Was it a lack of manpower? Was it geographic circumstances? Why couldn’t civilizations like, say, Babylon or Rome have an Industrial Revolution?
In: 448
There is a quite intresting theory about the Roman empire. They basically had the ingridents for an industrial revolution meaning they knew a bit about electricity and they knew about steam power. So they had the basics to expand upon. The intresting question is why didn’t they? And one possible answer is the abundant availability of slaves. There was simply no incentive to develop steam power because slaves could do all the work. And their society was still strongly agrarian so they lacked the social prerequisites that enabled the modern industrial revolution.
I find this rather convincing because if you look at Europe before the industrial revolution it was a time of societal upheaval. The decline of the agrarian nobility and the rise of the commoners in the city. With a lack of Labour in the Labour intensive agrarian and mining industries. Also due to the discovery of America and the rest of the world which brought about great commerce there was the economic class to develop the industrial revolution. All this was not present for the Roman’s. Yes there was sort of a global commerce but the world was a lot smaller. And the Patricians were City folk but they didn’t need to work the same as the Patricians of the medivela city’s had to. They relied on their estates still and their slaves
Latest Answers