NationStates Jolt Archive

This is one of many half-baked ideas I have for a multimedia graphic novel project that I want to do for shits and giggles.

I want to know if there are any Economists on this forum who could succinctly define what the basic requirements to an Industrial Revolution would be. And if there are any Classicists who would know how far Rome went in achieving these requirements.

I would also like to hear peoples' opinions as to when the Point-of-Divergence would be, I'm thinking after the death of Caligula the attempts to restore the Republic succeeded, which stokes a renaissance in Roman society and science.

But please, if I'm talking nonsense, please correct me, I want this thing to be plausable, so I want some cohesive background information.

No. Without North American coal, I very much doubt any Industrial Revolution would have lasted long.

Best you read 'Lest Darkness Fall' by L. Sprague DeCamp. I think you'll find this has been done already - like, fifty years ago done already.

Best you read 'Lest Darkness Fall' by L. Sprague DeCamp. I think you'll find this has been done already - like, fifty years ago done already.

Well, since the subject has already been researched, would you mind enlightening the rest of us as to what conclusion was reached?

I remember seeing a programme on the BBC a while back that said that, in light of recent discoveries, some of the late Roman technology was quite a bit further advanced than we had previously thought. Don't ask me what all the technology was, but it was seriously impressive. Stuff that wasn't seen again until the 17th or 18th century.

This is one of many half-baked ideas I have for a multimedia graphic novel project that I want to do for shits and giggles.

I want to know if there are any Economists on this forum who could succinctly define what the basic requirements to an Industrial Revolution would be. And if there are any Classicists who would know how far Rome went in achieving these requirements.

I would also like to hear peoples' opinions as to when the Point-of-Divergence would be, I'm thinking after the death of Caligula the attempts to restore the Republic succeeded, which stokes a renaissance in Roman society and science.

But please, if I'm talking nonsense, please correct me, I want this thing to be plausable, so I want some cohesive background information.

I wouldn't know exactly what the precise definition of an Industrial Revolution was, but it has the essential elements of 1) increasing food production raising the level of population, 2) population increases and changes in land distribution leading to increased urbanization, and 3) the increased demand for service goods leading to methods of increasing productivity, such as labor specialization and use of machinery to increase production.

None of those elements were found in ancient Rome. It is true that Rome had some unique qualities that would have lent themselves well to an Industrial Revolution, such as the Roman baths providing sanitation, an embryonic knowledge of piping that lent itself later to sewer systems that make true metropolises possible, and rudimentary public service and entertainment systems. But the simple fact is that the Roman Empire was still largely rural, had a slowly growing population that was not being shifted off the land into urban areas, and there was no real need for increased productivity. Without those three elements, an industrial revolution simply will not and cannot occur.

No. Without North American coal, I very much doubt any Industrial Revolution would have lasted long.
Well if they'd managed to preciptate an industrial revolution with the coal they had on hand then it wouldn't have taken them long to use it to get access to that coal in North America. Although they're still mining coal in Britain where the industrial revolution started after hundreds of years so I don't think a Roman industrial revolution would have been stunted by lack of coal resources.

Well, since the subject has already been researched, would you mind enlightening the rest of us as to what conclusion was reached?
No, I'll instead encourage you to go out and read a book, lazybones.

Well...I'm not sure how close you could say Rome was to industrial power, but if they hadn't fallen, we would have had the revolution about a thousand years earlier. I remember a fiction about this idea: the Romans had nukes by 1500s.

I wouldn't know exactly what the precise definition of an Industrial Revolution was, but it has the essential elements of 1) increasing food production raising the level of population, 2) population increases and changes in land distribution leading to increased urbanization, and 3) the increased demand for service goods leading to methods of increasing productivity, such as labor specialization and use of machinery to increase production.

Well, what was it that caused step 1 to come into being?

Unless I am mistaken it was the highly improbable and brilliant invention of agricultural devices that led to this? So essentially it came down to the luck of birth, by luck a mind was born into that generation that had the skills and materials to build these machines. So... say a mind of the same stature was born into an Ancient Roman generation. Would they have the skills and materials, or would they, like countless other potential geniuses, have simply wiled away their lives in obscurity?

No, I'll instead encourage you to go out and read a book, lazybones.

That's no fun. :(

Your refusal to give me the information I want has led me to this only remaining option then... wild speculation.

*ahem*

I believe the Roman Empire was a decade away at most from discovering steam power, as early experiments in Rome conducted by the secret society of Coolstuff Maximus were making steady progress towards that goal. Steam powered war machines would have been immediately integrated into the legions of the Empire, and so history would have been full of wicked cool stuff like giant steam-powered mecha stomping across the battlefield to conquer the Parthian Empire.

:)

Not likely. Why? They had a different cultural mindset and slavery. They had no need for labor saving devices as slaves did all the crap work. And they needed to keep the slaves busy at all times lest they have time to stage a revolt. Idle hands and such.

The Industrial Revolution wasn't just about inventions. Yes, the Romans had the basis of understanding that could have led to a steam engine. Yes, given their scholastic method they _might_ have started doing enough applied tinkering to lead to the Scientific Revolution which was the necessary concurrent component.

You have to understand that people didn't think "this is too hard, there has to be a way to make it easier" ...they thought "this is hard, I must not be doing it right or" "this is hard, life sucks". Fatalism and reverence for tradition were a dead hand on human innovation for ages because our earliest experiences as a race were that stability and continuity were important and that change was a dangerous gambit all too likely to fail.

Moreover, economically, the Romans had NO reason to go looking for mechanical power. Human muscle power served them just fine. They had issues with food production and an ongoing economic crisis, but neither of these was rooted in a lack of brute force labor. They had slaves in amazing numbers. They had some of the most fertile land in the known world under cultivation and some of it's richest mines being worked within their dominions.

Yes, they lacked for some types of _skilled_ labor...but there was no impelling reasons to start trying to strain against the limits of what was possible. They had been innovators in military technology when pressed up against disaster....but in civilian administration, once the volatile days of the Seven Kings were behind them and the Republic on it's path of inexorable expansion, they just didn't have hte incentive to press against the edges of their worldview.

Moreover, they were a fractious lot who saw the primary organ demanding their loyalty as their _clan_ in the vicinity of their immediate family. The habit of wondering "how can the _whole system_ be improved was one they didn't have because their main focus was "how can I advance my faction _today_" ? This lack of true commitment to the State was ultimately one of the fundamental causes of their downfall.

The Industrial revolution was rooted in several things:
(1) The Scientific Revolution and the slow rise of the gentleman tinkerer
(2) Improvements in mining technology and a shortage of firewood that made mining coal a major activty.
(3) Britain was perpetually struggling "out of its weight class" against the forces of continental Europe. They were hungry and desperate (albeit in quiet dignity) for most of their modern history. They were in the habit of innovation because going with "the way things always were" had led them to the nearly fatal blind alley of the 100 year' war and the civil war that followed.
(4) Puritan protestantism was a strong spur to the vigor and size (and distribution of power!) within the merchant class. It kicked up the spare productive capcity of the realm because you had a cadre of educated people who felt one of the only things that was not immoral was making money. A few "connected" ogilopolists dominated the Roman economy, deliberately stifling innovation. The English economy was more dynamic if less prosperous.
(5) Puritan protestants respected the rule of law, albeit reluctantly, because once it was obvious they had lost "the culture wars" they needed the law as a shield to have freedom of conscience. But their influence in demanding a strong rule of law was a condition of the iron bound sanctity of the contract that underlay early capitalism. England was probably the most lawful country in Europe for its times.
(6) Because England had been exhuming and investigating classical thought from an outsider's perspective, they ended up helping to spark and shape the Enlightenment, which was the foundation of the scientific method. The Romans had no way of achieving this objectivity.


Ther'es more I could say but I hope it's obvious why I think the Romans had no realistic hope of an industrial revolution. And given the moral shortcomings in the culture of their ruling elites (which Christianity didn't really address, immo), it's probably just as well they didn't persist. They were more use to the rest of Europe dead than as a Pharohic dynasty. They did discover and synthesize many useful things, but the stagnation they mired in from the end of the Pax Romania on was probably inescapable in the most likely cases.

I'll note I'm not a great fan of Puritan protestants, and I thnk they weren't indispensible to the process...but I don't see any factors in Rome that would plug the gap of not having them such as existed in France and Germany. (the secondary sites of the Industrial revolution's opening phases)

Your refusal to give me the information I want has led me to this only remaining option then... wild speculation.

Wow, you sure do give up easily. Who am I supposed to be, your mommy? Go look it up.

My impression is that you'd be amongst the first to starve for want of a can-opener.

And the ancient Greeks and Romans did have steam powerd devices. They just never put them to "practical" use as they didn't see the need to.

http://www.e-telescope.gr/en/cat05/art05_021129.htm

.

My impression is that you'd be amongst the first to starve for want of a can-opener.

It was a joke, my friend.

You don't think I seriously believe that Coolstuff Maximus was going to invent the steam powered mecha for combat against the Partian Empire, do you?

(3) Britain was perpetually struggling "out of its weight class" against the forces of continental Europe. They were hungry and desperate (albeit in quiet dignity) for most of their modern history. They were in the habit of innovation because going with "the way things always were" had led them to the nearly fatal blind alley of the 100 year' war and the civil war that followed.

To be fair, the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses were a long time, 3 or 4 hundred years, before the Industrial Revolution.


The Romans certainly had some of the ingredients for the Industrial Revolution...Watermills (which were prevalent at the beginning of the revolution), pistons etc, but they never had the need, or desire, for it.

That's no fun. :(

Your refusal to give me the information I want has led me to this only remaining option then... wild speculation.

*ahem*

I believe the Roman Empire was a decade away at most from discovering steam power, as early experiments in Rome conducted by the secret society of Coolstuff Maximus were making steady progress towards that goal. Steam powered war machines would have been immediately integrated into the legions of the Empire, and so history would have been full of wicked cool stuff like giant steam-powered mecha stomping across the battlefield to conquer the Parthian Empire.

:)


Rome, not Cygnar :p

This is one of many half-baked ideas I have for a multimedia graphic novel project that I want to do for shits and giggles.

I want to know if there are any Economists on this forum who could succinctly define what the basic requirements to an Industrial Revolution would be. And if there are any Classicists who would know how far Rome went in achieving these requirements.

I would also like to hear peoples' opinions as to when the Point-of-Divergence would be, I'm thinking after the death of Caligula the attempts to restore the Republic succeeded, which stokes a renaissance in Roman society and science.

But please, if I'm talking nonsense, please correct me, I want this thing to be plausable, so I want some cohesive background information.

Are you sure you're not just looking for someone to do your homework for you?

Wouldn't a stable governmental system be helpful in kicking off one of these?

Transportation would be important, too. I'd say that a significant portion of the Roman Empire's waterways weren't particularly easy to transverse.

It was a joke, my friend.

You don't think I seriously believe that Coolstuff Maximus was going to invent the steam powered mecha for combat against the Partian Empire, do you?
No, to be fair, I didn't.

Alright, already: the protagonist, a learned man of the 20th century with a wealth of knowledge of all things Roman, finds himself thrown back in time (and with no credible explanation given, it's the single-biggest hurdle the reader will encounter in the novel) to the 6th century.

Relying on his knowledge, and his familiarity with Latin, the main character Padway manages to set himself up running a variety of schemes (distilling brandy to start with, later moving onto things like printing presses and telegraph systems) to increase his fortunes and influence - in order to stave off the dark age he alone knows is coming, going to great lengths to alter history in such a way as to ensure Rome does not fall.

Wikipedia has an article, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall).

Hmm... Muy well put.

*tries to think of a way around all of the good points raised*

Transportation would be important, too. I'd say that a significant portion of the Roman Empire's waterways weren't particularly easy to transverse.

Maybe not, but their roads were/are fantastic, and many of the remaining ones are still useable.

Are you sure you're not just looking for someone to do your homework for you?

I am thankfully not in the current situation where homework is set for me.

However, I wish they would have set me homework as interesting as this.

I wouldn't know exactly what the precise definition of an Industrial Revolution was, but it has the essential elements of

2) population increases and changes in land distribution leading to increased urbanization

One of the major reasons for land distributions importance is that after the fall of Rome land quickly came under the control of people who eventually became fuedal lords. During roman times it was common for people to own the property they lived on outright. By the Dark Ages most land was owned/controlled by the nobility.

3) the increased demand for service goods leading to methods of increasing productivity, such as labor specialization and use of machinery to increase production.

Increased demand in part came from falling prices (largely due to increased mechanization and better methods). When you have competition between cities and free markets (both of which existed to some extant in Rome and concievably would have expanded with a revitalized republic) you have a lot of different people in different places thinking up ways to produce more goods at cheaper prices. The dark ages resulted in intercity trade almost coming to a halt. Most towns and cities had gate taxes on trade goods to eliminate the need for the cities artisans to compete against anyone with better ideas.

To some extant the only missing ingredient here is some form of agriculteral improvement to push people off the farms and into the cities.. and with free trade, and forums for the public exchange of ideas (I believe that some form of mass printing technology was in the early stages of development not long before the fall) it only really takes a few people with good ideas to spark enormous changes.

With regards to someone claiming NA's coal was needed.. nope, europe has it's own supplies of coal, and coal is not the only way of generating work (ie power). It just happens to be the way our industrial revolution followed. Watermills worked, even if they often required less then optimum locations. Windmills are a possibility in some locations. The middle east wasn't all that far away and in many locations there, drilling for oil was unneccessary, the crude literally bubbled up (if slowly).

Innovation in many ways is a product of having the time to sit back and think about how you can do something better. The Roman people had that time, the average person from the dark ages however spent all their time just making sure they had enough to eat.

Thassa

I don't think the Romans wanted any technological advances. Apparently they were content with their current state, which was rather powerful either way.

if you are wanting to make a graphic novel you dont need to have it be a treatise on economics, you just have to pick your favorite cusp of roman history and make it work

maybe it was when carthage was defeated, because hannibal was such a great thinker.

maybe it was when julius ceasar got assassinated because he and cleo were working up a whole new cool science thing

maybe it was when constantine chose christianity over mitrhaism because those christians were so into killing off all the alternate thinkers

maybe it was when the huns invaded because it destroyed the technology that rome had built up to the point where it was ready to burst into a full fledged tech revolution

it doesnt have to be TRUE, it just has to work. you pick your favorite era of roman history and off you go.

id go with the ceasar/cleopatra era because it has so much sex and mysticism going for it. that whole secrets of ancient egypt combined with some kind of science thing picked up in gaul perhaps...

You've got to be wary about assuming that the Romans could have progressed into the industrial revolution based on what they had achieved. I mean their society seems surprisingly modern to the present day, their urban life and bureaucracy and all the rest, and they were civil engineers par excelence, and as far as agricultural implements, watching Adam Hart Davis on the telly will tell you they had some fancy labour saving gizmos to help them out. But there were still gaping holes in their knowledge not to mention that they weren't by nature innovators.

if you are wanting to make a graphic novel you dont need to have it be a treatise on economics, you just have to pick your favorite cusp of roman history and make it work

maybe it was when carthage was defeated, because hannibal was such a great thinker.

maybe it was when julius ceasar got assassinated because he and cleo were working up a whole new cool science thing

maybe it was when constantine chose christianity over mitrhaism because those christians were so into killing off all the alternate thinkers

maybe it was when the huns invaded because it destroyed the technology that rome had built up to the point where it was ready to burst into a full fledged tech revolution

it doesnt have to be TRUE, it just has to work. you pick your favorite era of roman history and off you go.

id go with the ceasar/cleopatra era because it has so much sex and mysticism going for it. that whole secrets of ancient egypt combined with some kind of science thing picked up in gaul perhaps...

To be honest, I find pretty much all of Roman history fascinating (and all of history, for that matter) so, for me, choosing would be impossible...

Adam Hart Davis

You've seen his "What the *insert people* Did For Us" shows?

Absolutely fascinating. Admittedly probably not something you should rely on as a basis of understanding for technology in a certain time period, but they're brilliant nonetheless.

To be honest, I find pretty much all of Roman history fascinating (and all of history, for that matter) so, for me, choosing would be impossible...
i know what you mean. but if one wants to do a novel, one MUST choose an era and some are better than others for the type of novel he has in mind.

its not like he cant do other novels set in other times later.

Why not try industrializing Constantinople? At least it wasn't sacked quite as often as Rome...

Okay... how's this...

For some reason Carthage is successful in the Second Punic War. Hannibal crushes Rome, and returns to Carthage a hero. The people of Carthage, angered by their rulers attempt to impede Hannibal, overthrow the current government and have Hannibal Barca proclaimed Consul for Life, or some other post that effectively amounts to Dictatorship.

Hannibal's policies are motivated towards keeping Rome a crippled pariah. He issues a trade embargo against Rome, denying them of Africa's prized commodity, slaves. Rome's sole source of slaves is now second-hand bottom-of-the-barrel stock from Germanica. A convenient plague (okay yeah, I realise this is getting a bit deus ex machina now, but you wouldn't say that if this was actually history, countless unlikely flukes have defined our history) has decimated much of Rome's enslaved population.

A few generations of hardship begins to reshape Roman culture. They are driven to innovation, but are not yet able to realise it. Economically, they are scarcely superior to barbarian tribes, but are nonetheless cursed by the knowledge of how potentially close to greatness they were.

Eventually, as the traditional pariah-status of Rome is lifted, some land-owners begin to "tinker" with mechanisms to increase the productivity of their slaves, as the acquisition of slaves is still seen as difficult. However, the increasing liberalisation of the Slave trade makes this much more gradual than it was in our timeline.

Eventually, in say... the 200's, the Carthaginian Empire falls. This gives Rome the chance to expand, especially into Gaul and Iberia, which had been previously held by Carthage. These lands become a terra nova where new techniques in agriculture are encouraged and quickly become as productive as the 'bread basket' of North Africa.

Although during the pariah-years Rome suffered from some pretty cruel tyrannies that all claimed that they would restore glory, and all failed, the democratic pagan republic is more or less unscathed and is able to gradually at first, but then more rapidly, evolve industrially.

The lack of metallurgical know-how is a slowing factor, but by the 400's, the Republic is intact, pagan, and at a similar level of development as early-1800's Britain.

(Any problems, feel free to shoot holes)

Personally I don't think that Rome, if we are talking purely about the Latin empire, was anywhere near an industrial revolution. They did have some decent technology for their time, including a rudimentary use of steam. However, as stated by many here, the societal necessity for a revolution was lacking.

The fall of Rome in Europe totally destroyed security for civil society. Peasants looked to fuedal lords for protection. Thus the manor system of labor came to be. The monarchs of Europe eventually began to charter cities as a check against the power of the fuedal lords. Cities could not produce sufficient food and material to produce what they needed. Since trade was destroyed by the Ottoman control of the Mediterranean, Europe and the cities needed to look inward to organize economically. Advancements in industrial theory, not only technology, allowed for the "revolution" to take place. So, hypothetically, Rome had to fall, for the revolution to take place.

Edit - Constantinople had to fall, truly. The fall of the Latin empire had already thrown Europe into political chaos. When Byzantium finally collapsed, the Ottoman Turks controlled the major trade routes to North Africa, India amd the Far East.

Greyenivol Colony,

what sounds more likely is the wealthy Romans would all just pack up and go someplace else, where there's slaves, comfy chaise longes, and lotsa wine. I don't think there would be any landowners left.

This may have been mentioned before, but Heron of Alexandria discovered steam power well over a century before the modern Industrial Revolution, but he considered it just a trinket with not real value. His steam engine is posted to the right of the article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron_of_Alexandria

Greyenivol Colony,

what sounds more likely is the wealthy Romans would all just pack up and go someplace else, where there's slaves, comfy chaise longes, and lotsa wine. I don't think there would be any landowners left.

Hmm... damnit, you're right. In those circumstances Rome would revert permenantly to anarchy in moments...

Well that was a waste of a big post.

Hmm... damnit, you're right. In those circumstances Rome would revert permenantly to anarchy in moments...

Well that was a waste of a big post.
You just need to figure out what incentive the Romans would need to foster development. The most obvious one you're wrestling with is dispensing with the reliance on slaves. It's a little sketchy, but you could tweak it into something useable, at least until some other brilliant insight hits you. Other than 'no slaves', what factors might've helped to retard growth, and how could those be countered? Could there be a sequence of small social deviations in Roman history that could lead to where you're going? No doubt, but rather than inventing a plague, it'd be neat to research an actual plague and work your story around it instead.

That wasn't a waste of a big post at all.

AFAIK, The Roman's were not on the verge of an industrial revolution.

Granted they had harnessed the power of water and used that to build and maintain machines capable of mass production. There is also the debateable "battery".
They did some impressive things with what was available, but not even close to what we consider to be an industrial revolution. Although to them, it may have been.

I have no doubt that another few decades could've seen drastic improvement in their technology, but we'll never know for certain.

I'm no history professor, but I don't think the Romans could have started a great Tech leap on their own. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The Romans were great thinkers, but only if you gave them a springboard to start from, and rarely could that springboard be Roman. Their navy was begun by stealing Carthaginian ships, which they improved and made into ramming vessels. They stole their gods from the Greeks, and supposedly stole their language from an early conquest.

If somebody had dropped a Model T in the right part of the Roman Empire, there would be cars on many Roman roads within a decade, but they would stay more or less the same vehicle for the next century. You wouldn't have yearly reimaginings of the model every year like we have now.

The Roman mentality was always imitation, not innovation. They would copy what somebody else made, they would make that better, but the idea of continuing to improve it after if worked better than the other guy's was foreign to them. A waste. Wasteful nations didn't last too long in the ancient world.

I wouldn't know exactly what the precise definition of an Industrial Revolution was, but it has the essential elements of 1) increasing food production raising the level of population, 2) population increases and changes in land distribution leading to increased urbanization, and 3) the increased demand for service goods leading to methods of increasing productivity, such as labor specialization and use of machinery to increase production.

None of those elements were found in ancient Rome. It is true that Rome had some unique qualities that would have lent themselves well to an Industrial Revolution, such as the Roman baths providing sanitation, an embryonic knowledge of piping that lent itself later to sewer systems that make true metropolises possible, and rudimentary public service and entertainment systems. But the simple fact is that the Roman Empire was still largely rural, had a slowly growing population that was not being shifted off the land into urban areas, and there was no real need for increased productivity. Without those three elements, an industrial revolution simply will not and cannot occur.I think you need to look up what a Latifundia is. They specialised in one agricultural product, be it wheat, olives or whatever. And each farm labourer could grow enough food for 30 other people. Such huge levels of agricultural production weren't seen again until the 19th century.

Rome, 2000 years ago, was also the first city to have more than 1 million inhabitants. The next city to make such a milestone was London in 1800.

So they had urbanisation, increased food production, labour specialisation and so forth. They only element they didn't have was machinery. However,

To the person who said they had no access to coal. Well from this picture you can see the extent of roman empire. If you have knowledge of the region surrounding the Rhine then you will probably agree with me that Roma had control of the modern day regions of Alsace, Lorraine, Saar and Ruhr. Thus giving the Romans easy access to many areas rich in coal.

If there was any obstacle to rome achieving an industrial revolution I believe it would have been their knowledge of metallurgy. The romans only appear to have been able to increase the carbon content of their iron enough to make wrought iron, and not hi-carbon steel. I do believe it is the lack of steel that lead to romans not advancing the plans of a steam engine.

Anyway, that's just my obnoxious two cents.

I say no.
No slave-owning society would be much interested in a thing like industrialisation.

The comparative levels of industrialisation of the antebellum North and South in the US context makes for a nice illustration.

I say no.
No slave-owning society would be much interested in a thing like industrialisation.

The comparative levels of industrialisation of the antebellum North and South in the US context makes for a nice illustration.Nah, your example doesn't count. The South had many slaves and the North didn't have many at all. Thus the South had a competitive advantage over the North before they industrialised. If the whole Roman empire functioned with the use of slaves then industrialisation would produce a competitive advantage. A slave working a machine is more productive than just a slave.

Nah, your example doesn't count. The South had many slaves and the North didn't have many at all. Thus the South had a competitive advantage over the North before they industrialised. If the whole Roman empire functioned with the use of slaves then industrialisation would produce a competitive advantage. A slave working a machine is more productive than just a slave.


So how come it didn't work out?
Proof of pudding = the eating.

My example fits the facts ( odd that examples have that tendency, wot? ),
your dictum does not fit the historical facts.

So how come it didn't work out?
Proof of pudding = the eating.

My example fits the facts ( odd that examples have that tendency, wot? ),
your dictum does not fit the historical facts.No, I have a different take. You suggest that a slave owning society is not interested in industrialisation, period. I am saying that Rome did not industrially develop because there were other circumstances. Earlier I cited a lack of understanding of metallurgy, and others have stated that there was a general lack of scientific innovation in Rome, even before slavery. In fact one could even claim that Rome's continued conquests prevented an industrial revolution. Their continued conquests meant that market for slaves was perpetually distorted with supply greater than it would otherwise be. Indeed, without conquest slaves can actually become quite expensive. For example, I believe in Ancient Egypt, where slavery was practiced, the Pyramids were actually constructed with paid labour as slaves were deemed to be too valueble for such projects (admittedly the difference between paid labour and slaves in Ancient Egypt is some what academic).

However, this brings me to another point. The serfs of the Renaissance were hardly in a better position than the slaves of the Roman Empire. Hence, how can you claim that slave economies would not produce an industrial revolution, whilst the Renaissance economies would?

I think perhaps the only way you could claim that slave economies would not produce an industrial revolution is in that the slaves are not free to move to where they wish to work.

So in sum, I believe that Rome did not achieve an industrial revolution because of their lack of innovation, especially metallurgy. I have one new point, that the continual conquest by the empire meant the slaves were cheaper than they would be otherwise. But, also that roman labourers who were evicted from land seized for Latifundias were not forced to relocate to the cities of the empire. Instead they could move to newly conquested areas or join the legions and gain a land pension.

That is, the reasons for no IR are lack of innovation and continual conquest.

I suggest they don't do Industrialisation, and in fact, they don't.

And Bob's your uncle.

I think you need to look up what a Latifundia is. They specialised in one agricultural product, be it wheat, olives or whatever. And each farm labourer could grow enough food for 30 other people. Such huge levels of agricultural production weren't seen again until the 19th century.

Rome, 2000 years ago, was also the first city to have more than 1 million inhabitants. The next city to make such a milestone was London in 1800.

So they had urbanisation, increased food production, labour specialisation and so forth. They only element they didn't have was machinery. However,

To the person who said they had no access to coal. Well from this picture you can see the extent of roman empire. If you have knowledge of the region surrounding the Rhine then you will probably agree with me that Roma had control of the modern day regions of Alsace, Lorraine, Saar and Ruhr. Thus giving the Romans easy access to many areas rich in coal.

If there was any obstacle to rome achieving an industrial revolution I believe it would have been their knowledge of metallurgy. The romans only appear to have been able to increase the carbon content of their iron enough to make wrought iron, and not hi-carbon steel. I do believe it is the lack of steel that lead to romans not advancing the plans of a steam engine.

Anyway, that's just my obnoxious two cents.

Excellent. I'd expand metallurgy to science and technological innovation in general, and tack on a variety of socio-political-cultural innovations as well.

Technologies the Romans lacked, and were unlikely to develop within the given time frame:
1) Metallurgy, as already mentioned.
2) Advanced agricultural tech - breast-strap horse collar (although, with it's nea-period invention I might concede that one), moldboard plough, seed drill, 4-crop rotation, and so on.
3) "Clockwork" and machine tools (which stem from metallurgy).
4) "Modern" mining techniques, which would be needed to get at that coal and iron ore.
5) Printing press

Socio-political-cultural innovations the Romans lacked, and were unlikely to develop within the given time frame:
1) Capitalism - especially financial markets, advanced bookkeeping, and that sort of thing
2) Patents
3) A stable society open to change

This may have been mentioned before, but Heron of Alexandria discovered steam power well over a century before the modern Industrial Revolution, but he considered it just a trinket with not real value. His steam engine is posted to the right of the article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron_of_Alexandria

Yes, I'd say 17+ centuries qualifies as being well over a century...

I reckon the romans might have had something similar to industrial revolution, except they had priorities wrong.

Improved farming methods -----> people work in factories.


ROMANS do this.

Improved farming methods -----> people work in army.

So, no they wouldnt have

Classicist, and, plausible but entirely unlikely.

The Roman empire did indeed possess many of the prerequisites for industrialisation, notably an extensive workforce, and a capacity for metalurgy. However, it did lack both steel, and a viable explosive.

Whilst I doubt it would have emulated the industrialisation of the 18th and 19th centuries, it's technical progression was not dissimilar in terms of its rate.

To be fair, the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses were a long time, 3 or 4 hundred years, before the Industrial Revolution.


The Romans certainly had some of the ingredients for the Industrial Revolution...Watermills (which were prevalent at the beginning of the revolution), pistons etc, but they never had the need, or desire, for it.

Yes, it was 300-400 years...it took that long for the habit of innovation to catch on and differentiate the British outlook and habits of thought among the rulers, bureaucrats and social notables. It was a _big_ thing. And the Romans were safe and complacent (on a geopolitical level) for most of the history of the Empire of the West from the beginning of the Republic to the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in the 4th century. (that event was the key one that marked the beginning of the end)

It doesn't matter that the Romans had the theoretical components of the Industrial Revolution if they showed no sign of the habits of thought that were the foundation of that development.

Yes, Rome had economic crises all along, but they always found solutions rooted in conquest or internal power politics rather than actual reform. The few changes they did make were for the worse, typically. Such as the law that you had to work at the same profession as your father, to try and stop the decline of vital trades....

No. Without North American coal, I very much doubt any Industrial Revolution would have lasted long.

*blink*

May I remind you that the IR did not start in North America. England, my friend, England. At the time NA was a rural back-water. And English coal was, after a fasion, available to the Romans.

The problem with this was that the Empire was ruled after a centralized model, and Britania was more of an outpost province than an economic powerhouse like, say Iberia. Finds from the era tells of a small british influence on the rest of the Empire. There are few britons recorded as having any influence outside the island (I can't remember anyone at the moment), and not a of a lot of british goods found on roman-era sites in other parts of Europe.

That said, Roman engineers were familiar with steam power, they just lacked the knowledge of how to harness its full potential. While it is believed that they used a primitive system of kettles, funnels and wheels to power small machines, the energy utilization rate was way to low for it to have any practical value.

Also, remember the dangers of presurized gases. Whithout the proper metalurgical competance, fatality is the most likely outcome of such an experiment.

That said, even if you would have to make some rather extensive leaps of imagination, it is an interesting consept.

Another thing, the concept of Roman steam powered mechas stalking the battlefield is IMHO an impausible theory. The legions were, and still is, the most effective and well oiled army that has ever marched across this planet. why on earth would they sacrifice speed, versatility, adaptability, morale, and fighting strenght for... Well, let's face it, a technological terror that would probably be almost as lethal to themselves as their enemies?

You gotta love Roman History.

Alright, let's look at the 'abundance of slavery limits innovation' angle. What if the Spartacan slave revolts were more 'successful', or forced the establishment to make radical changes to the way Rome worked? Abolishing slavery? A reduction in power for the landed aristocratic classes in the Senate and more power to the Plebian Assembly?

If the social wars between Rome and other Italian cities prior to this had forced a more 'Italian' state, as opposed to a Roman one? Could the combination of abolished slavery and commitment to the state, as opposed to the domination of the aristocratic class create the economic conditions to spur industrialization?

Well, what was it that caused step 1 [vastly increased food production]to come into being?

Unless I am mistaken it was the highly improbable and brilliant invention of agricultural devices that led to this? So essentially it came down to the luck of birth, by luck a mind was born into that generation that had the skills and materials to build these machines...

No, it was NOT a matter of "luck" nor solely of "a few inventions happened". Agriculture wasn't just an economic activity, it was a way of life, and for fundamental changes to occur in a basically conservative society were rooted in more than fortunate happenstance. The Agricultural Revolution (yes, there's a LOT of things going on from the 18th century on, insanely busy time for fundamental changes to the society of first Britain and then Western Europe....) was the result of several things:

1) Protracted peace...the English Civil War was important because it accelerated the spread of the Renaissance, which was the basis for the beginning of the Enlightenment, which was the basis for the Scientific Revolution. How ? Because the Puritan rebels got to surrender (after Cromwell's death) on their own terms. The restoration of monarchy at this time _vastly_ strengthened the religious rights of dissenters and the political rights of the nobles, artisans, and squireocracy.

This radical increase in political input from below the monarchy bred a hunger for improved bureaucracy and laws, to help keep the squabbling between the factions under control...and so the British looked to Roman and Greek times for solutions to contemporary problems, and found them.

(And it is ironic that they _improved_ upon the solutions the Romans and Greeks used, because as outsiders in time and culture they had a freedom to make important adaptations to those original ideas that were critical in how things unfolded)

Rome didn't have protracted peace; in fact, culturally, they were a war making machine and the enforced idleness from the end of Trajan's rule on robbed them of the main mechanism they used to address imbalances in their system. The constant intercene struggles of the prominent clans were not bound by the same restraint which the British learned through the period of the end of the War of the Roses to end of the English Civil War.

It's not that the English nobles were all perfect, but everyone decided after having seen the abyss that voluntary limits on the use of force served everyone's best interest. And by taking power from the monarch progressively, they made it less of a prize for the factional infighting than it had been. While still leaving the nobles with worthwhile powers...I mean, the english nobility disararmed voluntarily. When Henry V said "time for an end to these private armies" people sighed and said "yah, guess so...."

The English were lucky to have peace and quiet to themselves to digest a series of rapid lessons which otherwise would have been impossible to absorb against the backdrop of wars or the drive towards absolute monarchy which characterized France, Spain, Germany and Italy. (albeit Italy and Germany never achieved political consolidation through this, but their prominent territories did)

And from the end of Armada to the rise of Napoleon, Britain faced _no_ external threats of invasion. This allowed a far lower spending on the military which was a pillar of their prosperity. Too little prosperity, and nothing new happens. Too much prosperity, and people have no incentive to innovate. The British ended up in a happy medium this way that the Romans showed no sign of having approached.

2) The British had a flowering of individual rights. One of the important secondary issues of the English Civil War was the Star Chamber. It had been a judicial jurisdiction that was suddenly the highest in the land and had extremely draconian precedings. Essentially, it was a tame kangaroo court the monarch could refer any issue he wished to, and did. After 150 years of this, it was a major issue in the English Civil War and significant and deep reforms in the practice of the common law came out of it.

With that liberty came a right to attempt innovative practices in agriculture. For example, the Enclosure Movement (the dispossession of the peasants a large portion of the common lands to create centralized agricultural businesses (usually sheep raising, but sometimes for food crops) managed directly by the landowners) was only possible because the courts upheld the rights of the landlords to defy the traditional rights of the rural dwellers based on new Common Law endorsements of the liberty of property owners. The rural dwellers had to accept this relatively peacefully because even the lowest reaches of the squireocracy had a terrible fear of civil disorder at this point. A fear that only grew with time. (Unlike the Romans who lived with a lot of civil disorder under Caeser's roof and saw no pressing reason to address it.) There were no notables among them clergy or prosperous yeoman who would gainsay the courts.

(It also helped that the nobles driving the Enclosure Movement had an obligation to demonstrate that the peasants still had enough commons left to them. What they would do is consolidate the "center" of a block of different commons (Imagine a recangle of 3 or 4 by 2 plots, and the center of the rectangle carved out) and then argue that the peasants could still get along on what was left.

They weren't entirely correct but the resulting dislocation of peasants was far less than it could have been. And the point was they felt they had to demonstrate a duty of care to the peasants because of the degree of reform in the legal system. The growing and unprecedented respect for the rule of law was a CRITICAL component in the process and was essentially absent in the hopelessly venal and politically tame courts of the Principes.)

(3) There was a change in adminstrative practice by the nobles and nascent capitalists. The British Aristocracy now understood that wealth was not arbitrary or accidental, but related to how you used your assets. They arrived at this understanding because the habits of debate and the justification of law by logic led them to an unprecedentedly practical perspective. If something didn't work, there was a reason, you could fix it! The society of rights and priveleges had been quietly changed at its foundations by introducing the idea that any change could happen if the facts justified it, and no change could be allowed UNLESS the facts justified it.

And it was watershed events like the English Civil War and the reforms of monarchial government under the Tudor monarchs (there were only three of them, but they had an indeliable effect on the formation of modern Britain) and the course the Reformation took in England....all of these were the reasons the English arrived at this pragamatism.

The poor Romans never negotiated any settlements to any internal divisions of the same magnitude. They simply did not have enough internal conflicts that ended in near-draws to force learning to occur. England did not seek such outcomes, but the repeated occurence of them became more and more a result of an emerging societal value on practicality and moderation.

The Romans had _aspired_ to logic and reason as a pillar of their society, but in practice they were a culture of traditions and rules as much as anywhere in Middle Ages Europe. They focused the fruits of their understanding of logic and reasoning towards rhetoric and persuasion in politics. But they suffered from the Greek tendency to declare something was a certain way because logic said it had to be so. The key element of referal to reality and the testing of hypotheses was absent.

Whereas in Britain, Francis Bacon had laid the foundation of the Imperical Method, and others had developed it, and it had defused outside of academia, through its application in the courts, which everyone participated in.

(They learned the fundamentals of the modern managerial outlook by acquaintance with the reformed workings of their courts and lawyers! And people say lawyers are only good as dinosaur fodder....)

In Rome, the courts decided based first on political influence, second on bribery and thirdly on facts. The British achievement in overcoming this type of corruption was stupendous and owed much to the peculiar circumstances above which were not present in Rome.

And through free inquiry and testing came reforms like
-->changes in the process and degree of fertilization
-->the rotation of crops between types (turnips, barley, clover, beans) that were good for replenishing the soil or increasing the profits of animal husbandry (which in turn helped increase fertilization)
--> the importance of hand-hoeing turnips and beans (without which their cultivation did little to improve the soil)
--> the spread of the horse plow and the seed drill, tools that vastly improved the efficiency of brute force labor
--> renewed vigor in the use of chalk, lime and marl (minerals) to address pH balance in the soil

It wasn't that a single visionary inventor said "wait, let's do it this way!" There was great acrimony over what way was best, but a few counties had smarter landlords and they proved by their yields that they were right. And people were fast to imititate them because everyone wanted to get more value from their assets. Here was a substainable way to do that finally! And Britain happened to be in a sociopolitical condition where there were no insurmountable barriers to these changes.

I go on at great length because I feel it is very important to demonstrate that history is not a series of lucky flukes and bad luck; certain decisions get made, certain events shake out a certain way and then _conscious human decisions_ in response to these events is what determines history, not the "random seed" events themselves. You can have the same thing (say, the Black Death) affect multiple societies, and have different effects in them.

Very interesting idea.
However, I think eastern Rome/Byzantinum would be the best place to start of an industrial revolution (though you can make any point in the history of the empire work, as suggested before).

Constantinople's position as a trading hub, and its mixed population, makes an excellent basis for setting things off.

Perhaps the Visigoths or Ostrogoths crushed western Rome more completely than in our history, and then turned their attention to easter Rome (possibly allying with the Persian empire, or supported 'under the table' by them).

The emperor and the nobles and generals sees disaster looming, and are frantic for a solution.
At the same time a roman highway patrol comes to the aid of a chinese caravan attacked by bandits.
The centurion in charge watch how easily the chinese caravan guards swords cut into their opponents during the fight, and after defeating the bandits he examines the weapon of a fallen guard and then make some quiet inquiries.
Since he's related to one of the generals close to the emperor he knows about the impeding invasion probably coming in a decade or three.
He dicides to escort the caravan to Constantinople and present them to his general relative, and so on.

The caravan just happens to include a chinese smith, who is through politics or outright force, made to stay and teach his art to the romans.
Blahablah, years pass, the legions begin to get better weapons and armour, and the steel has improved several of their machines/mechanical contraptions. (No real innovation yet though).

Then the invasion comes. Nomads attack, and the persian empire takes the opportunity to join in. Not all roman units have recieved the new armour and weapons, but thanks to those units that have, they manage after a few years of bitter campaigns to stop the invasion. Barely. And enough nomads escape that a new one is a very real threat. All they got was a breathing room.

The legions are so decimated that when news reach the larger public, the slaves revolt.
Unable to crush the revolt, the Emperor makes a proclamation that every slave will be considered free, if they will stop looting and destroying. Also forces consessions and changes in the laws.
(A bit alien to the roman mindset perhaps, but I thought it would be so bad that if he hadn't made that move, the empire would have collapsed from within).
In effect, the lower classes get more real influence and standing before the law.

Now without their largest labour pool, and with no way to pay for the labour required, they have no choice but to become innovative or get destroyed anyway a few years/decades along the road.
This is where the mixed population and trade hub position really kicks in.
Both romans from the diverese peoples within the empire, and influential merchants and even rulers from other countries come to their aid (they don't nessecarily like the Romans, but war disrupts business and a stable, peaceful, Rome is preferable to the cost of trying to rebuild the ruins if the empire falls).
With the knowledge of how to make steel, and with the input from both local and foreign people, they manage to make leaps in both land-distribution, laws, agriculture and urbanization (swelling Constantinople's population to over 2 million in 10 years or so perhaps?).
The Industrial Revolution has hit. Big time.


...I think I got a bit carried away there. Still, it was fun. Hope it can be useful. :)

So how come it didn't work out?
Proof of pudding = the eating.

My example fits the facts ( odd that examples have that tendency, wot? ),
your dictum does not fit the historical facts.

yes but you have forgotten the one thing that proves HIS point

the cotton gin

without this machine, cotton production was too labor intensive for even slavery to be enough to keep it going. the slave + the machine made for an economic powerhouse.

You gotta love Roman History.

Alright, let's look at the 'abundance of slavery limits innovation' angle. What if the Spartacan slave revolts were more 'successful', or forced the establishment to make radical changes to the way Rome worked? Abolishing slavery? A reduction in power for the landed aristocratic classes in the Senate and more power to the Plebian Assembly?

If the social wars between Rome and other Italian cities prior to this had forced a more 'Italian' state, as opposed to a Roman one? Could the combination of abolished slavery and commitment to the state, as opposed to the domination of the aristocratic class create the economic conditions to spur industrialization?

No internal revolt has ever been successful without foreign intervention. No contemporary would have intervened in Rome's internal affairs after the horrible example of Carthage's fate.

The point was, the Romans dominated the Italian peninsula because of their combination of relative purity in the laws they followed and the supremacy of their military process. The other Italian tribes were markedly different in this regard, and once the Romans exited the Seven Kings period in good shape, their domination was pretty much as inevitable as any historical process gets.

The Romans _did_ subsequently _lose_ this purity of law, and this faltering was a key reason why they never really got control of the endemic political economic crises that followed in the late Republic and Principes period. Because no one trusted the government to act for the good of all, as they had reason to do in the early Republican period.

And there was no sign that slavery would have been abolished by the Spartcaus revolt. The best outcome the rebels would have been able to hope for was to be allowed to declare their emancipation and have it stand. To go on to emancipate other slaves....how could it have happened ? The Sparticans were unique in having access to weapons and training in using them. And they still lacked military experience which limited the success they could hope for against the professional legions.

Other slaves would not have been able to revolt, and after a successful revolt, the central authorities would have been raving paranoid about containing any further insurrections. And they weren't exactly moderate or timid on the issue to start with, as the crucifiction of every last Spartican showed.

I mean, look at antebellum Deep South in the USA. The institution of slavery there was much more unstable than in Roman times because of the concurrent existence of racism (which itself is a modern artifact; there is a huge difference between the remarkable egocentricism and in-group prefernces of pre-modern nations and tribes and the conviction that there is a scientific basis for declarations of the innate perfidy and worthlessness of targeted ethnicities.) And the Deep South slave owners lived in quiet terror of a revolt. One which never happened despite a few small rumblings.

The American slaves had far more day to day incentive to revolt and far more likelihood of success and they did not. (the black slaves were far more numerous relative to the white landowners, and the standing armies of the day were far smaller than the Romans maintained) There is little reason to think that slavery as an institution had been endangered by the Sparticans.

Imagine how different history would have been if the Barbarians didn't destroy the scrolls of knowledge, and the Roman Empire didn't collapse, and the Arabs found the scrolls telling them how to build steamengines and other technology. :D

<snip>That was a good post, and well worth the read.

Just one insignificant factual thing I want to question you on. You said there were only three Tudor monarchs. As I'm aware there were five: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Did you perhaps mean there were only 3 generations?

Okay... how's this...

(conjectural history based on Roman defeat in the Punic Wars, and economic reality forcing the Romans to abandon slavery)

(Any problems, feel free to shoot holes)

(picks up her rifled musket) :)

You're imaginative and thoughtful, but you're missing some background knowledge which I am happy to share :)

First, the Punic Wars were pretty much a hopeless fight for Carthage. Their strongest asset was their naval power, but they LOST the majority of great naval battles throughout the wars. Because their seamanship skills simply didn't translate into expertise at the mass naval melees that ensued.

Their land power was not exceptionally distinguished, and they were facing the Roman Legions, the most effective iron age military force ever fielded on earth.

Yes, Hannibal was a bloody prodigy. Impossibly talented. But his genius couldn't address the fact that if Carthage stayed home and fought on the periphery, Rome would simply eventually get an armada together and invade them or destroy their periphery holdings one by one...and then invade after letting them decline into relative poverty. But if they went to Italy, they didn't have a prayer because without naval supremacy, they could not reinforce a successful expedition there.

(Nor was there far sighted enough strategic thinking in the domestic government in Carthage. They didn't have a political visionary who could see the significance of Hannibal's achievements and use them as a fulcrum to change events. For the Carthaginian elite, the Second Punic War was just "this big thing in our lives". Because it was so far from their shores, they didn't understand emotionally how serious it was until Scipio landed.)

Hannibal needed heavy siege equipment which he could not manufacture in the field and which could not be shipped to him without secure control of a large port. His next oldest brother tried to carry some of the lighter equipment that would have been useful overland to him, but was destroyed by the Romans as soon as he crossed the Alps.

Without this, he could not take any city save by treachery. And as much treacery as benefited him, it worked against him in turn, too. He was like this huge nasty ass lion being harried by hyenas. There were something approaching a score of legions harrassing him in Italy. He destroyed the bulk of _eight_ legions at Cannae, and he spent a year reorganizing after that victory.

After that, the Romans formed groups of 4 legions or so (their traditional army size) and just harried him, not letting him get close enough to do anything tactically brilliant but keeping him from protecting the cities that went over to him. Slowly, the number of cities in revolt dwindled faster than new rebels joined them.

Yes, he was a major source of econmic distress, but he simply could not impose a united front against the Romans. His vision of an anti-Roman pan-Italian revolt fell apart because he had not understood the intense fractiousess of the Latin tribes and that no one but Rome had a hope of organizing this (admittedly highly civilized) rabble to do anything at the time.

No, the Carthiginians simply did not have the military outlook to understand the type of fight they would get in with Rome, nor possess the institutions to wage it successfully. The Roman way of war rested on making genius an optional benefit to successful campaigns; the Carthaginians relied on it for any dramatic gains. They weren't bad, but "not bad" buried opponent after opponent whom Rome faced.

Now, regarding the slavery thing....

Even if we assume Hannibal somehow wins, the Romans had more access to slaves than Germany. There was Spain, there was Gaul, there was Asia Minor and Greece and the Levant. The romans would have found marching hte long way aroudn the adriatic a bit of a chore, but they did most of their conquests with less than 1/10 of their potential manpower mobilized. Even if their economic strength was devestated by a Carthaginian victory...well, they weren't that rich when they won the Latin Wars that unified the peninsula. The Romans did discard their spartan roots quickly, but the point was they showed they could function under adversity to a remarkable degree.

So they could have just plundered Greece and eventually the Balkans and Asia Minor for slaves, since as you do accurately note, the barbarian tribes just didnt' represent a huge amount of manpower. (I will note however, that a plague would not have killed huge amounts of them because they weren't urban enough to die in sufficient numbers from it.) While Macedon and the Greek City States would have been a slow slog, there's no reason to think they weren't equal to the task. And the Carthaginians would have been very unlikely to see the threat of Rome attacking other powers because, after all, it wasn't their lands at risk.

Remember, the Romans were considered _atypically vindictive and paranoid_ by their contemporaries for deciding to sack and destroy Carthage once they had reduced it to a rump state. People just didn't have the type of far sighted geopolitical thinking that characterizes modern international rivalries.

Slavery was an indeliable economic addiction of bronze and iron age civilizations. The harvesting of humans was one of the most short term productive economic activities possible. Like cocaine, if the "high" started to wear off, they just went out and did more :)

You'll note serfs were not emacnipated in Europe until the Industrial Revolution. There's a reason: the historical addiction to slavery ran too deep. Once you got into it, you simply could not disentangle yourself. Only a vast increase in the wealth of the nation made "buying out" the slave owners possible. But without such a buyout, the labor value of the slaves was only a fraction of that of a comparalbe number of free humans. (England, pointedly, had a remarkably high proportion of free Yeoman, and once they achieved ecnomic stability, this advantage showed in their economic prosperity in the Reformation period)

So there, bang bang :)

I'm no history professor, but I don't think the Romans could have started a great Tech leap on their own. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The Roman mentality was always imitation, not innovation. They would copy what somebody else made, they would make that better, but the idea of continuing to improve it after if worked better than the other guy's was foreign to them. A waste. Wasteful nations didn't last too long in the ancient world.

That's another big part of it. They could synthesize, but conceptually they were not particularly creative. Their one great creative achievement was the Republic, and it fell apart because they were not sufficiently talented problem solvers to troubleshoot the effects of the obscene plunder of the Punic Wars upon their society.

But yes, very much so. Good point.

Nah, your example doesn't count. The South had many slaves and the North didn't have many at all. Thus the South had a competitive advantage over the North before they industrialised. If the whole Roman empire functioned with the use of slaves then industrialisation would produce a competitive advantage. A slave working a machine is more productive than just a slave.

Actually, the South didn't have an economic advantage over the north. By the time of the civil war they were a backwater economically. They started the war with less than half the economic "might" overall of the North, and they slowly cannibalized this to fight the conflict. The North expanded their economy throughout the war.

The South had access to the same technology and the same managerial learning as the North in the prewar years...but they didn't use it. Slaves did not work machines by and large, because the whole structure of industrialism lacked the key supports in the South which existed in the North.

In fact, slaveowners considered themselves morally superior to factory owners. They clung to the ownership of slaves in part to avoid anything smacking of the factory system. (There were some factories in the South, but they were not treated the same way and did not function the same way as the ones in the North did, hence the modest and shallow progress of industrialism in the South.)

That was a good post, and well worth the read.

Just one insignificant factual thing I want to question you on. You said there were only three Tudor monarchs. As I'm aware there were five: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Did you perhaps mean there were only 3 generations?

I suppose you have me there. Edward never ruled in his own right, though, and Mary didn't live long either. They were blips on the screen compared to the two Henries and Good Queen Bess. So I think it is accurate to say that only three of the Tudor monarchs exerted a significant effect on the history of Britain.

It's interesting that the only other case of comparable depth and bredth of progress happened in Prussia...under the span of Wilhelm the Great Elector; Frederick Wilhelm I, and Frederick II (The Great). Frederick I did gain Prussia a monarchial crown, but that was pretty much his only achievement. Between them, as with the main Tudor monarchs, the represented over a solid century of commitment to progress.

Actually, the South didn't have an economic advantage over the north. By the time of the civil war they were a backwater economically. They started the war with less than half the economic "might" overall of the North, and they slowly cannibalized this to fight the conflict. The North expanded their economy throughout the war.Don't chop and change what I say. I did say that the south would have had a competative advantage before the North industrialised, but aftet they abolished slavery (which is really only a 20-30 year period at the beginning of the 19th century). I'm pretty sure the north had begun to industrialise before the civil war, but my knowledge of US history is limited.
The South had access to the same technology and the same managerial learning as the North in the prewar years...but they didn't use it. Slaves did not work machines by and large, because the whole structure of industrialism lacked the key supports in the South which existed in the North.

In fact, slaveowners considered themselves morally superior to factory owners. They clung to the ownership of slaves in part to avoid anything smacking of the factory system. (There were some factories in the South, but they were not treated the same way and did not function the same way as the ones in the North did, hence the modest and shallow progress of industrialism in the South.)You raise an interesting point. The south was more traditionalist and conservative than the North, but is this because they owned slaves or because of other factors or even that these other factors were caused by the use of slavery.

I think perhaps it could be that economic necessity pushed the North to abloished slavery. Was Union agriculture less profitable? If so then the freeing of slaves would facilitate the movement of workers into the cities (I presume a freed slave wasn't exactly content to live the rest of his life in the rural areas where his ex-master lived. Too many hard feelings). Hence, facilitating the industrial revolution. Therefore it could be economic necessity rather than morals that ment the North industrialised first. I believe it was a further 100 years before the black civil rights movement bore fruit.

I'm losing the thread of my post. I'll just stop here.

I suppose you have me there. Edward never ruled in his own right, though, and Mary didn't live long either. They were blips on the screen compared to the two Henries and Good Queen Bess. So I think it is accurate to say that only three of the Tudor monarchs exerted a significant effect on the history of Britain.

It's interesting that the only other case of comparable depth and bredth of progress happened in Prussia...under the span of Wilhelm the Great Elector; Frederick Wilhelm I, and Frederick II (The Great). Frederick I did gain Prussia a monarchial crown, but that was pretty much his only achievement. Between them, as with the main Tudor monarchs, the represented over a solid century of commitment to progress.It would be slightly unwise to underestimate the influence of Edward and Mary on English history. Whilst Edward never ruled in his own right he was the first protestant Monarch of England and Northumberland's policies were reflected in that. He also refused to name Mary or Elizabeth as his heir in his will. Thus Northumberland was able to attempt to install Lady Jane Grey on the throne. It was this couple with Mary's intial mercy towards Sufolk and Lady Jane Grey that lead to them attempting to take the throne again in Wyatt's rebellion. This rebellion coupled with Northumberland's policies under Edward lead Mary to persecute protestants and attempt to bring England back under the influence of Roman Catholicism. Once Elizabeth gained the throne she reversed Mary's policies and reinstituted protestantism. So the religious turmoil that Edward and Mary caused should not be underestimated.

With regards to Prussia I shall have to admit my complete ignorance except for the fact that I know who Frederick the Great was and who Chancellor Bismarck was.

Don't chop and change what I say. I did say that the south would have had a competative advantage before the North industrialised, but aftet they abolished slavery


Sorry for the confusion, but even in that earlier American period...the North was still the economic heart of the nation. The 17th century wasn't as remarkable for the use of non-muscle power and organized production of goods as the 18th, but yet it was still a firm leap ahead of previous times.

I'm not able to confirm this offhand but I could swear some aspects of mass production were begining regarding some goods. Certaintly, economic activity had definitely begun the shift from individual artisans pursuing their livelihoods into small companies. While few ventures were formally incorporated, my understanding is that New England was a thriving center of commerce and manufactured goods.

I know for sure that American goods were cheaper and higher quality than ones imported from Europe in Canada, which gave the Intendant of New France (Quebec) fits because part of his job was to make sure the colonists bought from the mother country only. (which would argue that they were relatively sophisticated at efficiently producing items with the modest improvements in tehcniques and tools already proliferating)(since hauling stuff by horseback or upriver in boats to the Canadian border and beyond was probably about as expensive as Atlantic shipping, or at least, not much cheaper...)

Even in it's heyday, the South was simply not a place of organized and foresighted economic policy. Yes, it had a great deal of economic brute force from the power of its commodity exports. But the structure of this economy was in some ways an idealized recreation of Feudal Europe. One of the great flaws in their economy was that by locking up most of the state lands in huge agricultural estates, they retarded the development of the middle class fatally. They also caused themselves to slowly fall behind demographically for free citizens. The lack of social mobility and opportunity was a heavy drag upon their development.

The South _was_ still significant, but there was a reason after all that most of the fighting in the War of Independence took place in the New England area. (Aside from the fact the South tried to sit on the fence....)


Is this because they owned slaves or because of other factors or even that these other factors were caused by the use of slavery.


As far as I know, the consensus is this: The South was dominated by people who entered the New World with assets. Locke emigrated there and had a big hand in the constitutions of Carolina. They were looking for a new land to establish the security they had always felt eluded them in the Old World. This was one of the reasons why the South ended up with so many slaves; the Northerners didn't have the wealth to buy them in wholesale lots as the Southerners did. (and because the South favored labor intensive cash crops, whereas the North's path to economic power was less direct...)

So a combination of economics and cultural norms. And once slavery was entrenched, there was no getting rid of it, because the economic elites relied on it. Yet if they did not abandon it, in the long run, they could only fall farther and farther behind their industrializing Northern cousins. Now it was _their_ turn to have insufficient spare investment capital, ironically.


I think perhaps it could be that economic necessity pushed the North to abloished slavery. Was Union agriculture less profitable? If so then the freeing of slaves would facilitate the movement of workers into the cities (I presume a freed slave wasn't exactly content to live the rest of his life in the rural areas where his ex-master lived. Too many hard feelings). Hence, facilitating the industrial revolution. Therefore it could be economic necessity rather than morals that ment the North industrialised first. I believe it was a further 100 years before the black civil rights movement bore fruit.

I'm losing the thread of my post. I'll just stop here.

Ah, you see there never was much of a moral thread in day to day life around the abolition of slavery. Yes, moralism was a part of the abolitionist movement, but much of it was firmly wedded to self interest and prejudice. It was not the defining thread in the mixture of parties who banned slavery in the North.

One of my favorite quotes from Lincoln from the early years in politics was something like "Don't think I'm for negro equality; you're not, I'm not, no one is, and that's not what the slavery issue is about"... (Lincoln did change his mind about that during the war, and it was commendable that he did...but his convictions demonstrate the narrow range of what was considered "reasonable opinions" on the matter)

The point is, the North hardly ever had slaves. New England pioneers had to be generalist jack of all trades. The ones who were exceptionally good could save a little money and go into trade, law, medicine or politics and thus climb the social ladder (or allow their children to.) Social mobility was more an aspiration than a reality. But it was the foundation of "The American Dream" in it's earlier incarnations.

You worked for the immediate benefits of liberty and cheap (or free land) and the hope of eventual improvement. Over and over, the majoriyt of people voted with their money (by not buying any) that slaves were a bad investment on this path. And as the economy became more and more developed, slave purchasing declined in the North.

The point is, the laws didn't outlaw something but ratify an existing state of affairs. A combination of nativism and racism led to the laws as a bulwark against the possiblity of one more source of "cheap labor competition" with "the virtuous native sons" of the land.

I'm not sure why factory owners (as textile mills and such evolved) didn't use slaves. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't (at least primarily) the laws regarding slavery. Anyone have more solid data so I don't have to go to the library ? :)

However, I do know that black ex slaves did not figure significantly in Northern industrialism. In fact, they had small marginalized subcombinities and lived in material circumstances that were often worse than slaves. But they did have basic personal liberty which mattered a great deal to them.

It would be slightly unwise to underestimate the influence of Edward and Mary on English history. Whilst Edward never ruled in his own right he was the first protestant Monarch of England and Northumberland's policies were reflected in that. He also refused to name Mary or Elizabeth as his heir in his will. Thus Northumberland was able to attempt to install Lady Jane Grey on the throne. It was this couple with Mary's intial mercy towards Sufolk and Lady Jane Grey that lead to them attempting to take the throne again in Wyatt's rebellion. This rebellion coupled with Northumberland's policies under Edward lead Mary to persecute protestants and attempt to bring England back under the influence of Roman Catholicism. Once Elizabeth gained the throne she reversed Mary's policies and reinstituted protestantism. So the religious turmoil that Edward and Mary caused should not be underestimated.


The religious turmoil was not necessarily endemic to either. Henry failed to doctrinally define the Tudor state throughout his reign, as the kings book, 1543, and the succession of articles between 1536 and 1539, demonstrate. Essentially, in 1547 the Tudor state was religiously malleable, and it remained so until, I would contend, the 1560's. The north, and indeed, much of rural England, remained inherently conservative, given the appendages to their wills, whilst London, and other southern settlements, became progressively more radicalised.

Elizabeth never actually imposed protestantism, she merely ensured that it was used as the state faith, ehilst tolerating clandestine coatholocism.

yeah, they could've done it, they even had batteries, weakones, that were pretty big, but they did have them, they used them for some metal thingy they did. If only they would've invented gun powder and coulda wasted the barbarians.

The religious turmoil was not necessarily endemic to either. Henry failed to doctrinally define the Tudor state throughout his reign, as the kings book, 1543, and the succession of articles between 1536 and 1539, demonstrate. Essentially, in 1547 the Tudor state was religiously malleable, and it remained so until, I would contend, the 1560's. The north, and indeed, much of rural England, remained inherently conservative, given the appendages to their wills, whilst London, and other southern settlements, became progressively more radicalised.

Elizabeth never actually imposed protestantism, she merely ensured that it was used as the state faith, ehilst tolerating clandestine coatholocism.I'd say good post apart from the last sentence. I was browsing wiki as I haven't studied the Tudors in ages and it claims that Elizabeth was fairly bloody herself.
The persecution [by Mary] lasted for three and three-quarter years. She earned the epithet of Bloody Mary though her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth, more than balanced the number killed under Mary with Catholic persecution, both in total and frequency, earning Elizabeth the epithet of Bloody Bess[1]. (Elizabeth once had 600+ Catholics executed for restoring the Mass in a town and another time had 300 priests killed including Edmund Campion).From wiki's article on 'Mary I of England'

So I wouldn't say she was terribly tolerant. I mean she even attempted to pass the Reformation Bill, and only when it was voted by the Lords did she tone her ambitions to be Supreme Head of the Church of England.

I'd say good post apart from the last sentence. I was browsing wiki as I haven't studied the Tudors in ages and it claims that Elizabeth was fairly bloody herself.
From wiki's article on 'Mary I of England'

So I wouldn't say she was terribly tolerant. I mean she even attempted to pass the Reformation Bill, and only when it was voted by the Lords did she tone her ambitions to be Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Ah. The dangers of only studying the reformation up to 1558. We were simply told that Elizabeth maintained aa aurum mediocritas of sorts.

Sorry for the confusion, but even in that earlier American period...the North was still the economic heart of the nation. The 17th century wasn't as remarkable for the use of non-muscle power and organized production of goods as the 18th, but yet it was still a firm leap ahead of previous times.
<snip>
However, I do know that black ex slaves did not figure significantly in Northern industrialism. In fact, they had small marginalized subcombinities and lived in material circumstances that were often worse than slaves. But they did have basic personal liberty which mattered a great deal to them.I think you've reached the extent at which I can debate about this topic. You see I'm a scientist turned political scientist for the past year. I have passed the year, so yay! But I'm still catching up on a lot of periperhal and not-so-peripheral knowledge to the subject. I did manage to gain a 2-1 in all my essays and exams relating to Marx. God knows how, I swear I still don't understand Marxism. Sure I understand most of the little separte pieces of theory. But what I don't understand is how it all fits together as one huge, all-encompassing, super theory (maybe because it doesn't, but that's not what I've been led to believe).

Anyway, we seem to be agreeing on a majority of points. Which I, at least, find gratifying, probably because you seem to have a very extensive knowledge of history.

Oh, Locke. You mention Locke had a hand in writing the constitutions of Carolina? Weren't they slave states? Great, if you mean what I think you meant then this would be some great ammo to use against one of my friends who is a staunch supporter of Locke. Sorry, but the idea of 'natural rights' just seems alien to me. To me there is nothing natural about a right. A right is something that as a group we agree that we should all have the ability to do regardless of prevailing conditions. A right is like a human ability, but with protected status, thus it is a concept and not natural. So, yeah, it'd be great to tar Locke as a racist. I'd like to see my friend being so aloof in his support of Locke now. Hah.

Sorry that was getting way off topic. What were we talking about? The possibility of Rome industrialising?

No internal revolt has ever been successful without foreign intervention. No contemporary would have intervened in Rome's internal affairs after the horrible example of Carthage's fate.

The point was, the Romans dominated the Italian peninsula because of their combination of relative purity in the laws they followed and the supremacy of their military process. The other Italian tribes were markedly different in this regard, and once the Romans exited the Seven Kings period in good shape, their domination was pretty much as inevitable as any historical process gets.

The Romans _did_ subsequently _lose_ this purity of law, and this faltering was a key reason why they never really got control of the endemic political economic crises that followed in the late Republic and Principes period. Because no one trusted the government to act for the good of all, as they had reason to do in the early Republican period.

And there was no sign that slavery would have been abolished by the Spartcaus revolt. The best outcome the rebels would have been able to hope for was to be allowed to declare their emancipation and have it stand. To go on to emancipate other slaves....how could it have happened ? The Sparticans were unique in having access to weapons and training in using them. And they still lacked military experience which limited the success they could hope for against the professional legions.

Other slaves would not have been able to revolt, and after a successful revolt, the central authorities would have been raving paranoid about containing any further insurrections. And they weren't exactly moderate or timid on the issue to start with, as the crucifiction of every last Spartican showed.

I mean, look at antebellum Deep South in the USA. The institution of slavery there was much more unstable than in Roman times because of the concurrent existence of racism (which itself is a modern artifact; there is a huge difference between the remarkable egocentricism and in-group prefernces of pre-modern nations and tribes and the conviction that there is a scientific basis for declarations of the innate perfidy and worthlessness of targeted ethnicities.) And the Deep South slave owners lived in quiet terror of a revolt. One which never happened despite a few small rumblings.

The American slaves had far more day to day incentive to revolt and far more likelihood of success and they did not. (the black slaves were far more numerous relative to the white landowners, and the standing armies of the day were far smaller than the Romans maintained) There is little reason to think that slavery as an institution had been endangered by the Sparticans.

Since we're only conjecturing here, I see your point about the Spartican rebellion not ending slavery as a system within the Republic.

However, your point that no internal revolt ever being successful without foreign intervention simply isn't true. (Or did the Roman's expel their Eutruscan Kings with help from Egypt;) ?)

Also, the social wars between Rome and its Italian neighbours pitted armies trained in exactly the same style, that had campaigned all over the mediteranean. To say that Romans 'won' because their laws were more pure than Samnite or Marsic one's is silly; Rome had the luck of having Marius and Sulla as military leaders. What if Rome had been destroyed in that conflict and the new capital of the republic was in Corfinium?

Also, let's not forget the constant struggle between the Senate and Plebian Assembly? When Sulla broke the 'purest' of Roman Laws, by crossing the pomerium with legions so that he could restore the power of the Senate?

There were several opportunities in the Republican period to destroy the power base of the landed classes, who were the prime beneficiaries of slavery.

It would be slightly unwise to underestimate the influence of Edward and Mary on English history....[snip]. So the religious turmoil that Edward and Mary caused should not be underestimated.


Well, it was certainly significant to the immediate span of time....and it definitely was instrumental in shaping the State Church of England. But the overall institutions of the bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the legal system remained mostly untouched by this. These things are typically only influenced by long lived, conscientious rulers.

I tend to favor those considerations as more significant. But I do have to admit that a big part of the English outlook was owing to events they set in motion. Because there was that quick back and forth tussle between Protestantism, Catholicism and Anglicanism, the English got heartily tired of sectarian struggle and grudingly decided to grant a degree of freedom of conscience which was relevant to other things indirectly.

Still, this process was not one that Edward and Mary set out to create _by design_. It was one of those cases of serendipity, immo.....


With regards to Prussia I shall have to admit my complete ignorance except for the fact that I know who Frederick the Great was and who Chancellor Bismarck was.

I am mortified, it was Frederick Wilhelm who was the Great Elector, not Wilhelm. His father George Willhelm did an ok job given the limits he was working with. But the Great Elector earned his title and then some.

The Great Elector was a canny bastard who ruled the Electorate of Brandenburg (centered on the territories in a weird amoebic glob around Berlin). There were seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire and either the weakest or second weakest of the four or five secular electors (2 or 3 were the Bishops of particular cities). So he started with a moderate amount of power and prominence, but was hardly a dominant player.

He used his 48 years of rule to
---> Secured and integrated the acquisition by bequest of East Prussia from the now defunct Knights who had owned it (and other territorial issues in the neightbourhood like Pomerania on the Baltic Coast immediately north of landlocked Brandenburg) (bear in mind East Prussia was _larger_ than Brandenburg)
---> Systemtically erode the perogatives and the powers of the nobles under the duress of "war time necessity" which became permanent and get consistent and significant taxation out of them
---> Deftly managed to avoid getting his lands sacked by the Swedes or the Hapsburgs or the Protestant League during the tail end of the (1640-1648) of the 30's year war which he took over during (again, his dad did well to avoid any disasters in the precedint years) (He was not well liked for his lack of practical solidarity with his co-religionists)
---> Actually managed to consolidate and expand the electorate's territory at the peace treaty that ended the 30 years war despite not having contributed a great deal to the military conflict, through shrewd bargaining and begging

He ruled for about 48 years and I loved the one quote that said something like"You might not understand how he managed to so methodically strip the perogatives from the nobles, but imagine the same president in the USA facing the congress....for _twelve consecutive terms_. And he never backed down and incessantly pressed his case. You'd give in a lot just from fatigue, too, in that sort of extended conflict"

Then his son Frederick became Frederick the First, King of Prussia. (mostly by persistent wheedling, but hey, you do what it takes, the Hapsburgs wanted his vote BADLY and they felt the monarchy was a cheap bribe, I think....) and that was pretty much his sole accomplishment, aside from a large debt he racked up getting kingly :)

Now, his grandson Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia....he was a hardcase. When they say "we're going to do this by the book" in Prussia, at least for about a century or more afterwards, they meant HIS book. In the early part of his reign he sat down and in a rare burst of scholastic effort wrote out a comprehensive set of policies and procedures to govern anything the State touched upon. I seem to recall he needed two books to cover everything. He wasn't a great intellectual, but he was a martinet and a die hard disciplinarian. In fact, for a monarch, he was kind of a freak (grins). (He even had a section in his book about "Preachers may not spend more than an hour on their sermons on Sunday(!)")

He was a strange man. He had this (seemingly non sexual) fetish for tall men and had giants from all over Europe recruited (sometimes abducted) into his Potsdam Grenadiers. He painted portraits of a great many of them, too. He loved military pomp and pagentry, but he was terrified of actually using his army. (though he expanded it to be far larger relative to the population of Prussia than any other army in Europe). It was written that under him, Prussia was an army with an exceptionally large barracks....

(One bit I love was the time he's walking in Berlin and some indigent crosses his path...realizes whom he's seeing...and runs away! FW chased him down and cornered him saying "Why did you run from me ?" "Because I'se scared of you, your honor!" and he takes out his cane and starts screaming "you should love me ! love me!" while proceeding to beat the tar out of him.)

Still, he was one of those leaders who "asked nothing of others that he did not ask of himself". He was definitely consistent, reasonably fair, and if he was a bit strange, he was a tireless sevant of the state and made sure everyone else in government service was as well

He was a harsh, heavy handed man who shaped his son, Frederick profoundly. Frederick hated living under him and tried to run away to France. FW caught him and the friend (von Katte) whom Frederick had run away with. He wanted to execute Frederick for "desertion" but the courts said they wouldn't endorse this because the royal family must not make war upon itself. So FW executed Von Katte and made Frederick watch.

Yet on his deathbed, FW knew Frederick would do great things and teach a lesson to all the people who'd pushed his country around just because he didn't want to go to war. And that's exactly what happened!

Frederick II was a lonely, brilliant man. Possibly queer, possibly asexual, but definitely always aloof and alone save for one or two others during his time on earth, he burned to show the world his brilliance. He rationalized and entrenched the norms of service that his father had created. An Englishman (horrified at the harsh and austere working conditions for the Prussian officials) said "Better a castrated Turk than a Minister in Prussia!"

(Frederick II did fancy himself an intellectual, and while he was not as great a poet or philosopher as he was a military leader and administrator, he was not oblivious to the life of the mind and spirit as his father was. )

He looked at the stituation his country was in, and realized if it did not maintain its army, it would lose influence, but if it maintained its army, it would go broke. So he looked around for the best "value for time" conquest and decided on Silesia in Austria, one of its richest province. He wrenched it out Maria Theresa's hands just as she aceded to the throne, and he spent the majority of the rest of his life defending and making this acquisition safe from her efforts to retake it. Two wars and endless years of political maneuvering to keep Austria weak and on the sidelines.

He was a brilliant general, and won something like sixteen battles before he was defeated, during the Seven Years War. He had an eye both for detail (metal ram rods for muskets, the invention of the cadence step) and strategy (he could take on numberically equal or superior opponents and beat them consistently). He led from the front and had the Devil's own luck. (During one of the few battles he lost, he cried as a rout began "What, dogs, do you want to live forever?" and the reply from one fleeing infantryman was "for 16 pence a day (or some numerical wage) that's quite enough, thank you")

Frederick was a practical man who said things like "If we get enough Turks in Berlin, then I will pay to have a Mosque made for them" (and this was a time when Turks were regarded as not even quite human by most Europeans) because he was such a firm believer in freedom of conscience. There was never perfect conformity of belief in his kingdom and he saw no reason to waste blood and money trying to enforce it. (Especially since a major economic windfall for him was the settlement of part of the Hugenot exodus from France)

Basically, The Great Elector whipped the nobles into shape. Frederick Wilhelm I beat them down and laid down what the government was going to do and how it would do it. Frederick II made sure the nobles never wanted to get up again and knew their place, and fine tuned the State apartatus he received, as well as expanding the country and guaranteeing it's near term security. It was a period spanning almost 100 years of good (if harsh) government from three rulers and formed the core (politically and culturally) of modern Germany.

I hate going with the "Great Men Make Great History" school, but to a degree, this was one of its few demonstrable operations. (Though to be fair, there were quirks and idiosyncracies in Prussian norms pushed upon them by these obsessed men that would come back to haunt Germany after unification)

However, your point that no internal revolt ever being successful without foreign intervention simply isn't true. (Or did the Roman's expel their Eutruscan Kings with help from Egypt;) ?)

Maybe it's not absolute, but I got the impression Etruscan society had entered a moribund phase, and Rome was an organized society waging civil war upon their political masters. Revolts, in the sense of "popular uprisings by most of the population" generally don't change things, and when they do, I haven't heard of a case where someone outside wasn't paying the rebels. Even if it does happen otherwise, it's certainly not common.



Also, the social wars between Rome and its Italian neighbours pitted armies trained in exactly the same style, that had campaigned all over the mediteranean. To say that Romans 'won' because their laws were more pure than Samnite or Marsic one's is silly; Rome had the luck of having Marius and Sulla as military leaders. What if Rome had been destroyed in that conflict and the new capital of the republic was in Corfinium?


The Romans used _simliar_ laws and similar military procedures. But they do things different, even in the early days of the republic, long long before Sulla and Marius.

I'll admit my source here is narrow, but I read a recent book on the Punic Wars and the picture it paints of the recently conquered Latin cities in Italy is not flattering to the Italians. Most of them weren't republican, and the Republican ones were as bad as late Republican Rome for breakdown of efficiency and public order. Hannibal had many of them go over to his side, but the point was they were hopelessly parochial and felt no sense of mission of the rightness of their city's values and government.

Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to me that since the Romans spent about a century beating the rest of Italy into submission that part of what substained them was an ideological vocation, and what made it possible was their small but signficiant differences in military tactics. And by the end of the Peninsular Wars, the legions (instutitionally and organizationally) were now distinctly better than their peers. And from this edge...they parlayed it into dominance of the whole Mediterranean.

(I'll note that I'm not sure in the long run how _good_ this conquest was, but it rested on being able to defeat far more numerous foes with organized, disciplined troops following a brilliant tactical and operational doctrine)

One of the few areas where the Romans learned by doing was military science. Even people who could study and hear of their successes didn't learn enough to stand against them.



Also, let's not forget the constant struggle between the Senate and Plebian Assembly? When Sulla broke the 'purest' of Roman Laws, by crossing the pomerium with legions so that he could restore the power of the Senate?

There were several opportunities in the Republican period to destroy the power base of the landed classes, who were the prime beneficiaries of slavery.

Yes, but the landed classes hardly stood there like practice dummies either and had their own machinations and schemes. I'll note that I count the Roman Republic _effectively_ over at the end of the Third Punic War. This may not be an orthodox rendering, but by this time the ethos of public service was essentially dead. Also, the Romans had adopted permanent, professional armies, which gave them power in the material world that corrupted them, because now they could fight long and well without any effect but taxes on the home front. Consular power lost most of it's checks and balances when the army was no longer raised and staffed by the Consul's peers.

The Republic was a hothouse flower that blossomed for something like a century and a half. It wasn't perfect, but it was a damned sight better than what came after it. Though worst of all was the Republic-that-didn't-act-like-a-Republic in the years leading up to Julius Caeser.

Anyway, we seem to be agreeing on a majority of points. Which I, at least, find gratifying, probably because you seem to have a very extensive knowledge of history.

I was a sucky history _student_ and my education was not nearly as broad as I would have liked (almost oblivious to non European history, not that I like it this way, but had a hard time getting the energy to break in a new field)

But I have a hell of a memory and I do see the patterns within what I know. So thank you (curtsies)


Oh, Locke. You mention Locke had a hand in writing the constitutions of Carolina? Weren't they slave states? Great, if you mean what I think you meant then this would be some great ammo to use against one of my friends who is a staunch supporter of Locke. Sorry, but the idea of 'natural rights' just seems alien to me. To me there is nothing natural about a right. A right is something that as a group we agree that we should all have the ability to do regardless of prevailing conditions. A right is like a human ability, but with protected status, thus it is a concept and not natural. So, yeah, it'd be great to tar Locke as a racist. I'd like to see my friend being so aloof in his support of Locke now. Hah.

Sorry that was getting way off topic. What were we talking about? The possibility of Rome industrialising?

tangents are endemic though not ubiqutious to history discussions :)

But yes, Locke was one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers being one of the only ones who had a big hand in a government. Not sure if he held office or was just an advisor....

Many of the Enlightenment era thinkers onwards were racist, but to be fair, they had a darned hard time avoiding that conclusion from their starting points. I don't think we really have any people who are consciously _non_ racist till the end of WWII had percolated a few years.

Still, some were more outspoken about it than others. I still loathe Weber for his "we're not sure that the inferiority of the non caucasian races is a scientific fact, but I'm sure we'll be proving it any day now".

Nowadays, if you're a racist, it's because you're an ass. Back then, you were a racist because there was a relentless drive to rationalize and validate the status quo. They observed inequality. They had to endorse it. The blind spot is appalling, but all cultures have them.....

It would have been nicer if we'd collectively clued in earlier, but sadly for so long we were locked into a very martial mindset in confronting the world. There are times when a crusade is called for, but not everything is a fight and not everything is either-or....

Maybe it's not absolute, but I got the impression Etruscan society had entered a moribund phase, and Rome was an organized society waging civil war upon their political masters. Revolts, in the sense of "popular uprisings by most of the population" generally don't change things, and when they do, I haven't heard of a case where someone outside wasn't paying the rebels. Even if it does happen otherwise, it's certainly not common.

I won't quibble with you on this one. I'm sure I could pull out a few examples, but it's not all that important. :)

The Romans used _simliar_ laws and similar military procedures. But they do things different, even in the early days of the republic, long long before Sulla and Marius.

I'll admit my source here is narrow, but I read a recent book on the Punic Wars and the picture it paints of the recently conquered Latin cities in Italy is not flattering to the Italians. Most of them weren't republican, and the Republican ones were as bad as late Republican Rome for breakdown of efficiency and public order. Hannibal had many of them go over to his side, but the point was they were hopelessly parochial and felt no sense of mission of the rightness of their city's values and government.

Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to me that since the Romans spent about a century beating the rest of Italy into submission that part of what substained them was an ideological vocation, and what made it possible was their small but signficiant differences in military tactics. And by the end of the Peninsular Wars, the legions (instutitionally and organizationally) were now distinctly better than their peers. And from this edge...they parlayed it into dominance of the whole Mediterranean.

(I'll note that I'm not sure in the long run how _good_ this conquest was, but it rested on being able to defeat far more numerous foes with organized, disciplined troops following a brilliant tactical and operational doctrine)

One of the few areas where the Romans learned by doing was military science. Even people who could study and hear of their successes didn't learn enough to stand against them.

I'm referring specifically to the Social War, which wasn't too far before the Spartican rebellion. This is well after the initial conquest of Italia, and the punic wars. Together, Roman and Italian Allied forces fought throughout the meditaranean, and were trained by the same Roman Commanders. What they were fighting for, was to be considered Roman citizens.

There was a movement specifically to destroy Rome and create a new Italian Capital and have general enfranchisement for all Italians. Even after Rome won this conflict (and it was bloody, and not necessarily a sure thing), the Romans ended in giving citizenship to the rest of Italy regardless. So at this point in Roman history, there was a very crucial moment where the organization of the Republic could have drastically changed.

If Rome had fallen, and the new capital was in Corfinium (to be renamed 'Italia'), what might have happened during the Spartacan rebellion then? One would surmise that Italy would have been even weaker, and the Spartacan's may have forced some concessions, or at least had Italians rethinking slavery (I know, it's a stretch :) ).



Yes, but the landed classes hardly stood there like practice dummies either and had their own machinations and schemes. I'll note that I count the Roman Republic _effectively_ over at the end of the Third Punic War. This may not be an orthodox rendering, but by this time the ethos of public service was essentially dead. Also, the Romans had adopted permanent, professional armies, which gave them power in the material world that corrupted them, because now they could fight long and well without any effect but taxes on the home front. Consular power lost most of it's checks and balances when the army was no longer raised and staffed by the Consul's peers.

The Republic was a hothouse flower that blossomed for something like a century and a half. It wasn't perfect, but it was a damned sight better than what came after it. Though worst of all was the Republic-that-didn't-act-like-a-Republic in the years leading up to Julius Caeser.

Oh the Senate definitely had their schemes, because Sulla ended up reimposing the power of the Senate over the Plebs and proscribed all enemies.

If there was a reason for the collapse of the Republic, it's this;

a) Gauis Marius, with extreme opposition from the conservative members of Senate, started raising troops from the urban poor rather than traditionally land-owning Romans. At this point, facing hordes of Germanic Migrations, Rome didn't have a lot of choice, since the farming men who would supply their own equipment and had ties and loyalty to Rome through their hearth and home were either all dieing abroad, or were becoming penniless because their families couldn't run the farm when the rich slave-owning property owners started buying them out.

b) Gaius Marius, once again, used personal funds to hire recruits when the Senate ran out of funds. This created a precedent whereby an ambitious politician could hire armies, ostensibly under the control of the Senate, but in reality only loyal to their commander and source of income.

c) Sulla, broke the ancient tradition of keeping armies outside of the 'pomerium' (the ancient boundaries of Rome), and became the first Roman to march on fellow Romans. He did this to oust the Plebian Assembly who had, quite legally, taken control of Rome, which Sulla, a Conservative would not allow. This set the precedent that even Romans would consider marching on Rome. He was also the first to be named dictator for any serious length of time. Another important precedent.

d) And then we come to Caesar. A man who rose to power 'always in his time' and forged a new province from ambition alone. He was so popular in Rome, that the conservative faction, who despised him, feared he would march on Rome. And then the morons practically forced him to, by making him abandon his armies and show up for trials which would only end up in humiliating and degrading his accomplishments. So, given the choice between sacrificing his pride, and marching on Rome, Caesar kept his pride. And became dictator, but spared all of his enemies.

After his assassination, there was never any real serious attempt to truly restore the republic.

And in some ways, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The republic, steeped in tradition and designed to run a city, was a piss-poor way of managing an empire that they acquired not even necessarily intentionally. It put an end to the constant civil war (at least for quite some time), and was fairer to the provinces than the republic was.

Rome was never truly a model of Republicanism for the whole empire, just the city of Rome itself. Management of such a large and diverse empire needed a system that governed it properly, which Octavious (Augustus) saw perfectly well.

(Incidentally, If you're a Rome fan, I highly recommend Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. It covers the rise of Marius/Sulla to the Death of Caesar and the Republican period. Seriously good stuff.)

though rome was very innovative and invented a lot of things that wouldnt be reinveted til least the industrial revolution up to and including today they prefered tried and tested methods until they shook that out of their cultures then they might of not hada industrial Revolution

Greyenivol Colony,

what sounds more likely is the wealthy Romans would all just pack up and go someplace else, where there's slaves, comfy chaise longes, and lotsa wine. I don't think there would be any landowners left.

I do not agree. The Roman patricians would be bound by culture, and probably by convenience, to the ravaged Republic. Imagine an uprooted family trying to meke it in the non-friendly environment of Carthago, not to mention Gaulle or other non conquered area.

As for the peripheral parts of the Republic, their fate would be dependent on wether there was powerful leaders on one side or the other. There would probaby be a period of several small, short lived republics.

Not to forget the growth of Carthago. They would almost certainly not sit idly on their laurels in this period. They might even grow to be a (by the standard) global empire. Which would probably lead to some sort of remnant, akin to the East-Roman empire from the latter half of the first millennia, by the time of Roman IR.

There would certainly be enough powerful enemies for the Industrial Republic.

Is there any good books that cover the eastern roman empire from shortly before western Rome fell to when Byzantine fell?

Man, most people seem pretty ruthless about denying the Romans played any part in innovation. It seems a bit silly to me to write off the society as incapable of creating advancement.

Given the right leadership (Maybe some ficticious emperor who has a thing for efficiency) and a widespread interest in technology that spurs individual experimentation, the technological limitations could be overcome.

Romans liked weapons, right? What hallmark of the industrial revolution makes fantastic weapons? Steel! If the Romans had figured out how to go past iron tools and weapons (They were doing it in India and the Middle East, so the Romans could have picked it up) that would have been a great advancement.

Even with slaves, industrialisation helps things along. Slave traders would have jumped at the opportunity to load their chattal into the Roman version of a truck rather than march them halfway across the Empire and wreck their feet.

Electricity could have been figured out much earlier. All it would take is a single Consul zapped when a lightning bolt hits a fence that he happens to be touching to get people to start looking into how it all works.

My suggestion is to simply look up how people discovered various things, and work out plausible ways for such things to happen in Rome. You do not need to reform the Empire's economic system to create a need for some piece of technology, you just need one farm or one scientist to have that desire. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day.