Could the industrial revolution have started earlier?

Wouldn't the slaves work as well?

I know a lot of them were "status possession" and a lot were personal servants but surely, a lot of them must have had some production based job?

In the city of Rome you can expect a lot of house-slaves in the senatorial and equestrian households. Of course there have been other slaves as well, like the 20.000 jews, who buildt Vespasians amphitheatre. Actually the prefects of Rome, like the Praefectus Operum Publicorum or the Praefectus Annonae had a lot jobs.

I often hear the argument, that the romans had slaves, and therefore they did not need industrialization. At least the part about slaves is wrong. Already in the late 1st century, the number of slaves was decreasing. Especially in the main sector: agriculture. Tenancy was much more effective and way more casual for the landowner. But also in the production sector tenancy became very popular.

Compare Plinius or Columella writing in the 1st/2nd century AD with Cato writing during the republic and you see the dramatic change in agriculture.
Latest for the 4th century, historians can safely say, that slavery became the rare exception and tenancy (serfdom) the rule.
 
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I often hear the argument, that the romans had slaves, and therefore they did not need industrialization. At least the part about slaves is wrong. Already in the late 1st century, the number of slaves was decreasing. Especially in the main sector: agriculture. Tenancy was much more effective and way more casual for the landowner. But also in the production sector tenancy became very popular.
Bit of an economic question, but had the large owners any interest in investing? If they got enough money on its own, why would they put it back in the land, in machinery and all?
 
Bit of an economic question, but had the large owners any interest in investing? If they got enough money on its own, why would they put it back in the land, in machinery and all?

The senators usually invested their money in land. And most of the land was leased to tenants. Actually since the Lex Claudia de nave senatorum (218 BC) it was forbidden for a senator to invest in trade or production. Some found ways to bypass this law via straw men. But landowner was also by definition the one and only honorable job at all for a senator. And a lot of equestrians copied their lifestyle and mentality.

Industrialization is hard to achieve in such a society.
 
The senators usually invested their money in land. And most of the land was leased to tenants. Actually since the Lex Claudia de nave senatorum (218 BC) it was forbidden for a senator to invest in trade or production. Some found ways to bypass this law via straw men. But landowner was also by definition the one and only honorable job at all for a senator. And a lot of equestrians copied their lifestyle and mentality.

Industrialization is hard to achieve in such a society.

That said, they certainly were enthusiastic about administrating their estates. The Romans wouldn't at all look down on a Senator acquiring the best available machinery for the farm.
 
No agricultural revolution (not the Neolithic one, the one in 1700s Britain), thus most of the population was still locked to agriculture.

Most of the population is still locked in agriculture. Agree with you. But do you really think every society has to procede from A to B? An industralization from B to A would be equally interesting to see.

Nowhere near the technological capabilities to create the necessary machinery for, say, steam engines (not talking about the Oracle toys, talking about actual powerful engines that could replace a slave or a horse).

Steam engines are only one part of the problem. Watermills and windmills, both totally feasible with Roman technology, would be enough for a start. Don't forget that watermills were already wide-spread

No scientific method.

That's right for the majority of ancient times, but they were on the brink to develop it in the 3rd century BCE. Thinking of Eratosthenes, the geoprapher who first used parallels and meridians to draw a map, or of Aristarchus of Samos, who calculated the distance of the earth to the Sun and the Moon and placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, I'm not sure that you could entirely dismiss Greek scholarship as "unscientific".

No lucrative markets for industrial goods.

Chinese loved Roman glassware, Romans loved Chinese silk. Roman loved Indian and Asian spices, Indians and Asians loved Roman gold. I'm sure there would have been a large market for all sorts of industrial products, certainly completly ruining traditional production in the concerned countries.
 
The more I think about it, the more interesting a steamless indistrial revolution would be. Imagine a few centuries of industrialized production prior to steam technology.
 
The more I think about it, the more interesting a steamless indistrial revolution would be. Imagine a few centuries of industrialized production prior to steam technology.

"Steam? Oh yes, we could have used it to start our industrial revolution. But isn't burning coal to get energy quite unecological? Wind and water are perfectly enough to producing our electricity." I think that @ComradeHuxley's TL has a good potential there. From knowing electricity he can go to producing electricity in windmills and watermills, then have trains driven by electricity ... ships and cars will be the only problems. If gunpowder is unknown, you can have air pressure cannons.
 
I read the British IR wasn't as much started by the steam but by heat intensive activities like paper, steel, ceramic...
What were potential heat sources for the romans? Coal?
 
I read the British IR wasn't as much started by the steam but by heat intensive activities like paper, steel, ceramic...
What were potential heat sources for the romans? Coal?

Charcoal, mainly. They were familiar with coal, but preferred charcoal.

And, to the best of my knowledge, it was textiles that formed the foundation of he industrial system.
 
That said, they certainly were enthusiastic about administrating their estates. The Romans wouldn't at all look down on a Senator acquiring the best available machinery for the farm.

Some of them perhaps. Like Plinius was pretty committed. But a lot of landowners were solely oriented in yield ("I don't care about what business and how. Just give me 3% per year."). Often their land was way too big, too. They had regional procuratores managing several estates. Every estate and the surrounding tenants managed by a vilicus; usually a fredman.

On the other side, during the 3rd and 4th century, when a lot of cities stopped working and travelling became more dangerous due to brigand bands, lots of these estates became fully self-sufficient service centers, also for the surrounding tenants. This included crafters, adminisitration/iurisdiction and even security (bucellarii). I can imagine, that such an estate could need some new ideas, what you can do with a water- or windmill. But in the roman world this process led to feudalism not to industrialization.
 
Some of them perhaps. Like Plinius was pretty committed. But a lot of landowners were solely oriented in yield ("I don't care about what business and how. Just give me 3% per year."). Often their land was way too big, too. They had regional procuratores managing several estates. Every estate and the surrounding tenants managed by a vilicus; usually a fredman.

None of those points are, at all, antithetical to the implementation of more advanced agricultural technologies and techniques. Those local managers had every reason to want to boost productivity, both to look good and to give themselves opportunities to skim some of the excess off for themselves, after all.
 
None of those points are, at all, antithetical to the implementation of more advanced agricultural technologies and techniques. Those local managers had every reason to want to boost productivity, both to look good and to give themselves opportunities to skim some of the excess off for themselves, after all.

Sure. I fully agree. But why did'nt it happen? Before I would start to write a plausible alternate history, I would like to know, what this damn roadblock was. Just in order to avoid it plausibly.
 
Sure. I fully agree. But why did'nt it happen? Before I would start to write a plausible alternate history, I would like to know, what this damn roadblock was. Just in order to avoid it plausibly.

The development of these technologies is such an interwoven tapestry of various causes and effects that its a long story. The main issue was lack of awareness of some of the essential technologies. For example, more intensive crop rotation requires heavy plows, which require horse collars to maximize their potential. Its a sort of domino effect. Not to mention that horse collars are more useful if they can be used to pull heavy plows, and heavy plows are more useful if you're using them for intensive crop rotation. It circles back in on itself.

That said, if you can get this cycle started in the first century, the sheer size and sophistication of the Roman Empire should be enough for it to fuel itself and blossom quickly. Heavy plows would be great for large estates, since one of their limiting factors was that they weren't as useful in small holdings, where the fields weren't laid out with heavy plows in mind (for a large estate, you don't have to worry about changing your fields up more, since you own all the land anyway).
 
@G.Washington_Fuckyeah I like your idea of the pressure cannon. One ATL I wrote a while ago (its not going here lol, either nowhere or Barnes and Noble :openedeyewink:) posited the development of "steam cannons," which sound similar to what you were suggesting. How exactly would these work? I was just making things up as I went along... and did not check to see if that was even possible.

To answer the thread itself... Yes. As in my ATL, I would say a longer Pax Romana even could do it. Everyone always says Romans were not advanced enough for this. What about if they had 4-500 more years of stability and progress, eh? The colonists on Mars would all speak Latin. ;)

Law of Averages will make sure that the Romans get scientists and thinkers. (as soon as they put the specialists in the right buildings, ofc)

Other candidate nations are IMO not only Song China but also a stable Tang. Abbasids?
 
I think early modern Italy is a possible contender. They had the wealth, they had the urbanization, they had the innovation, and they have a lot of rivers and a booming textile industry, hell the Venetian arsenal even had an early mass production going.

Avoid the Italian Wars and/or unify the North under a strong, dynamic power and kickstart a hydro-powered industrialization in Lombardy.
 
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