How close was Antiquity to Industrialism?

As most of us tend to agree, Song China was a proto industrial power with a lot of potential, but what about other areas of the world?

Were there any other places in the world prior to the OTL industrial revolution that were toeing the line of industrialism without going over completely?

Some people have said in passing that around the 2nd century Rome was on its way there, its ascent hampered by the crisis. If Rome was anywhere near it then was Persia and India nearing it in their own ways?
 
don't concentrate too much on the industrial part, you need other things too like the mindset for it.
and even more important you need an agricultural revolution alongside it, becuase that was what really enabled the explosive growth & development.
 
don't concentrate too much on the industrial part, you need other things too like the mindset for it.
and even more important you need an agricultural revolution alongside it, becuase that was what really enabled the explosive growth & development.

And how likely was that sort of growth at those times?
 
Depends of what you mean by industrialism.
Rome in the IIth is still by all means a mainly agrarian society, whom centers of productions are tied up with agricultural production. Which is means an helluva influenced by climatic change, lack of taskforce, and warring (all things that happened roughly in the same time at this point).

Now, you have some features that does looks like (if you're not too picky) as a proto-industrialisation workshops, but only for limited and basic products (such as pottery). It's still very far from the idea of a modern (or even late medieval) entreprise with a positive take on work (especially manual work) by elites and therefore true investment.

The servile taskforce remained an important component up to the end of the Empire (and centuries after) in most productive areas (even if it depended a lot from which region were concerned), something that didn't lead to use of an alternative energetic source.

Basically : no entreprise or capital investment in production other than latifundar worth of mention, no stable economy, partially servile-based production, and agrarian-based economy...All of that makes really difficult for an industrialized society to pop out overnight.

Eventually it could have appeared, but I don't think saying it was "close to" happen is in any way realistic.
 
And how likely was that sort of growth at those times?

Not much. Without mentioning again the problems of a largely agricultural society, you still have to deal with a mentality issue, as in being interested on investement and partial mechanisation.

Eventually agricultural revolution have to be sustained by industrial revolution (for chemical or mechanisation, for exemple) in order to keep being a thing, so even resolving that doesn't fully help.

Keep in mind the the situation before is about a non-specialisation : every region producing more or less the same set. Devellopment of a regional or, if possible, national/imperial market is definitely a boost for searches and experiments about increasing productions instead of empiric discoveries (such as crop rotation). These researches implies themselves botanic and chemical knowledge that Romans were far from having at disposal.

- Basically : more diverse set of crops, interest on a specialized market production (and not a distribution/redistribution production as Rome had), botanic knowledge, good climatic backround, stability and capital support.
 
And how likely was that sort of growth at those times?

to take china as an example... need creates innovation, china (pre-industry) had become so efficient economically and politically that investing in labor productivity didnt seem worth it - internal supply problems could be solved internall due to its very good transportation network, there was simply not much pressure to improve methods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_equilibrium_trap

to get the "need" for innovation you need some large disaster to end the previous balance, maybe a century long drought in east asia to push for the neccessary innovation in agriculture, a plague to raise the cost of labor (and thus making labor efficient production methods more attractive).
 
Slave labor is always going to create an obstacle to industrialization by diminishing incentives to seek new ways to increase productivity. So Rome has that working against it.

You also need a society wealthy enough to buy stuff. Essentially you need a middle class. If most of your population lives in conditions of subsistence, there's no need for industrialization because you don't have mass consumption. It's not an accident that textile production in 17th/18th century UK was the epicenter of the industrial revolution. It was one of the few places in the world with a combination of knowledge, middle class/bourgeoisie, and resources to make the jump. Clothing is an obvious product that has mass appeal to a population that has the means to purchase it.

I cant speak to the Song Dynasty but IMO, the industrial revolution was an event that was a lot less inevitable than many on this board like to believe. Just my opinion.
 
I would basically echo the previous posters: while the technological base for an Industrial Revolution did exist (see the massive watermill complex at Barbegal for an example of what they could do), the political-legal-financial underpinnings were simply not there.
 
I'm assuming the focus on Rome and China is because there was nothing in Persia or India capable of this sort of advancement.
 
I'm assuming the focus on Rome and China is because there was nothing in Persia or India capable of this sort of advancement.

And also because most posters on the board will be more familiar with the situations in Rome (and to a lesser extent I think) and China, than with Persia and India. I can't say for certain what the Sassanids' capabilites to industrialize was, as I don't know enough about the structures in place during antiquity in their Empire (or for the Parthians, for that matter). In India, I'm not even sure what the biggest players were throughout antiquity!

But that's just me, and eventually we'll get a poster who has classical Persian or Indian history as their area of expertise to say why.
 
I'm assuming the focus on Rome and China is because there was nothing in Persia or India capable of this sort of advancement.

Not really, Persia and India had a lot of similar possibilities and were often the origin of several new features, such as the wind mill, irrigation (that was a plurimillenar legacy), etc.
The problem is that Rome formed a continuum more or less closed to these, and that they reached Europe when a new political-economical continuum, the Umayyad then Abassid Empires appeared.
Should have Rome expanded over Persia (that alone would have been insanely hard), you could have seen windmills earlier in the Mediterranean Basin.

After that, Hashoosh said it best : we talk about Rome because it's what people there know better (that said I know there's people with knowledge on these places on board, that would be helpful there).
 
I personally don't thnk that slave economies are that antithetical to industrialism, particularly when we consider that industrialization did take off in a slave economy.
 
I personally don't thnk that slave economies are that antithetical to industrialism, particularly when we consider that industrialization did take off in a slave economy.

I don't think it's really comparable. Roman economy was based on slavery (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every worker was a slave, far from it, but that you have a servile taskforce in every kind of large production), when British economy wasn't (as in, while using slaves for precise productions, had entiere parts of its economy that wasn't concerned by).
 
I personally don't thnk that slave economies are that antithetical to industrialism, particularly when we consider that industrialization did take off in a slave economy.

I didn't know there were chattel manning the factories in Merry Old England.
 

scholar

Banned
I'm assuming the focus on Rome and China is because there was nothing in Persia or India capable of this sort of advancement.
Persia never became as close to industrializing on their own as Rome or China, while India only became close to industrializing on their own as European Powers were moving on the scene. While it may be possible to force a spark in either of these two areas, it is easier to fan a preexisting flame.

Of the two, China could be described as proto-industrial three times. Of which, the Song Dynasty was the closest to sparking an internal revolution. Rome almost made it, but failed. The only problem is that if such a revolution takes off in Rome, it will not come from the center, but will radiate outward from the provinces. There are a couple stories where inventors came to the Roman Emperors stating they could do more with less men, but were sent away because the Emperors wanted to employ large scores of men.
 
I don't think it's really comparable. Roman economy was based on slavery (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every worker was a slave, far from it, but that you have a servile taskforce in every kind of large production), when British economy wasn't (as in, while using slaves for precise productions, had entiere parts of its economy that wasn't concerned by).

And yet, it was the industry that kicked off industrialism that was most dependent on slave-driven plantations...
 
And yet, it was the industry that kicked off industrialism that was most dependent on slave-driven plantations...

I'm not sure you understood my point (or I may explaining it badly): while the raw material came mainly from colonial production, processing them (as well the capital investment origin) wasn't and where eventually two distinct activities with mainly distinct investors.

While the Roman agricultural production remained still mainly dependent on free taskforce, more direct the involvement with the production more likely it was based on a large use of slaves.
It's interesting to point that the biggest servile proportions are found in Italy or Spain (for the western part) where the senatorial elite had more territorial importance.

As the use of servile population tends to limit the labor division in favor of a "everyone do everything" (not that you didn't have a specialisation, but it wasn't, as for basic production, the same for one), you had less motivation for going trough an investment on mechanic while you still had a cheap workforce avaible in sufficient numbers and in a same place.

Doesn't mean you couldn't have both, mechanisation AND servile taskforce (Cotton Gin prooves that it's quite possible), but the incitative is less important.
 
I personally don't thnk that slave economies are that antithetical to industrialism, particularly when we consider that industrialization did take off in a slave economy.

One of the principle drivers of innovation, particularly during industrialization, is to lower costs of production. The incentive to lower costs is pretty low when you have slaves. It's certainly a factor as to why industrialization progressed so much slower in antebellum South. As to the textile industry in Great Britain, had there been slave labor, or serfs for that matter, in the textile factories industrialization would have likely been delayed.
 
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