Please forgive me if this has been asked before, but I did a brief search and couldn’t find it on any of the msg boards. So here it goes.
To put the question simply - Was the Roman Empire on the verge of starting a/the Industrial Revolution?
My wife (who happens to be an Engineer) told me that during University, her Prof told them that the were. They had begun to harness steam power and made machines with it, something akin to automatic doors and such. The reason he gave that it didn’t progress was that they had slaves. Lots of them, so machines just weren’t pursued since they really weren’t needed.
Can anybody here throw some enlightenment my way on this? I find it quite interesting.
I’m not sure that the Romans were on the verge of an industrial revolution; most of the gadgets they produced were not much more than toys. However, the accepted wisdom for their failure to develop powered technology is generally thought to have been the prevalence of slaves. A number of things that were invented during the medieval period (those nasty Dark Ages) were preceded by similar developments hundreds of years earlier, but were only turned into practical tools during the later periods of lower population after the Roman Empire collapsed.
Among the fairly simple devices invented and ignored by Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, and others were water and wind powered pumps and mills.
Isn’t there a story in Suetonius where someone brings a design for a timesaving construction device to the emperor (Vespasian??), and he rejects it, saying that it would take jobs away from his people?
Not true about the Romans ignoring the water wheel. They were in fairly common use during the later Empire, especially in the west. The 16-wheel mill at Barbegal near Arles, France is well known to historians of technology. But it wasn’t an isolated case. There was another near Rome at Janiculum, probably built during the early 3rd century. No doubt there are others yet to be found.
The use of water mills during this period has been ascribed to the rise of Christianity and the freeing of slaves. I have my doubts about this and think it’s more likely that plagues had reduced the work force so much that they became a necessity.
One of my history professors used to give 3 reasons:
Economics. Rome had lots of slaves, and high unemployment among the free plebians. With plenty of cheap human labor, there was no need for labor-saving technology.
Religion. Pagan Rome had strong animist components. Before you could chop down a tree or dam a river, you had to placate a dryad or a river-god. Even after the coming of Christianity, it was centuries before the “man has dominion over nature” paradigm took hold.
Snobbery. Rome was ruled by patricians. Medieval Europe was ruled by aristocrats. They despised the laboring classes. Then the Black Death weakened the class structure. The peasants were now in great demand, but short supply, and so they were more powerful. Labor was now a virtue, and increasing output was now deemed to be a worthy pursuit.
Here’s a monograph that lays most of the blame to the classical attitude of the upper classes towards the artisan classes. No doubt there is a good deal of truth there.
It should also be noted that during this period, the emperors were distributing large quantities of bread to go along with the circuses. They needed the grain milled more efficiently than animal and slave labor could do. Thus the need for large water mills.
According to the fascinating, well-researched book Ancient Inventions, “automatic doors” were invented by the highly ingenious engineer Heron of Alexandria well before the twilight of the Roman Empire. Water wheels and pumps had long been discovered. Modern engines were not. The Romans went soft… slaves did the menial jobs and creativity was stifled in the lower classes as sons were forced by law to do the same job as their fathers. Scientific studies faltered. And Heron had already discovered that if “s” is half the perimeter of a triangle, its area is the square root of s(s-a)(s-b)(s-c) given a perimeter with the sum of the sides a+b+c.
A highly interesting thread - one of the most thought-provoking topics I have seen in a bit. And I’ll even try to post something useful next time, when I get home to my two favorite references, “The History of Engineering” and “A Short History of Technology”.
While the Romans may have invented some early mechanical items (like Hero’s steam engine), they were also lacking in many of the disciplines that would help them refine these inventions. Like a simple number system, for example. Doing math in Roman numerals is nearly impossible, beyond simple arithmatic. It’s only with the invention of Arabic numerals that more complicated mathematics could be devised (like trig and calculus). Math plays a very important part in mechanics and engineering.
As to slavery preventing the rise of industrialization, I’m reminded of something I once read about America in the 1700’s. Prior to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was beginning to decline, even the US South. After the cotton gin, Southern plantations now needed huge numbers of slaves to pick, process, and move cotton.
The Roman Empire was not on the verge of an industrial revolution. It had no need to be.
The idea that someone says, “Hey! I’ve got this really cool idea – the steam engine!”, and everyone else cries out, “Wow! That is cool! I’m going to run right out and get me one”, seems to be a combiation of fin de siecle consumerism and computer-geekiness. Look at the invention of the steam engine in actual history: it was proceeded by the almost total deforestation of England, the need for coal as a fuel, the running of mines into low-lying, coastal areas to supply that coal, the need to combat the flooding of the mines by some more efficent methods than putting an ox on a treadmill to pump out the shaft, the refinement of the steam engine (which took nearly a century), its application of other problems, etc. That situation did not exist in the Empire.
Now, if the Empire had continued as a strong economic and political unit for several more centuries (why it didn’t, but might have, is probably a GD topic), perhaps a situation would have developed that would have led to an industrial revolution in some province, and perhaps that revolution would have spread to other provinces over the next couple of centuries, as in actual history. But that didn’t happen.
Or not. From Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel:
Examples Diamond gives: Edison’s phonograph, which he never conceived of using for recording music (the largest subsequent application of said technology). He made something, thought up some vague uses for it that he could not commercialize, and declared it a failure. Then everyone else started using it (and its knock-offs) to record songs, much to his chagrin.
Likewise, Diamond notes that gasoline engines took almost 100 years to become the equal of horses, and there was no pressing need for them to develop further during all that time. The inventors just thought they were neat.
But the point is that even if some Roman had invented a steam engine, what would they have used it for? Nothing…it would have been a toy.
What really made the steam engine develop was that it was designed to pump water out of coal mines…which allowed the coal to be used to power the steam engine. The guys who were building them saw a direct benefit to improving the engines, they didn’t need a transportation infrastructure, etc.
It seems to me that the industrial revolution was a unique event. China was certainly more technologically advanced than Europe, even up until the 16th century. But they didn’t have an industrial revolution either. Sure, they had technological advance, but none of the out of control positive feedback loops of industrialization.
I came across an interesting idea a while back concerning why China failed to develop further during the time it was far ahead in all technologies and why (eventually) Europe did. The theory is that China abandoned the development of glass in favour of rice paper (for windows) and pottery (because of the additional heat/wood required to produce glass). However, in the Middle Ages Europe, with it’s less temperate climate, found a greater need to pursue the manufacture of glass.
This was important because it led to technology that aided failing eyesight. Thus, craftsmen, engineers, etc. who, at the peak of their abilities, would otherwise no longer be able to produce the best work from the best ideas because of failing sight (say around 35-40 years old) could continue on.
I mention this as a contributing reason as to why the Industrial Revolution happened where and when it did. Not sure the Roman Empire could have developed glass to the extent that it might have aided the most experienced craftsmen and engineers.