# How come Rome never entered the Industrial age? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 19, 2002, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831 "2002-06-19T11:13:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/121 "2012-02-19T18:58:27Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I have not read his book, and I don’t claim to. But I have heard similar theses, and they tend to boil down to _post hoc, ergo prompter hoc_. There’s essentially no evidence linking the slave economies of the New World to industrialization, and a great deal separating them. At most, you can argue that increased commerce helped create wealth useful forindustrialization and allowed a cheaper food supply for city workers… but then you find you can’t show that early industrial capital came at all from the slave trade. Aside from which, the slave trade was abolished extremely _early_ in industrialization, which makes the link much more tenuous. > > Again, I haven’t read this book. But suffice it to say this view is not well-accepted among historians, precisely because industrialization has a long patterns of avoiding areas with lots of slave labor, or effective slave labor as in parts of China, and does not seem to be well correlated with the slave trade except to the extent that some heavily commercial cities were involved in both. Even if the thesis is at all true, it requires so many exceptions, qualifications, and compromises that it isn’t very useful. There is not much evidence _directly_ in support of the Polanyi “Great Transformation” hypothesis, either. As in any case, that evidence requires a lot of interpretation. The usual narrative confirms what we’d already like to believe about industrialization, but even it fails to explain the location and timing of industrialization across different countries. You have to go to economics to find general theories of industrialization, and naturally, most historians object to this because economists saw off all of the details. Inikori argues that England industrialized in a very patchy way, with some regions transforming earlier and more rapidly than others. He then tries to use data to analyze how integrated early industrializing regions were with Atlantic and African commerce. It turns out that integrated markets within England itself industrialized sooner and faster and relied heavily on (possibly exploitative) trade relations with Africans in North America and in Africa. Of course this is an _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ argument, but then again, so are pretty much all arguments in the entire discipline of history, including the mainstream narrative of industrialization. This one at least mobilizes a lot of data in a somewhat interesting and novel way. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/122 "2012-02-19T19:15:14Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > And how would they get the belts to move? > > Their was a BBC programme once which looked at what innovations were needed to get even the most low tecn stuff to be possible. It was quite illuminating and answered many querys of why something was not invented before. Overshot water wheel? With power transmitted by cogged wheels or leather belts? ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/123 "2012-02-19T19:19:27Z")
Industrialization is primarily driven by economics. A place with high cost of labor and access to cheap energy sources (like coal) is more likely to industrialize. As a slave economy has access to extremely cheap labor, there’s much less impetus to industrialize because the payoff will be lower. The economy of the Roman empire featured latifundia controlled by a relatively small number of wealthy landowners, worked by slave labor and proto-serfs. From the point of view of the landowners, so long as the legions continued conquering and maintained the flow of slaves, there was no compelling reason to industrialize. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/124 "2012-02-19T19:35:28Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Then what you said was extremely unclear. England was indeed heavily industrialized before it began to unwind the slave trade. The utility of slavery does decline in a post-agricultural, industrial world. But slavery was instrumental in the process of industrialization. The Industrial Revolution kicked off in England because they had a high cost of labor, cheap coal provided by a well developed mining industry, and patent laws that provided rich incentives to inventors. While slavery existed in the British Empire, it was mainly confined to their colonies. So even as factories started popping up in England, places like Jamaica kept right on going with their plantations. So the idea that slavery was “instrumental” in spurring industrialization is nonsensical. If anything, it hindered industrialization. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/125 "2012-02-19T20:32:03Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > The economy of the Roman empire featured latifundia controlled by a relatively small number of wealthy landowners, worked by slave labor and proto-serfs. From the point of view of the landowners, so long as the legions continued conquering and maintained the flow of slaves, there was no compelling reason to industrialize. This does not follow at all. First, latifundia worked by slaves were largely found in Italy alone. The great estates of Egypt and North Africa, for example, were worked mostly by wage laborers (despite what Pliny says about North Africa). Second, latifundia were incredibly productive, moreso than agriculture anywhere until the 19th century or so. The legions stopped conquering long, long before the latifundia ran out. The supply of newly captured slaves was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for Italian great estates. > [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > The Industrial Revolution kicked off in England because they had a high cost of labor, cheap coal provided by a well developed mining industry, and patent laws that provided rich incentives to inventors. While slavery existed in the British Empire, it was mainly confined to their colonies. So even as factories started popping up in England, places like Jamaica kept right on going with their plantations. > > So the idea that slavery was “instrumental” in spurring industrialization is nonsensical. If anything, it hindered industrialization. This is debatable. Many of the key inventions of the industrial revolution that mechanized textile production were pre-coal. British mercantile policy, which explicitly recognized the importance of captured export markets in, you guessed it, Africa and North America provided incentives to investors. About half of the manufactured goods made in England were exported to the colonies. Slaves were not instrumental because they worked in the factories but because their markets were forcibly integrated with Britain’s to fuel its own industrialization. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/126 "2012-02-19T21:09:36Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > This does not follow at all. First, latifundia worked by slaves were largely found in Italy alone. But not exclusively Italy (not that it really undermines my point). > [@](#): > > The great estates of Egypt and North Africa, for example, were worked mostly by wage laborers (despite what Pliny says about North Africa). Proto-serfs. > [@](#): > > Second, latifundia were incredibly productive, moreso than agriculture anywhere until the 19th century or so. Yeah, but it was profitable because the labor was cheap. Hence, no incentive to industrialize and replace the labor component with machines. > [@](#): > > This is debatable. Many of the key inventions of the industrial revolution that mechanized textile production were pre-coal. British mercantile policy, which explicitly recognized the importance of captured export markets in, you guessed it, Africa and North America provided incentives to investors. About half of the manufactured goods made in England were exported to the colonies. Slaves were not instrumental because they worked in the factories but because their markets were forcibly integrated with Britain’s to fuel its own industrialization. Captive market or no, any such export business must be profitable, yes? And if your pool of labor commands high wages, it becomes more difficult to turn a profit, right? So if you can find a way to substitute capital for expensive labor, you increase the profit potential of your business. It may have been mercantilism, but it was still driven by capitalists looking to make a lot of money. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/127 "2012-02-20T02:28:04Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > But not exclusively Italy (not that it really undermines my point). Yes it does. Charitably speaking, your argument might explain why latifundism is inimical to industrialization, but that would fail to apply to most of the rest of the Roman empire at its peak because Rome was not organized that way. > [@](#): > > Proto-serfs. Are you even convincing yourself here? > [@](#): > > Yeah, but it was profitable because the labor was cheap. Hence, no incentive to industrialize and replace the labor component with machines. The fact that labor was cheap is not some kind of exogenous miracle. Labor became expensive because of vigorous demand from foreign markets. Rome did not have strong export markets. Rome traded precious metals for foreign goods, not the reverse. Roman labor stayed cheap because demand never changed very much throughout centuries of Roman history. > [@](#): > > Captive market or no, any such export business must be profitable, yes? Maybe. East Asian industrialization was unprofitable for decades, backed only by foreign direct investment and gigantic government subsidies. Many of these industries, even in places like South Korea, just failed. England in the 18th century even had a silk industry, if you can believe that. Adam Smith himself said it sucked., Yet it persisted longer than it should have thanks to generous government support and the demand from captured markets. > [@](#): > > And if your pool of labor commands high wages, it becomes more difficult to turn a profit, right? So if you can find a way to substitute capital for expensive labor, you increase the profit potential of your business. It may have been mercantilism, but it was still driven by capitalists looking to make a lot of money. You are still hung up on the supply side. English agriculture did have a surplus at the dawn of industrialization, and there certainly were wealthy people who wanted to make money with that surplus. But the Romans had wealthy publicans with huge amounts of surplus capital. The only place it could go was tax farming, since there was very little internal demand. Europe had a felicitous combination of surplus, people who wanted to make money, and rapidly growing foreign markets where they could force people to buy their goods. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/128 "2012-02-20T22:41:04Z")
I just recalled an interesting book on this topic a few years ago. **A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World** By Gregory Clark [http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282](http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282) He has interesting examples about how much variation there is in labor productivity from country to country even when they are using the production machinery. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/129 "2012-02-23T01:40:43Z")
I think we need to put the point-of-divergence further back, to the 6th and 5th Centuries B.C., the age of Thales of Miletus. If Greek philosophy had followed the path of the [Ionian scientists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionian_School_(philosophy)) – and, if anyone in that age were able to perceive the potential in a mutually assistive partnership between natural philosophy and technology (despite the latter being deeply beneath the notice and dignity of a philosopher and a gentleman) – then, Rome might have had an industrial revolution. If Greece didn’t first. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/130 "2012-02-23T01:47:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > – and, if anyone in that age were able to perceive the potential in a mutually assistive partnership between natural philosophy and technology (despite the latter being deeply beneath the notice and dignity of a philosopher and a gentleman) – And that was a real cultural barrier between them. I recall reading how an admiring Greek biographer of [Archimedes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes) felt obliged to focus on his purely mathematical and philosophical achievements, and apologize for his mechanical tinkering and inventions, as if feeling obliged in honesty to admit to a vice or a childish hobby of his subject. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831/131 "2012-02-23T04:53:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And that was a real cultural barrier between them. I recall reading how an admiring Greek biographer of [Archimedes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes) felt obliged to focus on his purely mathematical and philosophical achievements, and apologize for his mechanical tinkering and inventions, as if feeling obliged in honesty to admit to a vice or a childish hobby of his subject. Once again I ask. How on earth are the Romans/Greeks/little green men going to make the thousands of innovations and technical advances that they need to even have the beginnings of an industrial revolution? I am pretty sure there are people in Rawanda who know they theory of how to make nukes. OTH, no one worries about a Rawandan project. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-rome-never-entered-the-industrial-age/114831.md?page=6)