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Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

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Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#41

Post by jcranmer »

jychang wrote: post #16
caio1982 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very simplistic (bit naive IMHO) POV.

I agree it's simplistic, but that's not particularly overly naive. The kickstart of the industrial revolution very much benefited from the disappearance of a large "free" labor source, and it was probably one of the primary social factors that worked in conjunction with the technological foundations at the time.

As a counterpoint, the cotton that fueled the textiles industry that drove early industrialization was entirely dependent on slavery. There is no doubt that the cotton gin was the primary economic factor in making slavery in the South profitable, and it's very arguable that, without the massive expansion of cotton cultivation, the textile industry in the early 1800s couldn't have grown as much and couldn't have driven industrialization.

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#42

Post by jacques_chester »

So to explain the background:

1. Helen Dale, a novelist, has written a novel, Kingdom of the Wicked, of which the first book has recently been released[0].

2. It's set in an alternative history, during the time of Augustus.

3. Helen Dale believes an author's intepretation of her work is more meaningful, in a critical or literary sense, than a critic's. So she included an "Author's Note" in her novel, explaining the background leading to its creation.

4. The Author's Note was republished by the Cato Institute on their libertarianism.org website[1].

5. This essay is a reply to the Author's Note.

I've been hosting Helen's website for more than a decade. She is very, very, very smart and a damn good writer. She's also the right person for the right story.

I think you're going to hear a lot about this book in the coming year.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Wicked-Book-One-Rules/dp/0994...

[1] https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/authors-n...

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#43

Post by boomboomsubban »

jychang wrote: post #16
caio1982 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very simplistic (bit naive IMHO) POV.

I agree it's simplistic, but that's not particularly overly naive. The kickstart of the industrial revolution very much benefited from the disappearance of a large "free" labor source, and it was probably one of the primary social factors that worked in conjunction with the technological foundations at the time.

This ignores the massive amounts of "free" labor that they were receiving from places like India and the Americas. That was a far larger pool than any amount of domestic slavery most of Europe had in previous generations.

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#44

Post by louthy »

orbat wrote: post #38
saalweachter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serfdom was completely ended in England 200 years before the Industrial Revolution, and while slaves were still present in England, they were never a significant part of the labor pool. What other conditions had to be met, or is it simply a matter of waiting two centuries after eliminating slaves/serfs from the labor pool?

My point was that it sounds likely that something like the industrial revolution would happen after the abolishment of slavery, when there's more pressure on people to be inventive. Not that it has to happen immediately

Why then did it not happen after the Black Death decimated Europe?

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#45

Post by AnimalMuppet »

eropple wrote: post #29
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why then did Oppenheimer (not a Christian, BTW) say that science could not have begun without Christianity? How much of your example is survivor bias? How many roman aqueducts didn't stand to this day (and in fact failed in use)? Well, we'd only know if someone made a record of it, and the record survived, or if we found the remains in an archaelogical exploration. Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and br…

I can't speak about Oppenheimer, but I can speak to how we understand that scientific practice in antiquity worked as they themselves described it. Have you studied the Pythagoreans through Plato? Or read Vitruvius? This is not oh, those capricious gods! stuff, this is "what can we think about?", "how do we know what we know?", and "how does it apply?" stuff. And, when you spend time reading them, it is pretty obviou…

The Pythagoreans? The guys who couldn't separate their geometry from their mysticism? The guys who murdered the man who proved the existence of irrational numbers for (essentially) heresy? Whose "how do we know what we know" was at least sometimes "because mysticism"? They grappled with the question, I'll grant you. But their answer left a fair amount to be desired.

> What do you think the iterative process of developing those rules of thumb is, if it isn't science?

Well, it's technology. We observe that, if we want to build a bridge for an aqueduct, if it's higher than X feet, we have to build the bridge in layers, or else it will fall down. And we can't have more than Y layers, or it will fall down anyway. That's observation, and engineering, but it isn't science.

To me, science is: 1) Systematic observation, 2) The search for regularities in the observations, 3) Proposing an explanation for the observed regularities, and 4) Testing the proposed explanation.

Without that fourth step, it isn't science. And I don't think that "we can't build higher than Y layers" should be the end point of "proposing an explanation".

> And if Aristotle being wrong about the observation rankles you...

What rankles me isn't that Aristotle was wrong. It's that he never made the observation. He stated something that seemed obviously right (to him), but he never checked it in any way, even though he had the means to do so in his own house. (And no, I don't think Epicurus is the answer to what Aristotle did wrong.)

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#46

Post by philipkglass »

sassenach wrote: post #22
saalweachter wrote: post #7

Has anyone read a good book on why the Industrial Revolution did happen? What were the necessary precursors, politically, economically, technologically, scientifically, culturally, before you start trying to automate all the things?

One factor often overlooked is energy availability (the link touches it somewhat). EDIT: Wikipedia on coal, for instance, states "The development of the Industrial Revolution led to the large-scale use of coal" - rather than coal being the enabler what, with forests probably being exhausted at the time... Important in automation is work done by a machine, enhancing or replacing labor. Machines require energy, both fo…

I think that energy availability is overlooked because it doesn't seem to be an especially proximate cause of the Industrial Revolution. Many other countries have coal. People in the UK knew of the existence of coal for centuries (millennia?) before the IR. A lot of times and places had fossil energy stores available in the abstract. Why did it take so long before any people performed mechanical work with fossil fuels, and why did the first outbreak of industrialization occur in the UK instead of (e.g.) China or Germany?

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#47

Post by adventured »

WalterBright wrote: post #40
saalweachter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the elimination of slavery/serfdom isn't a necessary precursor; I just don't think it was a sufficient condition. What is the complete set of necessary and sufficient preconditions to have an Industrial Revolution?

I don't know if this is a complete set, but: 1. economic freedom 2. printing press 3. a view of the universe that it follows rules that can be discovered and modeled in the small 4. the scientific method 5. protection of property rights, enforcement of contracts, rule of law rather than corruption

> economic freedom

China certainly supports that premise. The before and after on their shift toward economic liberalization, is something beyond dramatic. A 50 fold expansion of their economy in a mere three decades after Deng Xiaoping began the liberalization.

It's also interesting to note that wealthier resource nations that heavily lack economic freedom such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (formerly semi-wealthy in their case), also mostly lack modern industrialization and have routinely failed to develop their economies.

Russia is another example of this in action. Putin will continually fail to see high level economic development under his regime, as the nation almost entirely lacks economic freedom. The primary means by which Russia can expand its economy under his oppressive rule, is through natural resource prices moving higher (which accounted for most of Russia's economic gains from 2001-2013, leading up to the price of oil imploding in 2014 and sparking a terrible recession there). Russia's GDP in 1991 was $518 billion (when the price of oil was $20). It was $1.28 trillion for 2016. Inflation adjusted (much less further adjusting for the higher real oil prices today), they've made very little self-sustaining economic progress, while burning through vast energy resources.

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#48

Post by jcranmer »

adventured wrote: post #47
WalterBright wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is a complete set, but: 1. economic freedom 2. printing press 3. a view of the universe that it follows rules that can be discovered and modeled in the small 4. the scientific method 5. protection of property rights, enforcement of contracts, rule of law rather than corruption

> economic freedom China certainly supports that premise. The before and after on their shift toward economic liberalization, is something beyond dramatic. A 50 fold expansion of their economy in a mere three decades after Deng Xiaoping began the liberalization. It's also interesting to note that wealthier resource nations that heavily lack economic freedom such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (formerly semi-wealthy in…

The USSR is a powerful counterexample. In 1914, Russia was a backwards agrocentric economy that was one of the poorest of Europe. 25 years later, it's an industrial juggernaut on par with, or perhaps even (especially as feared by many at the time) better than the US.

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#49

Post by adventured »

saalweachter wrote: post #32
orbat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Started late 18th century, after several decades of European countries and US states abolishing slavery ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... ). Why, when do you think it happened?

Serfdom was completely ended in England 200 years before the Industrial Revolution, and while slaves were still present in England, they were never a significant part of the labor pool. What other conditions had to be met, or is it simply a matter of waiting two centuries after eliminating slaves/serfs from the labor pool?

England, like many of the European powers, vastly benefited from the slavery in the Americas through trade. Former English territories such as South Carolina (it was theirs for a century leading up to the Revolutionary War) or Georgia, were aggressive slave states and England was heavily responsible for that condition. England was the largest slave trader in the 18th century, as such the foundations of slavery particularly in the colonies were overwhelmingly their responsibility. England's wealthy slave owners were still very active in the slave trade well into the 19th century (into the 1830s). Their direct role in the slave trade, as such, didn't cease until about 50-60 years prior to the industrial revolution (their indirect role, responsibility and benefit extends far longer than that).

European powers outsourced their slavery to the Americas, directly funding, operating and protecting it, while feigning morality about it at home.

Re: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?

#50

Post by megaman22 »

jcranmer wrote: post #48
adventured wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> economic freedom China certainly supports that premise. The before and after on their shift toward economic liberalization, is something beyond dramatic. A 50 fold expansion of their economy in a mere three decades after Deng Xiaoping began the liberalization. It's also interesting to note that wealthier resource nations that heavily lack economic freedom such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (formerly semi-wealthy in…

The USSR is a powerful counterexample. In 1914, Russia was a backwards agrocentric economy that was one of the poorest of Europe. 25 years later, it's an industrial juggernaut on par with, or perhaps even (especially as feared by many at the time) better than the US.

Who cares if you have to starve a few tens of millions of peasants to death to drag them into the industrial age?
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