Wisdom Of The Olds - A Roman industrialization TL

[ManintheField]

I have to confess that I don't read enough metallurgy (law, physics and economy are simply to interesting), but I was wery very intrigued by ComradeHuyles's post - if steel is possible that early in Africa, why isn't it possible in Rome? It hasn't to be developed in 10 years - but I don't think hundred or two hundred years are that implausible.

Well, first of all, what they are making in Africa at that time is a form of high carbon steel. That's not what you want for early industrial steam engines: It's way too expensive before the specifics of something like the Bessemer process are invented. You need very low-carbon wrought iron of sufficient tensile strength to take the pressures involved in a steam boiler. That is the kind of thing that takes a long time to come about because the techniques necessary to get improved mechanical and metallurgical properties out of old materials like iron are developed through a process of trial and error over centuries.

Getting carbon steel cheap enough for use in pressure vessels is what is at the end of the development process that things like Wootz or Damascus steel are at the beginning of. That is, you already need to have a kind of industrial revolution under way before it's realistic to get cheap, machine-economical steel produced on industrial scales.

Things like the invention of methods of generating and working various metals are the 'sudden advances' I talked about. The invention of processes for making carbon steel period is a 'sudden advance' that can be thought of as a speed-up in the otherwise relatively slow process of pre-industrial metallurgical advance. However, sudden advances just mean you now have another branch of practical metallurgy to advance along, so introducing carbon steel into classical Rome isn't going to get you an industrial revolution, it'll just get you better weapons, utensils, and other things it is economical to use carbon steel for before it can be made in industrial quantities.

And? Did I said that Rome will discover the steam engine before being able to make appropriate metals? Until now, they have only the Pneumatic Automaton, a precursor of the atmospheric engine, itself completly inefficient and wasteful - the Romans are not going to make the jump within 10 years, but I'm not thinking it will take 1000 years.

It depends how long it takes Roman iron manufacturers to start running out of trees to turn into charcoal, really. Considering how much of Europe's old primeval forests are left in Roman times, we're looking at quite the stretch of wood to be cut down and converted before anyone gets curious about alternatives.

Also, you're really kind of barking up the wrong tree when it comes to your concentration on steam engines. While they were important to the production of coal, which was important to the manufacture of iron, the real breaking open of the industrial revolution in Britain happened in textiles. Textile factories didn't start making use of steam power, for the most part, until the middleish part of the 19th century. The First Industrial Revolution happened with water power, not steam.

I don't think that it is hard to teach the Romans the concept of paper currency - after all they knew promissory notes, and paper currency is only an advancment of these. What they need is a method duplicate paper currency (a printing press) - let's see how fast they can develop that.

It is actually pretty complicated. Paper currency took hold in Restoration era Britain as the result of several legal advances, as much as anything else. While the Romans certainly had checks (which implies some kind of deposit banking going on), and I think I've even read they had a deposit-based form of fractional reserve banking going on, but I don't know that I've ever seen them any kind of note being indefinitely endorsable/payable to a bearer. This is actually a pretty big leap, even the British had to have an act of Parliament to get the courts to recognize the first bank notes.

But may I rise the question to whom the issue of paper money should be permitted? State would be most logical - but is this rational from a capitalist point of view?

I don't see what's particularly logical about it. 'Because that's the way we do it today' is falliciously teleological. The First Industrial Revolution happened in the back of a financial system that used as hand-to-hand currency bank notes emitted by private bankers which were redeemable for metal coins. Even the Bank of England was, at the time, a privately owned and operated institution with no formal public obligations or currency management duties.

If the Roman state takes over paper currency issue, it's more likely to replicate the Chinese experience, where the state monopolized paper currency issue soon after its initial invention under the Song and totally ruined the first paper currency ever, eventually driving it from existence under the Mongol Yuan dynasty. No conception of macroeconomic management existed prior to the 19th or 20th centuries (depending on how you want to define your terms), so state issued currencies were always a finance mechanism/mark of sovereignty.

It's telling to note that proto- and early industrial Britain experienced a period of private coinage, when the Royal Mint completely failed to supply small coinage over the course of the 18th century and a series of private mints opened in defiance of the Mint's legal monopoly.

Publicly issued paper currency is not only not necessary for the emergence of an industrial revolution, it's probably harmful.

First millenium... This isn't what I wanted.

Being Roman meant much more than being a bigoted conservative - it also meant to adopt innovations if a Roman thought they were going to help the Empire.

The Romans were tremendously enthusiastic adopters of military innovations and incredibly strident conservatives on every other front of society. It really would be hard to get Roman aristocrats to become tinkerers of any sort, and equally or even more difficult to get them to imagine applying the results of their tinkering to economic production.

Then again, you could say a lot of the same things about British aristocrats and be 100% right. In many ways the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain in spite of the establishment, rather than because of anything it did. Same thing would have to happen in Rome, with the 'little' people, the plebians (rich and poor) driving economic growth underneath the noses of the high-born. Why they didn't produce an industrial revolution IOTL is a pretty deep question to ask.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

Things like the invention of methods of generating and working various metals are the 'sudden advances' I talked about. The invention of processes for making carbon steel period is a 'sudden advance' that can be thought of as a speed-up in the otherwise relatively slow process of pre-industrial metallurgical advance. However, sudden advances just mean you now have another branch of practical metallurgy to advance along, so introducing carbon steel into classical Rome isn't going to get you an industrial revolution, it'll just get you better weapons, utensils, and other things it is economical to use carbon steel for before it can be made in industrial quantities.

So what is the main advantage of carbon steel? And how do you produce it? I suspect it's quite complicated to do it.

It depends how long it takes Roman iron manufacturers to start running out of trees to turn into charcoal, really. Considering how much of Europe's old primeval forests are left in Roman times, we're looking at quite the stretch of wood to be cut down and converted before anyone gets curious about alternatives.

Is this part of the carbon steel thing - do you need coal to make it, and you're saying while they're large forests left in Europe nobody will use it? Hope I understand you right.

Also, you're really kind of barking up the wrong tree when it comes to your concentration on steam engines.

That's personal interest on the one side, since I'm very interested in steam power and everything that has to do with the physics linked to it, and on the other side it's eyecatching to have the Roman develop a steam engine.

While they were important to the production of coal, which was important to the manufacture of iron, the real breaking open of the industrial revolution in Britain happened in textiles. Textile factories didn't start making use of steam power, for the most part, until the middleish part of the 19th century.

Right, right. I know this. But there are other things you can use steam engines for.

The First Industrial Revolution happened with water power, not steam.

This will indeed my next step. But I have to permanently change something in my plans, so the next update will take some additional time.

It is actually pretty complicated. Paper currency took hold in Restoration era Britain as the result of several legal advances, as much as anything else. While the Romans certainly had checks (which implies some kind of deposit banking going on), and I think I've even read they had a deposit-based form of fractional reserve banking going on, but I don't know that I've ever seen them any kind of note being indefinitely endorsable/payable to a bearer. This is actually a pretty big leap, even the British had to have an act of Parliament to get the courts to recognize the first bank notes.

I'm thinking of something like this (tried it in my last TL): state has lots of new land and wants to sell it quickly -> state starts to issue documents proving that the state owes you a land lot -> this documents are used to pay soldiers and officials -> people start to exchange this documents and use it as money secured by a real property. Then the state realizes that it's quite useful to use paper money for bigger sums, he standardly issues paper money.

If the Roman state takes over paper currency issue, it's more likely to replicate the Chinese experience, where the state monopolized paper currency issue soon after its initial invention under the Song and totally ruined the first paper currency ever, eventually driving it from existence under the Mongol Yuan dynasty. No conception of macroeconomic management existed prior to the 19th or 20th centuries (depending on how you want to define your terms), so state issued currencies were always a finance mechanism/mark of sovereignty.

Paper money is based on confidence - once you know that you can exchange your paper money against real goods (like land or as OTL gold), paper money is likely to work.

The Romans were tremendously enthusiastic adopters of military innovations and incredibly strident conservatives on every other front of society. It really would be hard to get Roman aristocrats to become tinkerers of any sort, and equally or even more difficult to get them to imagine applying the results of their tinkering to economic production.

No, not tinkerers - to work in a shop and invent stuff is beneath their dignity. But people loving seeing and buying new toys is quite possible. Just to impress their neighbors. And once you understand how much is possible with the right technology, you will (maybe) start to want to use it for your own industries.

Then again, you could say a lot of the same things about British aristocrats and be 100% right. In many ways the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain in spite of the establishment, rather than because of anything it did. Same thing would have to happen in Rome, with the 'little' people, the plebians (rich and poor) driving economic growth underneath the noses of the high-born. Why they didn't produce an industrial revolution IOTL is a pretty deep question to ask.

But the plebeians just don't have the money to do it... Wait, I've an idea. You may be right with your thought about the "little people".

 

[Reader347]

But the plebeians just don't have the money to do it...

Somebody had money for large business. Couple of examples: Amphora were mass produced and shipped, in apparently limitless numbers, and had makers marks from all over the empire. Romans produced ceramic cast tableware in huge amounts and shipped it to the very ends their empire.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

#8: The Scientific Revolution

Somebody had money for large business. Couple of examples: Amphora were mass produced and shipped, in apparently limitless numbers, and had makers marks from all over the empire. Romans produced ceramic cast tableware in huge amounts and shipped it to the very ends their empire.

The time of the plebeian (that means: non-senatorial) entrepreneurs will come, don't worry. But before, we have to give the science a leg-up.

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The Scientific Revolution
17 - 3
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17 BCE: Tired of his powerless office, C. Iunius Silanus, the consul of the year, wants to impress the addressees of his letters. Luckily, he knows a statuary blessed with mechanical talent and asks him if he can build for him a sculpture moved by a weight and writing letters.

15 BCE: Even if Silanus is not Consul any more, he is still interested in a scribe android and is quite delighted when the first mechanical writing slave is presented to him – save that he can write only the Name C. Iunius Silanus due to the lacking means of programming. Silanus orders to look for another resolution of the problem.

12 BCE: Silanus eventually gets his so much wanted duplicating machine. His mechanic was inspired by the manufacturing of coins and the coining punch used for it. The sadly unknown inventor then combines one of the new wine presses (for the energy) and the embosser labeled with the wanted text to inscribe a piece of papyrus.

11 BCE: Perdikkas, an old friend of the late Cassander and now principal of the Library of Rome, recognizes the profitability of the new method (the rivalry between Rome and Alexandria made scribes very expensive in these days) and orders to fabricate wood to copy the most common writings quickly and without needing to tie a valuable slave.

3 BCE: On the climax of the automata obsession of the upper class, after all the interesting, but in the end useless machines constructed by the inventors of Rome and Alexandria, a real revolution happens. Children using little wood letters to learn to write[1], printers start to use similar movable types for printing. The such developed printing press made books available for the alphabetized part of the population[2] and spread scientific realizings achieved in Rome and Alexandria, thus provoking the Roman Scientific Revolution.

[1] OTL fact
[2] Up to 30% of the Roman population

 

[ManintheField]

The time of the plebeian (that means: non-senatorial) entrepreneurs will come, don't worry. But before, we have to give the science a leg-up.

I don't have time to hit the bigger post above, but I just want to note that the 'time of plebeian entrepreneuers' has already come, a long time ago. Wealth and aristocratic status didn't correlate 100% in this era and hadn't in quite some time. There were a lot of very wealthy plebeians and they more or less ran the Roman economy. While the Senatorial land-holdings made many Senators very wealthy men, they shared this category with many plebeians who occupied it because of their part in commerce or industry (used broadly here).

The point I was making when this line of argument originally came up was that Romans had this whole cultural proclivity to be anti-commercial and anti-work. One of the revolutions that happened before/around/after the First Industrial Revolution was a completely changed attitude towards work and participation in markets. In several important ways, this represented a key driver of the American Revolution. You have to get something similar going with the Romans, where work and commerce gain respectability, essentially making bourgeoisie attitudes acceptable in the halls of power.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

#9: Agriculture In Germania

I don't have time to hit the bigger post above, but I just want to note that the 'time of plebeian entrepreneuers' has already come, a long time ago. Wealth and aristocratic status didn't correlate 100% in this era and hadn't in quite some time. There were a lot of very wealthy plebeians and they more or less ran the Roman economy. While the Senatorial land-holdings made many Senators very wealthy men, they shared this category with many plebeians who occupied it because of their part in commerce or industry (used broadly here).

The point I was making when this line of argument originally came up was that Romans had this whole cultural proclivity to be anti-commercial and anti-work. One of the revolutions that happened before/around/after the First Industrial Revolution was a completely changed attitude towards work and participation in markets. In several important ways, this represented a key driver of the American Revolution. You have to get something similar going with the Romans, where work and commerce gain respectability, essentially making bourgeoisie attitudes acceptable in the halls of power.

Sincerly, I'm holding another opinion. Sure, we agree on the basic fact that the Roman mindset is the main impediment to any kind of technological progress/"industrial revolution" and that you have to change this mindset (and find a good method to change it) to make possible a certain form of industrialization (mechanization of agriculture, water wheels, eventually the steam engine).

But I don't consent to you about the specific character trait of the Romans we have to change. You know, only the senators were anti-commerce - the equites, the second part of the Roman elite, was very open to commerce, banking and investment. And anti-work is the question of the right definition - the majority of today's ruling class rejects manual work even today. I reject manual work just because I don't like it. Does that mean that a Roman senator, a contemporary CEO or me will reject any technological innovsation just because we don't like to constrcut them with our own hands?

The main problem is still that the main part of the Romans simply couldn't imagine some form of progress or change. They thought (since the end of the civil war) that the world was perfect and would stay at it is (Roman and peaceful) until the end of the days.
And that is what I wanted to change and what I changed through the introduction of Cassander, the Library of Rome and the automata fashion. Many Romans now understand that a progress, a change of conditions is possible. This modified mindset will have them adopt innovsations, and the printing press makes possible to spread inventions very quickly.

As to the distribution of industrialization between the senators and the equites, the senators will care for the agricultural innovations while the equities and plebeians will take up the progress in manufactoring and industrial processes.

Beyond that, you mentioned that ruling classes are more or less conservative. That's right in a political sense, but they won't be opposed to something maximizing their profits as long as they don't have to completly abondon their lifestyle (so the senators will continue to avoid investing in industry for example and stick to agriculture). In fact, the only class really opposed to any progress are the craftsmen and artisans since they work according to a familiy tradition and use the same methods used by their fathers and forefathers - artisans don't want to maximize profit, but simply to do the work they always do.

That's why you have, after changing the mindset of the ruling class, to throw the artisans out of business to have the industrial revolution emerge.
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Agriculture In Germania

4- 27

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4 CE: The wheel plow using a broad blade[1] is firstly described in an agricultural manual – this book, the Concilia Agri Culturae published by the Saturnium, propagates the use of this agricultural implement, and while the plaumoratum is ignored by most of the Mediterranean landowners, proprietors of Gaulish latifundia start to use it as their preferred cultivation machine.

7 CE: The Germanic tribes revolt against the Roman occupation policies and loot various Roman cities in Germania, but are beaten pitched battle by the legions. The governor of Germania, Publius Quinctilius Varus, decides to relocate the most rebellious tribes on the other side of the Elbe and to distribute their land to Roman farmers.

8 CE: A second edition of the Concilia Agri Culturae presents the concept of the three-field system established experimentally in the Saturnium.

15 CE: The often ailing Romulus dies of a disease – Agrippa becomes emperor and appoints his son and Romulus’ grandson, Gaius Iulius Caesar, as successor. By then, the Empire was heavily burdened by the conquest of both Germania Magna, Illyria and Marcomannia emptying the state’s treasury.
Backing off from a fiscal reform provoking the senatorial elites or, all the worse, paralyzing the faltering economy, Agrippa hoped to solve the problem through the introduction of the so-called Assignationes, a type of cheque often described as the first paper money of the world. These assignats could at any times be converted in land north of the Danube and made, theoretically, a rich man out of its owner.
The central in Rome soon started to pay the provincial officials with assignats and legati and tribuni were expected to buy the soldiers' sold with the parchment.[2] The new system promoted the concentration of Germanic land in the hands of a few senators, but thus also accelerated the introduction of technological innovations in northern agriculture.

20 CE: The large landowners in Germania firstly produce plows of iron (instead of wood) – the so invented heavy plow is very conducive to the cultivation of grain in the northern provinces. Lover the years, the iron plow spreads through the Roman territories of northern Europe.

21 CE: Agrippa dies after a peaceful reign lasting six years. Gaius Iulius Caesar, already co-regent, is confirmed in power by the senate and the people. Since both of his brothers as a large part of his family died, he appoints Nero Claudius Germanicus, governor of Germania, as his heir.

27 CE: Gaius Caesar, much-loved mediator, dies of a serious riding accident. Coming home from Germania, Germanicus, Gaius’ brother-in-law, becomes is successor – though striving for a peaceful and liberal government, he has to protect the oriental provinces against Parthian attacks and crush revolts of the northern Germanic tribes.

[1] Used by the Rhaetian Gauls according to Pline the Elder and named plaumoratum
[2] I ventured to copy this passage from my Trajan TL

 

[ManintheField]

So what is the main advantage of carbon steel? And how do you produce it? I suspect it's quite complicated to do it.

Essentially, you use reflected heat and a constant flow of oxygen to create very pure, high carbon content steel. It's not so incredibly complicated (it was independently invented several times, running as far back as before the Romans), it's that it takes a long time to refine the process to the point where:

1. It's scalable. Carbon steel is all well and good, but as long as it's very expensive to make it's not going to be used in factory machinery. You need to be able to produce it on an industrial scale for it to be useful. That's the real magic of the Bessemer process.

2. It's got the mechanical properties to be useful in things like pressure vessels. There's carbon steel and then there's carbon steel. Not every heat is going to come out with the same mechanical properties, and learning how to make high strength carbon steel consistently is a lot different from knowing how to make carbon steel.

Is this part of the carbon steel thing - do you need coal to make it, and you're saying while they're large forests left in Europe nobody will use it? Hope I understand you right.

It's part of the iron thing. The most important material in early industrial machinery (besides various woods) was cast iron. It was the production of cast iron that they were digging up coal for: coke allowed iron making to be done on a much larger scale and cheaper than charcoal.

Prior to the use of coke in iron making, you have two problems:

1. Iron is too expensive for use in the kind of machinery you build an industrial revolution out of. Steam boilers were made out of brass before coke fueled blast furnaces, waaay too expensive for economic use.

2. The demand for coal is going to be a lot less, meaning there's no incentive to, say, develop steam engines to run pumps that can keep bell pit coal mines dry enough to produce.

The advantages that coke has over charcoal are not immediately obvious and there are actually some drawbacks to making iron with coke fired blast furnaces that are going to put anyone trying it the first time off of the whole idea. It takes a specific set of circumstances (relatively expensive charcoal, highly developed understanding of the thermodynamics of gases, etc) for it to happen and, without it, you're not going to get the virtuous cycle that leads to the industrial scale production of fossil fuel powered manufacturing equipment.

Right, right. I know this. But there are other things you can use steam engines for.

Not really anything early on that is going to incentivize increasing power output, affordability, and a host of other properties of the machine that led to its contributing to the industrial revolution.

I'm thinking of something like this (tried it in my last TL): state has lots of new land and wants to sell it quickly -> state starts to issue documents proving that the state owes you a land lot -> this documents are used to pay soldiers and officials -> people start to exchange this documents and use it as money secured by a real property. Then the state realizes that it's quite useful to use paper money for bigger sums, he standardly issues paper money.

There are a series of problems with this:

A. Land is neither liquid nor fungible. That means it makes for horrible money, which means it makes for horrible commodity backing of an early paper money. While there might be limited circulation of these documents amongst small groups (anything is possible), what is much, much more likely is that people sell them for actual money (metallic coins) when they don't want them anymore. You need something that is liquid and fungible to back your paper money because the reasons people accept a paper money are the same reasons people accept any money: Because they expect to be able to trade it for goods and services, because they expect to be able to save in it, or because they expect to be able to use it to price with.

Land is right out. Gold isn't really necessary, as the Chinese for example managed to found a paper money banking system on both silver and (most fascinatingly) on their strings of copper cash, but some kind of already extant money is the way to go. The Romans made use of a series of different kinds of metals in their coins, so any of them would work.

B. The moment the state notices that it can draw an income from issuing paper money, that paper money is fucked. There is no real incentive for the Roman state to not take over-zealous advantage of the possibilities of inflationary finance and simply print print print until the cows come home. The Chinese ran into something similar: Soon after merchants in Sichuan under the Song invented paper money, local government officials took over its issue and state issued paper currency became something of a craze for the next several centuries. Its value was never stable and the Chinese government never worried about making it so. The situation eventually became so heinous that the Yuan dynasty's overissues re-metallicized the Chinese economy and paper currency disappeared for the next several centuries, until the Qing dynasty wisely left paper currency issue to private banks.

And don't even think for a moment that the Romans would be any different. Emperors happily and continuously took advantage of the possibility to debase their existing coin currency whenever necessary to fund whatever they wanted to fund. Even if you got lucky with a virtuous Emperor who would want to stabilize the currency, the Romans had no idea how macroeconomics worked. When Diocletian (I think) tried to tackle the problem of the inflated gold currency that did exist, his idea was to simply start minting a whole bunch of full-bodied gold coins and throw them into circulation, completely missing that it wasn't necessarily the debasement that was the problem (gold coins can easily circulate as tokens, where the stamp on the coin is more important than the actual gold content), but rather the increased supply of coins that debasement allowed for.

These are ideas that wouldn't be invented until the 19th or 20th centuries. The Romans are completely, totally out of their depth.

C. The Romans already had private banks that probably engaged in fractional reserve deposit banking. There's no need to imagine the Roman state doing something that essentially no state has ever done ever and inventing a major financial innovation like paper money all on its own, you just need to have the practice of open-endorsement of checks (which the Romans did have) evolve somewhere. Eventually these banks can start issuing bearer-checks, which pay out to whoever comes in bearing the check, and bam, you've got paper bank notes. As long as Roman courts are willing to enforce these checks, you're great.

Paper money is based on confidence - once you know that you can exchange your paper money against real goods (like land or as OTL gold), paper money is likely to work.

Not every contract is equally liquid, though. Early paper monies were very liquid because they were exchangeable for a very liquid commodity money. Land is not very liquid. It's actually incredibly illiquid: Land markets are historically very fickle and it's difficult to easily divide parcels of land to whatever size, which makes exchanges in land very lumpy (and thus hard to price accurately along a continuum of size).

No, not tinkerers - to work in a shop and invent stuff is beneath their dignity. But people loving seeing and buying new toys is quite possible. Just to impress their neighbors. And once you understand how much is possible with the right technology, you will (maybe) start to want to use it for your own industries.

I dunno about that. The later Romans/Byzantines had some really cool steam toys (roaring lions, singing birds, automatically raising thrones, automatic doors, etc), but never really went anywhere with the technology. It takes more than the existence of the technology, it takes the necessary market size of apply that technology profitably. That's why textiles were the consumer good that really drove the early industrial revolution: It was a massive market.

 

[tophatgaming]

what exactly is the point of divergence?