Interesting column but people often don’t realize all of the Industrial Revolution is based upon the use of hydrocarbons, first coal and then oil and gas. Hydrocarbons are very dense forms of energy which can easily be used. I don’t think Rome had ample supplies of hydrocarbons at hand, however, England and Northern Europe did.
I address this theory in my original post on this topic (https://www.maximum-progress.com/p/romae-industriae), but the short version is: Rome had access to plenty of coal deposits and they were great at mining. Plus, Britain itself was part of the empire for three centuries!
But it was not the presence of hydrocarbons that was essential. After all, they had been in the ground for hundreds of millions of years. It was the technology and skills necessary to exploit those hydrocarbons that was essential.
More to the point, it was a massive technological leap from Ancient Rome to 18th century Britain in many domains. You mention one important one: the printing press. But that is just one of dozens of other key technologies.
I believe that it was the technological innovations of the Commercial societies (Northern Italy, Flanders, the Dutch Republic, and pre-industrial England) after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that innovated those technologies and skills that made the Industrial Revolution possible. Without them the Industrial Revolution would be extremely unlikely.
For all of these reasons, I believe that Ancient Rome was very far off from an Industrial Revolution.
Plus, if the printing press was so essential, why didn't more nations industrialize? The technology of the printing press and the books produced spread far beyond the nations that industrialized early. Something else must also be a key factor.
This is similar to Jason Crawford's thesis which I do talk about in the original post as well.
I basically agree that they were missing other important techs, although Kyle Harper emphasizes that Rome's financial markets were highly sophisticated. But they were missing some other important things like the spinning wheel and some sailing technology etc.
I'd also repeat my point about our current estimation of Rome's technology being a lower bound, not a central estimate so they may have had more of these things than we know.
But perhaps most importantly, I think the printing press helps them rapidly invent all these precursor techs. All of the things they needed were relatively simple (though difficult to see in advance), iterative improvements on their current tech. I would bet that these things actually have been invented several times throughout history but mostly fizzle out and fail to spread. Printing press makes it easier to spread the ideas when they do arise and helps way more people come up with new ideas by building on the investigations of others.
My argument is quite different than Jason Crawford's. It was not just the lack of specific technologies. It was also that centralized Agrarian regimes like Rome completely lacked the ability to innovate and diffuse the necessary technologies, skills and organizations regardless of how much time they had. This made industrialization almost impossible.
Obviously, these are very difficult topics with multiple causal factors that are difficult to untangle in the present. We are not going to solve them conclusively here.
I am, however, very skeptical of the Romans being as advanced technologically and financially as Harper claims. As far as I know, they did not have joint-stock ownership companies, double-entry book-keeping, a bond market, or a stock market. So, in comparison to 18th-century finance, Rome was not sophisticated.
And I do not see how "our current estimation of Rome's technology" will change much in the future. It is not the presence of a single instance of a technology that matters. It is how widespread it is throughout society. Even if it turns out that an obscure Roman inventor invented an automobile, what really matters is that it never got adopted at scale.
Roman land transportation was primarily by pack animals. That alone is a huge barrier to functioning markets.
I believe that the Roman Empire would likely have stifled the benefits of the printing press, just as the Ottomans did. Their highly centralized political power made the kind of decentralized experimentation of the subsequent Commercial city-states impossible. Political decisions were made to the extent they benefited the Emperor and an elite class of landowners. They could easily stifle competition and had an incentive to do so.
Another huge barrier was how unproductive Ancient Farming was compared to later farming techniques:
Interesting. I just finished reading The WEIRDest People by Joseph Henrich. His theory is that the Catholic Church’s marriage and family policy broke apart clan-based collective communities and created fertile ground for the Industrial Revolution as individuals joined voluntary orgs (universities, monasteries, charter cities) which helped the growth of Europe’s collective brain.
Henrich's explanation fits with the one data point we have and it's reasonable and interesting.
I do think he would agree that his contrast between catholic social organization and clan-based communities applies mostly to the post-empire, dark-ages, Germanic peoples rather than to the social organization of Rome at its height.
I'm not an expert, but I don't get the sense that clan collectives were stifling in Rome in the same way they were in the dark ages or in arab societies. There are important clans like the Julians of course, but there are strong dynasties in Enlightenment Europe too and there was lots of non-genetic adoption into dynasties in Rome.
Nice post, Maxwell. But that begs the question: why didn't the Roman world come up with the printing press? For what it's worth Jacques Ellul thought, in his seminal work The Technological Society, that the lack of further Greek/Roman technical progress was because of the fundamentally different worldview that the ancient world held:
"The Greeks were suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of brute force and implied a want of moderation…The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity involving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were permitted - those which would respond directly to material needs in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand….No one ought to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great preoccupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation; hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities."
Indeed, the rise of technique and the decline in faith in God are linked phenomenon:
"Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off essentials, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means. More than science which limits itself to explaining the “how,” technique desacralizes because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books) that mystery does not exist….
Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the supernatural. The individual who lives in the technical milieu knows very well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But man cannot live without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself."
"The results show a strong association between per capita scientific production, per capita GDP and urbanisation. Remarkably, the period of Italian, Dutch and English domination matches their period of maximum affluence during the studied period (i.e. the period during which their GDP per capita was over $1500 and their economic activity was growing, see Figure 3). Our dataset also allows for exploring alternative hypotheses, although better data would be required to test these hypotheses properly. We first considered the role of printing. Printing has often been cited as a cause of the Scientific Revolution, as it allows for better communication between scientists (Eisenstein, 1980; Febvre & Martin, 1997; Wootton, 2015). Although the increase in scientific productivity coincides roughly with the invention and diffusion of printing in Europe, it is notable that the invention of the printing press does not lead to the acceleration of scientific production. This result is in line with what can be observed outside Europe. For instance, the diffusion of printed books did not drastically change China's scientific productivity during the Tang dynasty (Xu, 2017), or that of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century (Coşgel et al., 2012). In contrast, it is worth noting that Ancient Greece achieved a level of productivity often deemed similar to that of early modern Europe despite the absence of printing (Leroi, 2014; Russo, 2013)."
I agree that the printing press was a big lack (I'm an Elizabeth Eisenstein fan from way back). But I think there are other factors too. Here's one that's related to #2 & #3 you mention above,but is, I think, worth mentioning independently. In the histories of science I've read, a frequently raised point is that the ancient Greeks (and I would guess the Romans, but the point is usually made about the Greeks) disdained labor: they thought that practical crafts were for lower orders and slaves, and that the noble thing was leisure and pure thought. But this meant that they didn't have a culture of scientific building. It's partly that this hampered their interest in empiricism, and partly that a lot of early scientists were *builders*, who made or improved machines and then used them to discover things. There wasn't a culture to support that in classical times.
Interesting column but people often don’t realize all of the Industrial Revolution is based upon the use of hydrocarbons, first coal and then oil and gas. Hydrocarbons are very dense forms of energy which can easily be used. I don’t think Rome had ample supplies of hydrocarbons at hand, however, England and Northern Europe did.
I address this theory in my original post on this topic (https://www.maximum-progress.com/p/romae-industriae), but the short version is: Rome had access to plenty of coal deposits and they were great at mining. Plus, Britain itself was part of the empire for three centuries!
But it was not the presence of hydrocarbons that was essential. After all, they had been in the ground for hundreds of millions of years. It was the technology and skills necessary to exploit those hydrocarbons that was essential.
More to the point, it was a massive technological leap from Ancient Rome to 18th century Britain in many domains. You mention one important one: the printing press. But that is just one of dozens of other key technologies.
I believe that it was the technological innovations of the Commercial societies (Northern Italy, Flanders, the Dutch Republic, and pre-industrial England) after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that innovated those technologies and skills that made the Industrial Revolution possible. Without them the Industrial Revolution would be extremely unlikely.
For all of these reasons, I believe that Ancient Rome was very far off from an Industrial Revolution.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-the-industrial-revolution-happened
Plus, if the printing press was so essential, why didn't more nations industrialize? The technology of the printing press and the books produced spread far beyond the nations that industrialized early. Something else must also be a key factor.
This is similar to Jason Crawford's thesis which I do talk about in the original post as well.
I basically agree that they were missing other important techs, although Kyle Harper emphasizes that Rome's financial markets were highly sophisticated. But they were missing some other important things like the spinning wheel and some sailing technology etc.
I'd also repeat my point about our current estimation of Rome's technology being a lower bound, not a central estimate so they may have had more of these things than we know.
But perhaps most importantly, I think the printing press helps them rapidly invent all these precursor techs. All of the things they needed were relatively simple (though difficult to see in advance), iterative improvements on their current tech. I would bet that these things actually have been invented several times throughout history but mostly fizzle out and fail to spread. Printing press makes it easier to spread the ideas when they do arise and helps way more people come up with new ideas by building on the investigations of others.
My argument is quite different than Jason Crawford's. It was not just the lack of specific technologies. It was also that centralized Agrarian regimes like Rome completely lacked the ability to innovate and diffuse the necessary technologies, skills and organizations regardless of how much time they had. This made industrialization almost impossible.
Obviously, these are very difficult topics with multiple causal factors that are difficult to untangle in the present. We are not going to solve them conclusively here.
I am, however, very skeptical of the Romans being as advanced technologically and financially as Harper claims. As far as I know, they did not have joint-stock ownership companies, double-entry book-keeping, a bond market, or a stock market. So, in comparison to 18th-century finance, Rome was not sophisticated.
And I do not see how "our current estimation of Rome's technology" will change much in the future. It is not the presence of a single instance of a technology that matters. It is how widespread it is throughout society. Even if it turns out that an obscure Roman inventor invented an automobile, what really matters is that it never got adopted at scale.
Roman land transportation was primarily by pack animals. That alone is a huge barrier to functioning markets.
I believe that the Roman Empire would likely have stifled the benefits of the printing press, just as the Ottomans did. Their highly centralized political power made the kind of decentralized experimentation of the subsequent Commercial city-states impossible. Political decisions were made to the extent they benefited the Emperor and an elite class of landowners. They could easily stifle competition and had an incentive to do so.
Another huge barrier was how unproductive Ancient Farming was compared to later farming techniques:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/farming-in-ancient-greece-and-rome
More productive agriculture was key to the innovation of Commercial societies and enabled far higher rates of urbanization:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/farming-in-commercial-societies
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-and-why-commercial-societies
Interesting. I just finished reading The WEIRDest People by Joseph Henrich. His theory is that the Catholic Church’s marriage and family policy broke apart clan-based collective communities and created fertile ground for the Industrial Revolution as individuals joined voluntary orgs (universities, monasteries, charter cities) which helped the growth of Europe’s collective brain.
Have to read this book? If so, what is your take?
Henrich's explanation fits with the one data point we have and it's reasonable and interesting.
I do think he would agree that his contrast between catholic social organization and clan-based communities applies mostly to the post-empire, dark-ages, Germanic peoples rather than to the social organization of Rome at its height.
I'm not an expert, but I don't get the sense that clan collectives were stifling in Rome in the same way they were in the dark ages or in arab societies. There are important clans like the Julians of course, but there are strong dynasties in Enlightenment Europe too and there was lots of non-genetic adoption into dynasties in Rome.
Rome controlled England from AD 43 to 410.
Nice post, Maxwell. But that begs the question: why didn't the Roman world come up with the printing press? For what it's worth Jacques Ellul thought, in his seminal work The Technological Society, that the lack of further Greek/Roman technical progress was because of the fundamentally different worldview that the ancient world held:
"The Greeks were suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of brute force and implied a want of moderation…The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity involving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were permitted - those which would respond directly to material needs in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand….No one ought to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great preoccupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation; hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities."
Indeed, the rise of technique and the decline in faith in God are linked phenomenon:
"Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off essentials, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means. More than science which limits itself to explaining the “how,” technique desacralizes because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books) that mystery does not exist….
Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the supernatural. The individual who lives in the technical milieu knows very well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But man cannot live without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself."
The paper at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/quantifying-the-scientific-revolution/60249C6B9DF636D2EC8446F6B7E454F8 tried to look at which variables correlated most with rise in scientific productivity (including engineering), they came to the conclusion that rising GDP and urbanization were more important than the printing press:
"The results show a strong association between per capita scientific production, per capita GDP and urbanisation. Remarkably, the period of Italian, Dutch and English domination matches their period of maximum affluence during the studied period (i.e. the period during which their GDP per capita was over $1500 and their economic activity was growing, see Figure 3). Our dataset also allows for exploring alternative hypotheses, although better data would be required to test these hypotheses properly. We first considered the role of printing. Printing has often been cited as a cause of the Scientific Revolution, as it allows for better communication between scientists (Eisenstein, 1980; Febvre & Martin, 1997; Wootton, 2015). Although the increase in scientific productivity coincides roughly with the invention and diffusion of printing in Europe, it is notable that the invention of the printing press does not lead to the acceleration of scientific production. This result is in line with what can be observed outside Europe. For instance, the diffusion of printed books did not drastically change China's scientific productivity during the Tang dynasty (Xu, 2017), or that of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century (Coşgel et al., 2012). In contrast, it is worth noting that Ancient Greece achieved a level of productivity often deemed similar to that of early modern Europe despite the absence of printing (Leroi, 2014; Russo, 2013)."
Kyle Harper underestimates how slavery completely removes any pressure from the cost of lack of labor.
Reducing the cost of labor directly motivated incremental changes throughout the Industrial Revolutions.
Slavery completely changes the economic calculations & significantly reduces the immediate benefits of labor saving techniques and devices.
I agree that the printing press was a big lack (I'm an Elizabeth Eisenstein fan from way back). But I think there are other factors too. Here's one that's related to #2 & #3 you mention above,but is, I think, worth mentioning independently. In the histories of science I've read, a frequently raised point is that the ancient Greeks (and I would guess the Romans, but the point is usually made about the Greeks) disdained labor: they thought that practical crafts were for lower orders and slaves, and that the noble thing was leisure and pure thought. But this meant that they didn't have a culture of scientific building. It's partly that this hampered their interest in empiricism, and partly that a lot of early scientists were *builders*, who made or improved machines and then used them to discover things. There wasn't a culture to support that in classical times.