Why Rome Never Industrialized

Comments · 777

• RA

  @radiobrojo · 5 months ago

  Roman Steampunk sounds like an incredible aesthetic.

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• PA

  @papipavlo · 5 months ago

  A non AI video on history. Thank you

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• BE

  @Benjibluebill · 5 months ago

  Honestly this is the sort of video I want to see a LOT more

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• TR

  @tree427 · 5 months ago

  The medieval ages had a lot of inventions that led up to the industrial revolution that the romans didn't have, like the printing press, arabic numerals, as well as various societal changes

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• ID

  @Idiodyssey87 · 5 months ago

  Rome was further from industrialization than many like to think. Rome lacked a lot of key ingredients: advanced metallurgy, knowledge of precision manufacturing necessary to produce machine tools, market demand and capital, an incentive to reduce cost of labor, advances in mathematics that allowed for precise measurement and systematic modeling.

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• IS

  @israeltola9627 · 5 months ago (edited)

  You've essentially communicated a blue print on how to construct any civilization. This is amazing thank you so much 🙏🏾. Belief , incentives and culture

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• SY

  @SystemicVariety · 5 months ago (edited)

  Imo, most of the discussion of why the industrial revolution happened are really telling us about how it spread when it happened. The focus should be on how the steam engine ended up in an exponential improvement cycle. Without the steam engine, the only place all this global trade was heading was another, bigger, bronze age collapse when a big enough calamity came along. <br><br>The steam engine ended up in an exponential improvement cycle because of high demand for cloth and coal and constrained supply for wood and labor. High demand for cloth meant meant forests getting cleared for pastures. Which constrained supply of wood for heating (which was also competing with ships to move the cloth), which drove up demand for coal, which got so deep you needed to pump out the water. Then because the labor was busy doing other stuff other than pumping out water for coal, you put a machine to a task, a machine that was too inefficent to use anywhere but right next the coal you were mining. But the more efficient that machine got, the less coal you needed for it to get better, so it kept getting better.<br><br>Eventually it got efficient enough to use for any task to which rotational movement could be applied (particularly all the cloth you were already making), which further incentivized efficency for fuel, then the rest is history. Eveything else to the story of the industrial revolution is superfluous except in so far as it lead to high demand for cloth/coal and constrained supply of wood/labor. No amount of whig history, system of private property or knowledge transmission would have created the industrial revolution without it. Any environment with those specific demands and constraints would have had one.

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• WI

  @wigglyhoney6711 · 4 months ago

  Great video!!!

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• WA

  @WagesOfDestruction · 5 months ago

  I think you underestimate how many technologies had to be developed before steam power made economic sense. Rome had severe wood shortages, and timber was very expensive because it had to be transported over long distances. With fuel being so scarce, a wood-fired Roman steam engine would never be economically viable. That is why the steam engine remained only a toy in Roman society. <br> <br>To get a cheap heat source like coal, you first need a reason to mine it, which requires the mass adoption of chimneys. Chimneys were actually very expensive to build; until the 1800s, they were often the most expensive part of a house. Once you have that domestic demand, you need gunpowder to make bulk, deep coal mining profitable. Only when Europeans had cheap coal, the metallurgy to handle high pressure (which the Romans lacked), and the need to pump water out of much deeper flooded mines, did the steam engine become an economical solution rather than an expensive toy. <br> <br>The Romans experimented with water power, which made much more sense for their economy and technology. I have often wondered about solar power in Rome, but that is another question.

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• PR

  @ProllyAvy · 4 months ago

  I love these concise video essays

• LI

  @Lima_BrokenArrow · 4 months ago

  Well what a pleasant surprise from the algorithm, great video, Im sure this channel will grow massively in due time

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• LU

  @LukAnd-md3by · 4 months ago

  Best content in a long time!💪