
Could Rome have had an industrial revolution? - jseliger
https://reaction.life/rome-industrial-revolution/
======
nabla9
Could Eastern Europe have had an industrial revolution before the Western
Europe?

I have seen the industrial revolution always as

paper -> printing press -> better paper -> newsletters -> more reading & books
-> more inclusive institutions -> ...

I can't see industrial revolution without large number of books and reading
just before it.

Acemoglu & Robinson have pointed out that the eastern and western Europe were
almost identical in institutions in the middle ages but then Western Europe
developed just slightly more inclusive institutions.

In Russia print office was established by Fedorov in Moscow and printing was
heavily censored. I think Russia had long time only 4 printers. Meanwhile tiny
Scotland had something like 7-8 printers at the beginning of 1700's and many
Scottish inventors followed. Germany, France, England, Portugal etc. had
printers in every major city.

~~~
jcranmer
There's no consensus on why the Industrial Revolution started in England. Some
common theories include:

* It could have happened other places, but started in England by pure dumb luck.

* English legal structure (common law and property ownership rules)--note that the Glorious Revolution took place before the Industrial Revolution, unlike, say, the French Revolution.

* English economic situation (holding a large mercantile empire).

* English natural resources (the loss of the forests to make charcoal, prompting the need to dig deeper to get coal).

As I said, there's certainly no consensus on why it occurred in England.
Generally, the more interesting question is not why it occurred in England and
not France, but why it occurred in Europe and not China, which after all had
access to things like the printing press long before Europe.

To actually answer your question, one feature of Western Europe in the Early
Modern is that serfdom was effectively abolished. Russia and Poland did not
abolish serfdom until the 1800s (in the case of Poland, after the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist). Slavery is generally considered to
retard the development of technology, and serfdom is similar enough to slavery
that it would have a similar effect if such an effect exists. In that vein,
it's dubious to think the Industrial Revolution could have developed in
Eastern Europe.

------
Houshalter
[http://an-emission-impossible-world.blogspot.com/2013/12/anc...](http://an-
emission-impossible-world.blogspot.com/2013/12/ancient-pollution.html)

The romans were producing a huge amount of lead and other metals at levels not
achieved again until the 18th century. The graph is pretty striking. And it's
a logarithmic graph so doesn't give the full perspective of just how ahead of
their time they were.

------
camelCaseOfBeer
So what I gather is it would appear academics are arguing over semantics to
describe an otherwise unerring narrative of historical events they otherwise
agree upon again. Did Rome have an industrial revolution? Well it depends on
how you define industrial revolution, but we all agree... Stuff happened.

------
macintux
I'd swear this just showed up a couple of weeks ago, maybe a different link
but same question.

~~~
macintux
There we go: twice recently, one with comments was the same piece, different
URL.

* Commentary, same piece: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15690293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15690293)

* No comments, author who inspired this piece: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15840705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15840705)

------
z3t4
there needs to be scarsity and demand for an economy to work. and free time is
needed for tech advancement. those who had free time did not have scarsity.
they could get anything they wanted. compare with today we have many people
with free time who create a huge demand for stuff.

------
k__
In school I was told that the industrial revolution was late because of the
church. "That's why the dark ages are called dark ages"

~~~
efficax
This fails to explain a lot of things, such as why there was no "industrial
revolution" in China, for example, which was technologically far more advanced
than Europe up until the 17th century.

Anyway, the answer is not so complicated: capitalist production is not a
question of markets or wealth, but of a set of social relations between owners
of capital and each other, and owners of capital and laborers, where laborers
depend upon owners of capital for their subsistence, and where capitalists are
set in a situation of compelled competition, where they must extract
constantly increasing productivity from their laborers in order to maintain
their status. That is, the conditions for the emergence of the industrial
revolution come about when participation in a competitive market is, on the
whole, _compulsory_ rather than optional, and where competition between
capitalists is compulsory, such that the livelihoods of both capitalists and
laborers is contingent upon technological improvements in productivity. This
turns into a self-reinforcing cycle, and before you know it we have airplanes,
iphones, empires of working poor, and global warming.

Throughout most of history, participation in market society was generally an
optional thing. The small landholding peasant brought goods to market when
they could but they did not depend on markets to live. Now we require markets
to live. At some point in England in the early modern period, this cycle of
market dependence and competition emerged, grew out of control, and spread out
conquering the world.

~~~
analog31
When my kids were beginning to read, we brought out the books by Laura Ingalls
Wilder ( _Little house on the Prairie_ etc). For our international readers,
the books are autobiographical, and she grew up in the North Woods of the
central US in the late 19th century.

Reading them as an adult really impressed me that her family was remarkably
close to the "landholding peasant" model that you describe. As the family
moved from one settlement to another, the description of possessions that they
brought along suggests that they were accumulating basically zero wealth, for
quite a time period.

And at that point, the industrial revolution was already running full steam
(literally) in the eastern US and in Europe.

~~~
eesmith
It is autobiographical, but also fictionalized.

Bear in mind that Laura Ingalls Wilder had help from her daughter, Rose Wilder
Lane, who is one of the founders of the American libertarian movement. Quoting
from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane)
:

> In late 1930, Lane's mother approached her with a rough, first-person
> narrative manuscript outlining her hardscrabble pioneer childhood, Pioneer
> Girl. Lane, using her sense of what was marketable, took notice. She
> recognized that an American public weary of the Depression would respond
> warmly to the story of the loving, self-sufficient and determined Ingalls
> family overcoming obstacles while maintaining their sense of independence,
> as told through the eyes of the spunky "Laura".

What you read was therefore likely selected to appeal to that vision of
independent landholding peasants.

That said, the Wilders did depend on markets to live. They depended on a
rifle, and on metal tools (including sewing needles), and tin pots. Nor do
they make their own cloth. I'll quote some lines from "Little House in the Big
Woods":

> The nearest town was far away. Laura and Mary had never seen a town. They
> had never seen a store. They had never seen even two houses standing
> together. But they knew that in a town there were many houses, and a store
> full of candy and calico and other wonderful things--powder, and shot, and
> salt, and store sugar.

The calico, powder, and shot were essentials. Likely salt too, though it may
simply be much easier to get from the store than naturally, rather like store
sugar vs. maple sugar/snow sugar.

You can also see some of the "compelled competition, where they must extract
constantly increasing productivity from their laborers in order to maintain
their status" in Chapter 12: "The Wonderful MACHINE", when the threshers come
with machinery which in one day with four men and eight horses can harvest as
much wheat as four men could in two weeks. This is seen as progress, but once
everyone does it, the prices will drop, and future farmers must then seek out
ever more productivity.

It is the Osage, in "Little House on the Prairie", who best fit efficax's
description of a people who were not dependent on market dependence.

~~~
analog31
Thanks for those notes. I assumed that they had some contact with markets, but
I didn't know about the fictionalized aspect of the books. Well, they were
still entertaining. ;-)

~~~
eesmith
Don't get me wrong. Many of the events are real, or based on real stories.
There is an avid amateur historian/fan community which has tracked down the
details, including newspaper articles from the time that specifically mention
some of the events which occur.

For instance, Mary's illness is mentioned in the local paper twice, according
to this paper which argues that it was likely meningoencephalitis, not scarlet
fever, which caused her illness and subsequent blindness. Interview at
[https://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171413261/laura-ingalls-
siste...](https://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171413261/laura-ingalls-sister-may-
not-have-lost-eyesight-to-scarlet-fever) and paper at
[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/ear...](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2013/01/29/peds.2012-1438.full.pdf)
.

