Industrial Revolution in Rome?

[Wozza]

The republic to empire switch really had desastrous consequences - moving the capital from the largest city in the western hemisphere to a much smaller city in Asia sure was a set back. Keeping prices down by enforcing price limits also was a big problem for economic development. Even more desastrous was the decision to allow people to only work in the trades of their parents. If it's not an urban myth, aluminum was apparently invented by a Roman - who was killed because the Roman Emperor believed the value of his silver coins would drop if people could make a silver-like metal from clay. And so on.

Disastrous consequences?

When exactly? The empire prospered for well over two hundred years. You might as well blame the American revolution for 9/11, the Norman Conquesr of England for the Black Death or the Potato War for the Holocaust.

The stories about holding back innovations are quite likely to be just stories, even if they are not they tell us nothing about the merits of imperial vs republican rule - all societies have vested interests against innovation.

In practice the central government was irrelevant to most people's lives, until the 4th century the cities were self-governing anyway. Imperial power was irrelevant on a day to day basis save for the general security it brought.

The lack of a Roman industrial revolution should not be looked for in its mode of government but rather in simple lack of technological and institutional development, for which the reasons are likely to be as simple as, that they did not get round to it. Considering the six hundred year gap between the development of the medieval western European banking system and the industrial revolution this should not be seen as a complete surprise.

 

[jolo]

Only as long as they could grow enough food in the rest of the Empire. If said empire shrinks...

The food problem might even be an advantage if it leads to progress in shipping, trade, and so on. It should also encourage diversification, thus cultural and technological exchanges in the empire and beyond, and developing of improved farming methods.

 

[jolo]

The problems with this are legion.
The most obvious being that the Eastern Empire repeatedly regained territory, and outlasted most of its medieval rivals. Certainly it showed strong signs of prosperity into the 6th century.

The comment about the Asian population og Byzantium is laughable, it reflects modern concerns no Ancient reality. The cities of the East were Hellenised anyway.

Finally the assertions about the role of Rome do not add up as Rome was not even the Western capital, that role passed to cities such as Trier and Ravenna, with Rome remaining an economic and cultural centre until the end.

The Eastern Empire also repeatedly lost territory - even more so. It was advanced, but not as advanced as Rome would probably have been at the same time, imo. Despite many of the medieval rivals being short lived, they still were able to fight them.

I'm not sure about the location - I still believe Italy would be more "universal" in the area Europe/Med/Arabia/Minor Asia. I also get the impression that the Mideast was always a rather martial place, and therefore always expensive to keep in check. A large Empire like Rome could do it, the much smaller remains apparently not.

There were quite a few reasons why Rome wasn't the capital of the Western Empire, like the fractioning of the Italian peninsula and the fact that those people didn't have much Roman legacy - it definitely wasn't the city itself. Though the city did loose lots of population and importance after the fall of Rome.

 

[jolo]

Disastrous consequences?

When exactly? The empire prospered for well over two hundred years. You might as well blame the American revolution for 9/11, the Norman Conquesr of England for the Black Death or the Potato War for the Holocaust.

The stories about holding back innovations are quite likely to be just stories, even if they are not they tell us nothing about the merits of imperial vs republican rule - all societies have vested interests against innovation.

In practice the central government was irrelevant to most people's lives, until the 4th century the cities were self-governing anyway. Imperial power was irrelevant on a day to day basis save for the general security it brought.

The lack of a Roman industrial revolution should not be looked for in its mode of government but rather in simple lack of technological and institutional development, for which the reasons are likely to be as simple as, that they did not get round to it. Considering the six hundred year gap between the development of the medieval western European banking system and the industrial revolution this should not be seen as a complete surprise.

I'd put the end date of the Roman Republic at the year 68 AD (a hundred years later than wiki), when military rulers without senatorial approval became known as Emperors instead of the former Princeps. There was already a shift towards more power to the head of state before, but usually with the Senate in game, though often as a puppet. That reduces the time of prospering quite a bit - and even a military dictatorship can draw upon the ressources of a strong country, and find competent successors due to luck.

I see the decline of the Roman Empire as having started even before it's point of largest expansion, as it was merely luck to make the right decision without some checks and balances, as was provided by the Senate during the Republic - meaning that the bad decisions hampering the Empire more and more began to mount at that time. I therefore also believe the economic and technological decisionmaking would have been slightly more competent in average in a Republic.

Imperial power usually provided the currency, the military infrastructure, most of the laws, the tax system, and so on - I suppose quite a bit of influence. The people in charge decided about irrigation, canals, librairies, and so on. Everyone was affected, even by seemingly unimportant decisions. Not to mention all the really bad decisions, most of which a strong senate would never have allowed to pass, or at least to last.

The slow changes were a Roman problem even before becoming an empire - still I see more adaptability to necessary changes in the Republic than in the Empire. I also believe that Rome at around the year 68 was about as developed as Europe in the year 1200 - some areas less, some more. Without the "dark times" (imo)of the military rulers, a progress rate similar to that of Renaissance Europe or Greece at their best should be possible - which means banking in the 2nd or 3rd century, and maybe even some kind of industrialisation a few hundred years later - about a thousand years earlier than IOTL, perhaps.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

*bump*

One important thing I want to mention, since the Roman steam engine pops up every few months:

Don't forget the Roman numeral system. It makes mathematics a nightmare.

Just compare this:

 749 * 185
 5992
  3745
 -----
138565

and this:

DCCXLIX * CLXXXV

How do you calculate that? I guess the Romans had multiplication tables, but it makes things much more difficult even then (underlined letters indicate that you have to multiply the value with 1000):
DCC * C = LXX
DCC * LXXX = LVI
DCC * V = IIID
XL * C = IV
XL * LXXX = IIICC
XL * V = CC
IX * C = CM
IX * LXXX = DCCXX
IX * V = XLV

Sum up:
LXX + LVI + IIID + IV + IIICC + CC + CM + DCCXX + XLV = CXXXVIIIDLXV

A Roman multiplication table would have 27 * 27 = 729 entries (27 = 3 * 9, because you need one symbol for each of 1-9, 10-90 and 100-900), compared to the 100 of our system. It gets even worse if you consider that in our 10x10 table the multiplication with 1 and 10 can be subsumed as "Mult with 1: same number; mult with 10: append a 0", so you only have to remember those two rules and the remaining 8 * 8 = 64 entries. In the Roman system, you still have the rule "mult with I returns same number", but that still leaves 26 * 26 = 676 entries to remember. So, Roman multiplication is ten times more difficult than ours.

And the lack of zero, negative and irrational numbers doesn't make things better. I'm not even sure how the Romans wrote fractures.

Without a good mathematical system, you can forget higher mathematics (calculus and such), and with that, all modern science.

That's why I don't wonder that the Romans had no scientific or industrial revolution.

The Archimedes Palimpsest indicates that Archimedes may have been working on the development of the calculus.

Is the lack of a good system for calculation that all-important for mathematics? Intuitively, it certainly does seem a fatal error but could it be a six of one thing?

I ask this question purely from my own observation that being good at arithmetic often is an obstacle to learning, and particularly to grasping, the higher concepts. Why reason the whole thing through from first principles when you can just measure and add it up?

To put it another way, algebra is purer the more it uses symbols and not numbers, while old time Euclidean geometry used only the compass and straightedge, regarding proofs that used numbers and calculation as no proof at all.

 

[lounge60]

There was this guy in the 1st century A.D., named Hero of Alexandria. He is famous for inventy many things, but is most famouse for inventing the aeolipile, a steam engine, used as a toy. What if he went a step furthur, far enough for an industrial revolution in Acncient Rome? The Romans could biuld trains and steam ships, all faster then previous ways to travel! The Revoulution changed the world in the 1800's, something new invented every month. Assumming the Romans would biuld trains, legions could be transported faster, it took 54 days to march from Rome to the English channel according to The Oxford Latin Course Part III second ed. I predict that The Barbarians would've been defeated, purhaps even the Parthian Empire would be conquered, and, the Roman economy being based on conquests, march through India before 500 years of the intro. of the steam engine. the Romans could respond to threats quicker then ever!

In 1st century AD the games were over.Erone are not a inventor,but a divulger.Erone'tecnology is the hellenistic tecnology of IIIst century AD,the century of scientific revolution.The hellenistic scientific revolution was stopped from the roman conquest and the destruction of hellenistic centers. http://www.feltrinelli.it/SchedaLibro?id_volume=1370411 http://www.matematicamente.it/libri/la_rivoluzione_dimenticata.html

 

[lounge60]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3540203966/sr=1-1/qid=1153420664/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0865677-7676902?ie=UTF8&s=books

 

[Max Sinister]

The Archimedes Palimpsest indicates that Archimedes may have been working on the development of the calculus.

"May" and "developing" don't indicate too much. And besides, I remember having read that Archimedes also calculated how many grains of sand you'd need to fill the universe (10 to the ~60th power), so I guess he also had developed an own number's system, and didn't use the Roman or Greek numbers.

 

[BGMan]

*bump*

One important thing I want to mention, since the Roman steam engine pops up every few months:

Don't forget the Roman numeral system. It makes mathematics a nightmare.

Agreed. Thank God for the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

One objection I've heard on this board is that you need steel, but that could be a chicken egg thing if you have gears and machinery.

A more serious objection is contained in what Augustus was supposed to have said to an inventor who brought him a way to draw back the awning over the Colosseum with a tenth the men. "What will I do with the rest?"

Still, this argument has never quite made sense to me. A corollary of it is that Rome and Greece didn't have an IR because they didn't want to be efficient because they had slaves and the slave had no motivation to improve efficiency. Well maybe the slave didn't but the owner certainly did, and then the slave might because the owner might reward him. Also, lots of Roman slaves were in fact scholars, teachers and clerks, not tradesmen or laborers. Most engineering was done by the Army in fact and skilled artisan work was done by...uh..skilled artisans.

Can anyone here state the "slavery blocked the IR argument" better? I've heard it a lot but noone has ever explained these parts to me.

Yes, I have heard that theory, and it seems to make a lot of sense to me. One can even look at modern-day America versus Japan. Japan has a well-developed robotics industry, and is generally seen as the cutting-edge in technological advancement. On the other hand, the USA is falling behind and it's not far-fetched to see that farmers may see using illegal labor as cheaper than investing in some expensive new machines. (One I read about can strip the oranges from an orange grove about 20 times more quickly than illegal labor could. Yet the Florida orange growers are complaining that all their illegal labor has been taken by the homebuilders. )

 

[Faeelin]

*bump*

One important thing I want to mention, since the Roman steam engine pops up every few months:

Don't forget the Roman numeral system. It makes mathematics a nightmare.

Why do I need calculus for an industrial revolution?

 

[abas]

*bump*

And the lack of zero, negative and irrational numbers doesn't make things better. I'm not even sure how the Romans wrote fractures.

Without a good mathematical system, you can forget higher mathematics (calculus and such), and with that, all modern science.

That's why I don't wonder that the Romans had no scientific or industrial revolution.

It seems that first steps of Industral Revolution had made more by skillful inventors, not by scientists

 

[BGMan]

It seems that first steps of Industral Revolution had made more by skillful inventors, not by scientists

Inventors tend to take math in school. It helps them get their brain going and seeing things in new ways.

 

[DominusNovus]

Inventors tend to take math in school. It helps them get their brain going and seeing things in new ways.

Nowadays, yes. But back then, a lot of it was based on experience, not education.

 

[Douglas]

What sort of numerical system did the Chinese use? Could a closer China/Rome relationship have benefited the Romans in this war?

Or perhaps closer to home, maybe a closer relationship to India?

So...a few things that everyone agrees would help Rome stay around longer (thereby getting our goal of a Roman IR):

Block-printing (China?)

"Arabic" Numerals (India?)

Keep the Republic

Parthians wiped out in 1st Century AD (closer contacts available w/ India and China)

Rome eventually hits its stride, starts losing ground beginning in 300 AD. Figure no terrible chaos until 450 AD, and charismatic leaders halt it by 500 AD. The Roman Republic falls in 750 AD, but what can it get done before then?

 

[hexicus]

What sort of numerical system did the Chinese use? Could a closer China/Rome relationship have benefited the Romans in this war?

Or perhaps closer to home, maybe a closer relationship to India?

There is a chicken and egg problem here. India and China are too far away for a close relationship with Rome until they have steamships or railroads.

It occurs to me that corruption (as we would see it) in the tendering process ofr government contracts doesn't help develop an IR. What is a companies incentive to produce goods (weapons. uniforms etc) cheaper and more efficiently if they get the contract by bribery and then passing on the costs, rather than by undercutting their rivals. Just a thought.

 

[Faeelin]

There is a chicken and egg problem here. India and China are too far away for a close relationship with Rome until they have steamships or railroads.

Why? There were Romans in India OTL; and the Arabs managed to get Indian techniques in mathematics, and Indian crops, to Spain without steamships.

 

[Max Sinister]

Calculus is very useful for calculating the size of more complicated geometrical forms, if they can be described by a function. I can't tell of an example, but don't forget that tinkerers also need good tools. Watchmaking, casting of church bells, building cannons - everything helped to gain new knowledge. The Romans had neither, don't forget.

 

[Max Sinister]

I just re-read "The Science of Discworld: Darwin's Watch" and found something interesting to know:

One important detail about steam machines: You have to let off steam at the right time so there won't be too much pressure building up, and the machine explodes. To calculate that right, you have to know about Boyle's law (which is about gas pressure). Denis Papin did know that and could build his machines by that way.