this up is because I want to push back against the frame which implies conditions made it impossible for Romans to have had an industrial revolution or that conditions made the revolution inevitable in England. If you widen the frame to include many civilizations, even many eras of roman history... it becomes more plausible that England was a fluke.