Why Didn't the Roman Empire Industrialize? | SideQuest Animated History
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- Опубліковано 23 вер 2022
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The Roman Empire was once the eminent European superpower and by some estimates they were only 300 years away from their own Industrial Revolution. So why didn't the Romans industrialize and could that have saved the empire?
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Further Reading:
“Proto-industrialization and the Economy of the Roman Empire” by K. Dark - artefacts.mom.fr/Publis/Dark_...[Proto_Industrialization].pdf
"Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire" by J. W. Hanson - royalsocietypublishing.org/do... - Розваги
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Amongus
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Even in the 1800s the Romans were considered people from the 1800s of America even though the United States is not considered to the most advanced country in Europe at the time to be extremely rich and wealthy for musket would be considered to be a very powerful weapon but extremely expensive they don't know how the thing worked don't get me wrong because the encountered something called a steam powered Cannon without Archimedes made some things they would think modern people are magicians or wizards or something like that I know it sounds like an old trope for science fiction or time travel but seriously yes they would look you can't like body functions to do anything you want to do it put yourself in the situation I'm glad I'm not I'm not in that situation even early Christians would think some modern technology or some sort of magic or something exactly know how it worked look there which we would say extremely privative That's maybe putting it in a lot of ways very every mild
The only difference between people is that Type B people believe that the dictionary entry for Undisputed is "Communism", right? Indeed, Type A people think that when something is undisputed, it is a god which is ordering them to go to a mountain and kill their son or something else, etc. Otherwise, there would be a military general in Isaac Newton's place (and no "scientist Isaac Newton").
if Westerners (other than "Japan"/Native Americans) truly/scientifically were as demonic as some people say they WERE, then we Non-Westerners would have needed to go to kindergarten in handcuffs to prevent us from fighting any of them to death immediately (entering a permanent lifelong duel) after first hearing them move or seeing any part of their body, right?
We were COMMUNISM: The News Channel With Genes .. Just kidding
In teaching, there is a practice called "dictation".
Is there any doubt that Communism is more than a nonfiction narration (is it merely a dictation) (isn't the only anti-Communist argument that Communism is merely a dictation of news over time, and phrased to us by ditsy people as "dictatorship")?
Is there "a vacuum" in Communism for making offerings (other than flowers for Lenin), and if so, should we be giving offerings to ... This (link below) musician from Australia? I just wonder what it would do, biologically. Maybe there are many more Aussie musicians who should get offerings, I'm too ditsy to know though
ua-cam.com/video/WPSsEb_KiYY/v-deo.html
😔🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄😞 All im saying is it wouldnt hurt to have "good incense game", because I see a lot of bad incense game in the world (South Asia, Japan, and the usual suspects if there were any more)
;_ _ -_.
Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. That is an old concept.
American Football Analogy 🏈: when it's already 4th down, the mind of an Imperialist is the mind which WAGERS that when it (for what it thinks is the first time) reveals its athleticism to us in order to make an assertion, its assertion IS ONLY that "As The Only Human To Ever Exist, I have INVENTED (as absurd as it sounds) "HIKING” (aka Snapping) of the ball".
You know, AS IF IT DIDN'T KNOW FOOTBALL EVER EXISTED or even that anybody on either team ever existed (it's pure coincidence to the Imperialist that we theoretically can exist and that we have witnessed the invention of the hike, and it's probably already amazed that we will be getting into the 3-point stance on the line of scrimmage next down, because it thinks we're REACTING TO ITS INVENTION and we're dependent on it for our own good, because if it thinks it knows more than us, it will think that we need it to be adjacent to us in order to protect us from The Nonsense Which It Hypothesizes That It Has Learned)
_ ___ ___ ___
And as a scientist, instead of real hypotheses in science, it only ever hypothesizes that it itself has learned something (while writing pages of toilet food). That's the tree branch it's sitting on (until it breaks).
do you want to test whether Western politics is about creating a "pressure cooker" which will result in a pro-Russia military leadership once the pressure gasket releases the pressure?
Don't you think we would have gone to kindergarten in handcuffs to prevent us from dueling each other to the death IF GENETICALLY ENGLISH/Western PEOPLE WERE REALLY AS BAD AS I PERSONALLY TOLD YOU THEY WERE YESTERDAY because i planned to say THIS today?
You think Rome was China huh? You need to open your eyes. Just because someone's capitol city has a YMCA with a pool doesn't mean they're Living The Life
you have made a slight oversight, water wheels.
The ancient Romans did make use of a series of water wheels to grind flour in a few factories, especially in france
To be honest this would make a sick alternate history scenario.
Edit: holy crap did this get a ton of replies,just to let you know I'm not going to respond to most comments from this point on unless I find them interesting.
Actually, once my time machine is up and running, there won't be anything "alternate" about it. ;-)
I too have a time machine and a Tardis in my backyard
ua-cam.com/video/aagl54g4Kmw/v-deo.html
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To think, the Industrial society collapsing back to donkey carts and hand crafting; why, it’s a post-apocalypse scenario!
Another factor holding the Romans back at the time was their strict governmental hierarchy. There have been quite a few documented cases of someone making a great invention that to us would seem like "oh, nice. That'll help them out a lot" only for them to be executed and their work buried purely because of it's implications on the Roman economy (which was often fragile or rife with inflation) or because the new technology wasn't part of a state-owned (by extension, Emperor owned) monopoly-industry and the Roman leadership had legitimate fears of the power dynamic being turned on it's head. One specific example was a case where someone had invented shatter-proof glass that could be mended with heat during the reign of Tiberius. Tiberius had him executed and wrote that he feared how the glass would devalue the Denarii and wreck the economy in the short term.
so there backwards not because of lack of resources but the politics.
The story of Tiberius is likely a folk myth that developed hundreds of years after his death. There are similar stories of other kings in Europe and Asia doing similar things.
@@mugikuyu9403 that's a bit less horrible to hear, tbh
He should have spoken about the roman industrial mills in Barbegal in France perfect exemple of what they could accomplish and show they had all the knowledge to make industrial revolution happen.
"shatterproof glass" + "Ancient Rome"
What.
The Romans were aware of the benefits of adding carbon to their steel. And yes, they did have steel. The ammount of carbon was just not as precise as it was today, but they did use it for things like pattern welding steel or adding a harder steel edge to the blade of their weapons.
The Romans also hung around for another thousand years after their supposed endpoint in this video. Yes, they lost Rome, but they still had the eastern empire... where most of the wealth and education was. We already know whether or not Rome would industrialise if they lasted another 300 years...
@@vacri54 yeah, I'm a little disappointed in this video. Really feels like it could have used more research. Also, in what world was Rome not around for "that long"? Not counting the Byzantines, the Roman Empire lasted 600 years! That's double to triple the lifespans of many other prominent empires, like the Mongolian, Achameneid Persian, British, or Spanish Empires.
@@vacri54 I will say that while the “Roman empire” did survive as the Eastern Roman Empire for many more centuries. The Byzantines were not really Roman by that point. They spoke Greek, practiced a different religion, thinkers and inventors worked differently than their true Roman predecessors, the eastern Roman Empire had access to less and different resources than the wide stretching Romans did, and most importantly their cultures deviated after a certain point. The eastern Roman Empire quickly ran into war too often for great minds to sit down and think of new ways to do things, which inevitably led to its final blunder and downfall, the cannon and gunpowder.
@@Lawnmower737 Also christianity prohibited more advanced scientifical research, while Byzantium definitely had the minds for that
@@Lawnmower737 the romans practiced christianity by 395already. It was their official and only religion. So that's one down. Being "roman" in the 5th century and after was far removed from what it meant in the 1st century. "Roman" was a political identity, not just an ethnically one. So that's 2 down. Culturally... yes, i can agree. But much of their cultural background came from Greece, after all... with Troy being the birthplace of all romans, through Eneas, to Romulus, and so on... greek mythology and culture was a very important part of said roman identity. At some point, many see these 2 so intertwined it was hard to say if true roman culture would even had existed without greek culture. Much like the chicken and the egg. So that's 3down. They have lost "Rome", but kept "Nova Roma" till 1453, with about 57years minus, 1204-1261. Smaller but far better organised, far superior in defense, much harder to besiege. Nova Roma was Rome 2.0 in every aspect, basically. So that's 4down. And the language? Greek has always been predominant in the East, and the West was starting to be heavily influenced by the germanic languages, the Lingua Franca being french and german, not latin, in the High Middle Ages. Latin was only used for liturgical purposes, rarely for other things. The West barely used it, why would the East try keeping it? Made no sense. And by "barely", i mean in small capacity. Sure, texts were still written in latin, if of high importance, but mundane issues were spoken in the native tongue. Overall. Heraklios only made the use of greek official in the practices of the law. The commoners were far more acquainted with greek than latin anyway. So that's 5down 🙂
You've missed the one of the biggest points by jumping right to the locomotive. The first practical steam engine was Thomas Newcomen's 1712 engine. Britain by 1700 was massively deforested, eliminating wood as a fuel source. This drove the British to begin deep coal mining operations that weren't needed or possible in the Roman period (because of inferior tools, as you mentioned). Those mine shafts would become flooded and Newcomen's engine was designed to pump that water out. It was feasible because 1) it filled a need for rotary motion that the Roman's never had, and 2) because it was immediately by its fuel source, which made overcoming its gross initial inefficacy possible, something unachievable with timber, since eventually the woods are too far from the machine.
The background to this was also the Colombian Exchange, which had made new food sources available, swelling Europe's population to numbers unachievable during the Roman era, creating the deforestation which drove people to use coal on a large scale. Frankly, unless some other society underwent an almost identical set circumstances, it's hard to imagine an Industrial Revolution happening anywhere else.
The thing is Romans had water based industrial facilities... This guy only focus's on the steam engine which was NOT that start of the industrial revolution (but it is what kicked it into high gear)... Rome was in the midst of the industrial revolution, but it failed to do it fast enough, and was destroyed prior to the full realization...
Rome also had plenty of steel, not sure what this guy was smoking...
@@chrismcaulay7805they did have steel though they tended to use iron more often. However the problem is that their steel was of fairly poor quality because of irregularities and impurities, certainly inadequate for steam boilers etc. So the end effect is still the same. The Chinese had already developed crucible steel before the fall of the Roman empire, so if the Romans were somehow able to learn of it maybe they would have had the material technology for steam machinery. As it was, it would take over a millennium to improve steel to a sufficient level in Europe for this job.
It is all very old and the Romans didn't build it. They renovated a small number of cities with great effort. Someone planned out the Roman Empire including the genetic makeup of the people what the government would look like and how long it would last. It was an experiment run from someone on the outside. Wake Up People they are doing it again but allowing us a bit more technology this time.
@@hetmankp that begs the question - why didn't China start the industrial revolution during this time period? I find it astonishing that, as the world's leading scientific and, arguably, military power of the classic period, China was unable to harness the power of steam before Britain did 1500 years later. 1500 years!!
@@lloyd9500 that is such a great question. Reliable materials are necessary but your example shows they're just one of many pieces that need to align for steam power to start making sense. Ranging from the right socio-economic conditions even to how humans conceptualise the world in a given time period/society. People underestimate the obviousness of the environment they live in.
Can't imagine seeing Romans fighting the Huns using helicopters and tanks
sounds like a solid idea for a video
Use the idea for a video!
I can and it looks like Civ 5
What Huns. Modern day Germans are the product of genetic engineering. The Europeans were in a race to create super races of which the Germans were the last round. Helicopters and tanks are older than the hills.
Well, tanks were basically the products of WW1 against German though
Britain only started the industrial revolution because we ran out of trees to build our navy so we had to replace wood with coal for heating, and this demand for coal led to us digging deeper and deeper mines, so the steam engine was invented not to power factories or locomotives but to drain water from the mines. Britain industrialised because were a small island nation that became a major commercial seapower more simaler to Carthage or Ancient Greece, Rome by contrast was a land power like Germany and France
Source? Not that I don't trust you (although Britain running out of trees seems like an fishy concept or oversimplification tbh), but I am genuinely curious and want to learn more.
@@cerebrummaximus3762 Its not really an oversimplification, your average ship of the line required about 2000 trees and when you take into account the size of Britain's navy and the relatively small area they were obtaining these trees from it makes alot of sense
@@cerebrummaximus3762 Even if it's not the only reason it's still a significant pressure driving coal production. Plus, it was unusually accessible for Britain compared to many others.
It should also be noted that the Industrial Revolution started before steam power; before that it was water powered textile mills and the like. And canals which predate railroads.
Neither of you answered my question tho... I wanted source or further reading, like a website link (or book but they're far less accessible for something I need for a day, so website is fine) or something so I can search up more
There is a story that a nameless Roman man invented a form of flexible glass and presented it to Emperor Tiberius. When asked, the man replied that he was the only one who knew how to make it and Tiberius had the man beheaded rather than share his invention with the world since he was afraid this miracle glass would devalue things like gold and silver.
Now, this story probably isn't true. It appears in a couple of primary Roman sources, but people like Pliny the Elder claim it is "more widely spread than authenticated" but even if it isn't true I think it still has some value since it shows a society and power structure that is more interested in keeping things the way they are rather than innovating and trying to change everything.
The version I've heard is that he was afraid of rampant unemployment in the glassmaking industry.
The car/oil industry of today is very much the same.
The line that I remembered from this video is more :
"Once the Germans get involved, things go downhill vey fast". 🤣🤣
That sure holds true onward ! (WW1, WW2, 2015 & Merkel's gift to Europe, ...WW3..)
The story isn’t true : unbreakable glass was produced indeed. More probably it was a secret of fabrication you could not copy under pain of death.
@@jonathanburmeister1946 nah. Internal combustion is still wildly efficient.
Electric cars are coming very fast. Probably too fast.
Funnily enough i did a fair bit of research into this before I started my Channel. Tracks that transported carts similar to railways did exist in ancient times, theres a mine in Corinth, Greece with grooves dug into the ground to make pulling carts easier. After finishing my research i also came to the same conclusion that there were simply no need for any large scale railway in ancient Rome, slaves and mules did the job way cheaper.
At the same time, calling the ancient times un-industrialized is not how it was. As an example, An entire portion of the ancient city of Carthage was basically reserved for industry, where glass, wine production, smelting, carpentry were all constructed/made/carried out. Even in the celtic lands, which are sometimes wrongly seen as being less developed than the civilizatons to the east had dedicated industrial areas- this wasn't necessarily for iron working, most of which seems to have taken place in the local area, but more for bronze smelting. In fact the celts of Britain found their metal work in high demand in the roman empire, especially when it came to polished mirrors.
I think the more interesting question that we can ask knowing this is not so why didn't the ancient industrialized, but would they have industrialized to a similar level as we have done if they did not have cheap slave labor? An example of an almost over reliance on slave labour in the quote on quote modern age could be during the American civil war, the south of the united states, which almost entirely relied on slave labour, did not have many industrial sectors as they didn't really need them. In comparison, the north, which did not rely on slave labour, relied on industry to keep the costs down.
Still, great video and fantastic explanation!
great analysis!
kinda, the slaves weren't the only reason the south didn't industrialize on a very large scale. they could easily import cheap industrial goods from the uk or the north and had become culturally centered around the agrarian-driven aristocracy.
Sorry this isn't industrialization. Industrialization is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. What you describe isn't that. There is a difference between having industry and being a industrialized society
@@InfernosReaper It was also because much of the South was too hot to work in factories before Air Conditioning, so they couldn't really industrialize even if they wanted to until air conditioning was invented and implemented.
@@wires-sl7gs yea, that definitely didn't help things. coincidentally, that's part of why they lost(in addition to the lack of industrialization, facing wave after wave of immigrant conscripts, and generally incompetent leadership):
They moved the capital to a state that wasn't as how, but was far less centralized, which pretty much crippled the war effort for 2/3 of the rebellion
"No one really cared to make the work of the slaves any easier"
Look into how many children were crippled in the first factory build by Richard Arkwright and you'll realise the ease of the work isn't a priority, it's about increasing productivity and reducing skill requirements.
19th century abolitionists often talked of getting rid of wage slavery after they had gotten rid of chattel slavery.
@@jasonkinzie8835and we still haven't really even done that.
@cvrator I know. Our problem is that Communism gave the idea that getting rid of wage slavery involves replacing it with state slavery. I think it is entirely possible to do away with both forms.
any form of government can be successful with a culture of low corruption and abudance of talent and resources
Actually, the use of iron rather than steel isn't all that much of a hindrance. Pretty much all steam engines and railways built prior to about 1850 were built primarily of iron. True, it's not as strong as later steel, but it would certainly be up to the job in the early stages.
The two real hindrances are the lack of wrought iron, iron that's been forged and worked to harden it, as opposed to cast iron that is just poured into a mold and is generally much more brittle, especially under tension (granted, under compression, that is when load forces are pressing inward on the piece rather than trying to pull it apart, the only thing better than cast iron is stone), and the Roman's inability to mass produce iron; the primitive bloomery furnaces available to the Romans simply couldn't keep up with industrial level demand. It wouldn't be until the invention of the Puddling Furnace that iron could be produced in massive enough quantities to bring the price down to make large-scale mechanical engineering like steam engines viable. Actually, the Romans could have gotten puddling furnace technology as it had been invented first by the Han Dynasty of China as early as the 1st Century AD, but for whatever reason the technology didn't catch on in Europe until it was rediscovered by the British in the 1700's.
technically Europe achieved basically the same level of steel quality and production of Han China with their ordinary large blast furnaces by the late 13th century. By the late 14th century steel production in Europe was largely on par, still 1300 years from Han to that
As soon as you forge iron with the help of coal, it becomes steel. There will always be inclusion of carbon in the steel this way, making it impossible for pre-modern forging to make iron objects.
Id say another real hinderance thats as, if not more, important was that there were little financial institutions to actually support this. even in medieval europe the guild-lord systems supported rudemwbtary tracks, and the establishment of more modern companies and banking in the 1600s and 1700, allowed for much larger planned projects that were not necessarily under the orders of the reigning power.
@@sandervdbrink84 well, there is a difference between just adding carbon to iron and doing it well with the wanted effects. it is a science. to much it could be brittle, if not even, it will warp and be not structurally sound, etc
@@midshipman8654 of course, but all I'm saying is that it's practically impossible not to have steel when forged with coal. Bad steel is also steel.
Literally been dreaming about how it would look when I found out that someone invented steam engines back then but didnot make anything from them
You mean like how the Chinese invented Gunpowder, but didn't see a Gun for another 300+ yrs? Yeah, that happened too.
they didn't though... that's just a toy that spins when you boil water, it doesn't have any of the key concepts of the industrial revolution style engines which only happened because of a scientific breakthrough. The key concepts are that temperature is a type of motion, hot gases are made of moving particles, and they release an insane amount of energy when they condense... the gas-phase transition, the carnot cycle, c'mon, what about those?
Most of the technology was used in secret to simulate magic or facilitate religious rituals, such as temple doors opening by magic when the priests lit a fire outside, vending machines that dispensed a measured amount of “holy” water for a coin, etc.
The problem is that the Romans had almost no mathematical much less scientific understanding of all these machineries. Rome didn’t even have the number 0 as a concept, it was a novel idea in Indian mathematics and algebra which was very very primitive math and very abstract not as applicable as today. When science is behind the engineering principles, it’s impossible to make grandiose machines.
Great video as always! Rome didn't have steam based industry, but they had massive factories and industrialization for other things. In particular, for bronze smelting and oil lamp manufacturing. I have some of the items made from this industry, and it is amazing how advanced the techniques were!
They also had factories mass producing lead curse tablets.
He should have spoken about the roman industrial mills in Barbegal in France perfect exemple of what they could accomplish and show they had all the knowledge to make industrial revolution happen.
Did it approach what Henry Ford did with the assembly line? Did he re-invent that?
@@longWriter Ford invented the moving assembly line,
Getting a fixed date for the invention of the assembly line is unlikely as the idea is relatively simple, you could argue something like washing and drying up is an assembly line
I wouldn’t really call what they had “factories” like we’d think of them. It was still very much the field of artisans. What you’re looking at is the work of skilled artisans who’ve honed their craft over generations. We don’t really get factories in the west until the early modern era.
Actually, the Romans knew railroad tracks (of sorts). The Greek had been using them for quite some time to transport ships over the Isthmus of Corinth (they built the Corinth Canal abour 130 years ago basically for the same purpose). The Greek had also known and used primitive steam engines, as childrens' toys. If they had invented the piston, they could have started an industrial revolution around 500 bc.
Not to mention that steam tractors exist and don't require rails.
Eh, an inclined plane canal isn’t really a railroad. We have those today and nobody’s ever considered them a railroad.
Wouldn’t have worked without steel.
each innovation in the chain of industrialization required not merely the discovery of the principle, but also the design and an economically viable use-case to all line up in order to have impact. The steam engine is an excellent example of this problem. Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion - the core function of a steam-engine - go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced - the aeolipile - had no practical use - it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation).
Via Wikipedia, an illustration of the ancient aeolipile, an early use of steam to create reciprocal motion. Apart from the use of steam pressure, the aeolipile shares very little in common with practical steam engine designs and the need to continually refill and heat the water reservoir would have limited its utility in any case.
So what was needed was not merely the idea of using steam, but also a design which could actually function in a specific use case. In practice that meant both a design that was far more efficient (though still wildly inefficient) and a use case that could tolerate the inevitable inadequacies of the 1.0 version of the device
That wouldn't happen largely because of the technological context of the time. Basically, the various technologies/scientific advances that made steam engines _possible_ weren't available at the time... meaning that you couldn't make the materials in the required quantities necessary to make an industrial revolution possible.
The fact is that Rome itself had certain advancements were still behind in many tech require to industralize even when compared to the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages werent some backward dark ages. There were still many technological advances made in both warfare and agriculture that made future innovations possible.
THANK YOU.
It drives me up the wall when people think of the mediaeval period as a barbarian time period in Europe where all thought beyond "hur dur push sharp stick into man in front of me" stopped for a thousand years.
Absolutely. This myth of the middle ages being a time of cultural stagnation is really annoying.
Yeah, I'm really disappointed with this video. He plays into the whole 19th myth of the dark ages following the loss of the poorer half the the empire.
@@Spoonishpls If not for that last Byzantine-Sassanid war weakening them to the degree it did at just the wrong time, it's unfathomable how much they could have grown with the Arabs as competition to egg them on.
@@odinfromcentr2 I mean, there was a regression initially as barbarians who knew very little of how to actually properly run a country/"industrialise", as they were nomad populations
But later things quickly improved and they went beyond what the Romans did
The feudal system was a problem though that has created many more
0:07 That's literally me.
it's kinda funny how the concept of the steam engine leads straight to trains/train tracks when all you need are good wheels roads and a method of steering for transportation
on the other hand stationary steam engines could process anything from grain, olives and grapes to water pumps, most early industrial machines didn't run on electricity but literally by connecting to a drive shaft from the engine with a belt.
so basically anything that the early industrial era was making could be done in Rome
yeah, not sure why the video creator immediately went to trains, when the other applications are far more immediate uses for the technology and were historically done *before* trains were a thing
@@InfernosReaper Correct, the very first steam engines were used to drain water from mine shafts (mine flooding was a constant issue) and drive millstones. I think somebody even experimented with forced ventilation by means of giant church-organ-like bellows.
Im going to guess most people dont have a lot of experience in the industrial sector
That was my thinking. If they made steam engines it would of been for water pumps or mills or many of the other things that stationary steam engines were used for before being put into locomotives
@@InfernosReaper yeah i was thinking that boats would be more realistic
Both Roman and Egyptian cultures were extremely conservative in the fact that they resisted change at almost every opportunity which explains why they lasted so long as. well as why they fell apart when they did.
Lack of change does that. It provides amazing stability at the cost of adaptability and innovation. The firm rod breaks over time as outside pressures forced to innovate due to hardship comes knocking at your doors.
Ultimately, collapses are a natural and vital part of progress and innovation as little pushes adaptability like desperation and chaos.
2:24 As far as I know (which to be fair isn't much), the iron they had back then was very carbon rich and closer to cast iron than to regular iron as we know it today because of the extraction method. So to get steel, the would've had to reduce the carbon content instead of increasing it.
They did make steel though.
I believe so (although again, to today's standards, it would've been high carbon steel). The technique is rather easy: heat up the cast iron until it sparks. The sparks are actually carbon from the cast iron burning and leaving the now steel.
Great video man. Love your content. Minor correction, Rome, at this time, actually had a fairly impressive banking system. In fact, the first case of quantitative easing occurred in Rome around 30 AD. They were a truly impressive power especially at their time
Rome also lasted for many centuries and had access to steel. His video is full of major factual errors.
Really? Boring video to me.
@@Transilvanian90the steel wasnt very strong however. It was full of impurities and not fit for a full scale Industrial Revolution. They probably needed at least 150 years to begin in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution
The driving invention behind the train wasn't just the steam engine, but also the track. Usually invention doesn't come out of nowhere, but is rather an incremental improvement on previous ideas. Sometimes we get lucky and the increment revolutionizes the concept completely.
The train track was invited in the late medieval period (if Im not mistaken) to facilitate transport of minerals from Mines and Quarries down to the Wharfs.
For example there's one in Newcastle.
These tracks were built entirely from wood and would use gravity to bring the ore down the mountain. Afterwards Oxen would pull up the empty cart back up to the mine.
This was far more efficient than a regular dirt road.
So when an engine was invented, somebody had the idea to adapt it to this pre-existing concept for longer lever hauls.
I'm not aware of the Romans using something similar.
You wouldn't need infrastructure for static machine power, like replacing manual or animal powered mills with steam mills.
Romans did have gigantic water mills, but water mills require rivers, iron steam mills could be built anywhere.
Also, if they could power their ships with steam wheels that would be neat for trade, at least for inner sea within the Mediterranean.
Would not be anything civilization breaking, but would be useful possibly, perhaps it by itself could perhaps inspire other things, among many other things, perhaps the very revolution in metallurgy that Romen needed to further it, sooner or later.
Eh, Roman ships were still a long way below later post-medieval constructions, they didn't really need to add steam to the mix
@@Molochors long way below because the massive difference of design and development centered on sails, but in this scenario, they would jump over the sails problem
Yes, I came into the comments to say much the same. There's a bit of a conflation of stream engines and locomotives here. Static stream engines were used to great effect in industrial revolution Britain before the invention of the locomotive, predominantly in factories, mills and mines.
@@neutralfellow9736 "they would jump over the sails problem"
What "problem"? And can you explain to me how the first Steam engines, and not their 50+ year successor improvements, can be strong enough to overcome the performance (let alone fuel efficiency) of using sails?
Imagine for one second romans had railroads. They could ship legions to one side of Europe to the other in hours rather than weeks. I would imagine that German tribes would come to know the steam train classic whistle sound as a noise of death and war.
Or a noise of trade if the barbarians behaved themselves and became good little Romans.
@beam gigachad Ancient Transportation with Modern Weapons is less interesting. Imagine trying to fire a nuclear missile from the back of a horse?
i still think the lack of financial institutions is a MASSIVELY underrespected reason though. before earupe went through its industrial age it had already gone through the development of many structurally financial FINANCIAL revolutions such as the foundings of more or less modern banking, notes, and fractional reserve banking, as well as the use of joint stock companies and home morgages, which made finances MUCH more liquid and effectively used. as well as some societal concepts like yeomenry and others.
I really think people forget the fundemental societal abd institutional bases that actually allowed the industrial revolution to happen when and where it did instead of somewhere like 10th century china, who had much of the power and resources of 1st century rome.
Hero of Alexandria is one of my favourite historical figures, and a much-underrated inventor. As will as inventing the steam engine in the second century AD (it was known as the Aeolipile), he also created the first known vending machine, which dispensed an exact amount of holy water when you put a coin on the right place. I often wonder how history would have progressed if his technology became more widespread.
'If only they had some place where they could read all the best news and stories in buisness, finance and technology'
Cries in the charred remains of the library of Alexandria
But that was in one spot and while it had plenty of old writings it was not that easy to get the latest stories. You would need a printing press to get all that information everywhere else and for everyone to read in their own homes and villas.
It may shock you but that was not the only library in the Roman world.
It may shock you but it never truly burned down. The burning of the library of Alexandria is a myth.
Considering that the byzantine empire never tried anything remotely in that direction its clear that the romans wouldnt have industrialized until a rival did so too. In fact rome only really developed during its wars against carthage. Beyond that they were basically just a mediterranian mongol empire. Most countries generally only develop out of a need, not a desire because any technological progress can threaten the ruling class. The only exception to this would be if the merchant class holds the most power because they will always need to be innovative in order to stay ahead of potential competitors.
and thats why europe was the first to industrialize because you had multiple difference forces by the 15th century all fighting. you had the pope vs king vs nobles vs middle class you get the picture. all this competition between kingdoms and different parts within the kingdoms meant innovation was encouaged immensely
really thats the reason (as many problems as it has) that capitalism's spread caused a insane amount of technological innovations in such a short amount of time.
The mongols killed up to 90% of the population of the areas they captured.
the romans didnt, as far as i am aware, go to quite such extremes.
@@Apokalypse456 Kill? No. They *did* put massive numbers in chains and drag them off to Rome's slave markets though.
@@Apokalypse456 the genocide it the Carthaginians the Jews and the Gauls
@@Apokalypse456 I am talking about the expansion rate, not the death toll. Give me one reason why I should care about people who died on the other side of the world several hundred years ago.
In other words, many medieval inventions were necessary before industrialization was possible. The middle ages saw advancements in steel making, finance, and even the abolition of slavery.
Abolition? ehhh, more like transition as feudalism/serfdom is almost slavery
Also algebra and distillation
Well the ancient World definitly had the the Knowhow to build proper steam power, but with slaves, hiw needs steam power
"this is the Roman empire"
"dear God"
"they're industrialized"
*"no"*
Question, can i keep the roman empire?
@@nicolasdolenc1404 *Hands over Western Rome*
Viewers: How many AltHistory scenarios do you wanna go through?
SideQuest: *Yes*
Hmm, viewers are questioning the basic premise of a channel named "SideQuest"?
“As with many things in life, when the Germans got involved things went down hill fast.” Ouch!
We all hate premier notifications. Just publish it! We like the content!
Watch the spiffing brits video
@Luqman's Malaysia i believe it's because this way lots of people will watch the video as soon as it actually releases, which makes youtube much more likely to recommend the video to non-subscribers, for example. It is extremely annoying for everyone else, though
Very interesting video. The section wherein you discuss the lack of railways and infrastructure reminds me of the fact that railroad tracks were invented and used long before (c. 1700) the locomotive was invented.
In northern england, coal was transported from hills to rivers using horse-drawn waggons running on wooden rails, making the steam train a natural progression.
Early streetcars were pulled by horses as well, before electric motors were developed! The first streetcar service in the UK started in 1807. Rails are useful to increase the load animals can pull even before you have other sources of power.
obscure topics, lively way of presentation, occasional humour & a wide range of words. all what I love!
If the video isn't getting the traction your expecting you might want to re-upload without the premier. The premier system on UA-cam has a habit of not recommending videos properly.
One of my favorite "What if's" just so happens to be this. and you were able to provide some insight into it. Great job Side Quest. Your a great channel.
A steam engine wouldn't necessarily need to be used for a train. There are plenty of applications that steam engines were used for including in manufacturing processes, sawmills, agriculture, or really anywhere something that was relatively stationary needed force added to it. They could have used them for water pumps to limit some of the need for elaborate aqueducts. It would have been fascinating to see the ways they could have made use of it.
I recently rewatched Burke's Connections, and the chain of events and inventions leading to efficient steam engines that the show highligted was far longer than you would think. Steam engines and various pumps existed for very long before Watt's incremental improvement came along and tipped the balance to make steam power useful almost everywhere.
I absolutely love the many small references you have included in your videos to WSB. We regards appreciate it very much.
Thank you for answering Questions that I’ve never thought to ask
I'm glad this channel is finally getting the attention it deserves
When you realize that the Roman Empire didn’t end till 1453 when Columbus was only 2 years old. Had the 4th crusade not occurred who knows what could’ve happened.
You are opening a can of worms. Various years can be defended as the date of the Fall of Rome. They range from political conflicts between the Optimates and Populates during the second century BCE (If you asked Seneca), when rivals openly trampled the Rule of Law to maintain their hold on power to 1806 CE, when Napoleon forced the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrians finally stopped casting manhole covers with the sigil of the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR).
@⌘ Hyperborean Bard ⌘ not holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. The amount of mental gymnastics you have to perform to believe your stance is Olympian level
Probably not much independently. The Ottomans were that much of a military power house.
However had the 4th Crusade not happen the the East would have been a lot more receptive to reunion with the West. We wouldn't have the polarizing Council of Florence, and many Western States could have joined in defense of the Empire.
This is the type of content I love. Amazing dinner party conversation starter.
great job sidequest, keep it up
Another episode of one of my favorite history video producers.
That`s an incredible sponsor transition
Upload more often. I’m begging you lol…I love your channel and style
Congrats on 420k subs! A truly marvelous milestone
I have to tell you something: once the content was done and the ad started rolling I closed the video and hopped to the next one. Then a couple of videos later I began to think of how warm, cozy your animation and delivery are. I actually empathized with the character. I felt bad for skipping the ad. Because you animated it and the character was presenting to me like a thespian. So I came back and watched the end. Thanks for being a nice, genuine person presenting interesting and informative topics for free online!
You do know of course, that the industrial revolution didn't start with steel.
They relied on good old iron.
Mass production of steel didn't occur till the 1850's.
The industrial revolution started about a century earlier.
A steam engine isn't a train. It just powers one. There are many many many other thing that you could do with a steam engine, like running a mill.
Very good video. It actually explains what were the conditions for a industrial revolution later in Europe.
Rome deffinately had steel Gladius, Spatha, and Roman Lorcia Segmentata were found made of steel.
Great video! Another interesting aspect that slowed progress in Rome has been talked about by the great Roman history channel Toldinstone. There was a social perception at the time that inventing and tinkering was a common folk or even slave activity to do, the higher class looked down on it. This would've had the effect that even when something was invented that could make life in Rome better it often wouldn't be taken seriously or accepted, which we seem to see in the examples we do have.
"There was a social perception at the time that inventing and tinkering was a common folk or even slave activity to do, the higher class looked down on it."
Are you implying that the English nobility had a different outlook on that?
@@roadent217 Yes, post-enlightenment. After the cultural shifts in Tuscany which helped to trigger the renaissance, the concept of artist and inventor both took on a whole new image in the culture of the nobility, effectively elevating them from what used to be "peasants providing their rightful lords" to pseudo-celebrities.
In the early 1700s England, this cultural acceptance of arts/sciences being at an all-time high coupled with a pressing need for more efficient resource gathering triggers the industrial revolution. It also helps when much of the nobility is effectively powerless (3rd sons, branch families, so on) and the sudden ability to invest in potential gadgetry to make them fabulously wealthy gives the lower nobility leverage they hadn't had.
Culture is just as important as wealth and knowledge in the scheme of impressive advancement. "The Industrial Revolution" required the perfect level of all three.
The producers seem to have forgotten the original use for steam engines was for pumping water out of mines. No tracks needed. This allowed mines to be deeper. The steam engine was also to lift ores and crews up and down in mines. These early engines were made out of iron. Nowhere the investment needed than for a railroad. This is how Britain got its start in the industrial revolution.
Always great!
The Roman Empire did not end with the west and I'm dying on this hill.
The true Roman Empire ended when they moved the capital from Rome and i'm dying on this hill
Is a Roman Empire without Rome really the Roman Empire anymore?
I'd go further to say that Ancient Greece never died.
@@lordgemini2376 well the romans agree that rome was not as important as the empire as a whole
Two hills down, five to go
Someone should make a Roman steampunk franchise of some sort lol
Already happened. There is a novel about alternate history where the Roman empire did not collapsed because of some I ovations.
The emperors produced steam tanks as a hobby, Europe was fully under control and they even made contact with the people of America - unfortunately were they way more advanced and even more bloodthirsty.
@@molybdaen11 how is it called?
@@wolfy1398 It was long ago and I needed some time to find it:
The germanicus trilogy from Kirk Mitchel.
First one should be „Procurator”.
@@molybdaen11 thank you so very much
4:01 Rome did have banks, Livy documents them as early as 310 BC. Insurance also existed in some forms, particularly maritime insurance as the voyages were expensive and the ships were usually used as collateral.
Lovely info ! Tnx!
I think besides the factors you mentioned lack of (on a technology level) competition with other powers was another prohibiting factor
It’s always a good day when a SideQuest video drops
thanks for having subtitles btw
I gather that you are doing SideQuest as a SideGig, not as your main income. I appreciate you put the sponsor at the end of the video .... but ofc understand if you can't continue. Thanks for the great content!
The main thing I love about this guy is that he never self-flagellates over Britain's or the West's past. He's actually unabashedly proud of it. It's refreshing AF.
PS. And you can never go wrong with dry Pommie humour.
This. Rule Britannia!
I love your videos! Short yet full of information. I would enjoy them if they were longer too!
Enjoying these interesting side quests 😁👍
Love you! Thanks!
There were insurances companies and banks in Rome. It’s just often unheard of.
This looks interesting 🤔
I feel this all just confirms MY hypothesis: if the Old World had possessed popcorn as a grain, civilization as we know it wouldn't have happened! Think about it: if you have popcorn as a principle grain, you don't need gristmills....
😉
Very good vid. Wish it went a bit longer
Rome's failure to industrialize ala-Britain during the late 1700's has a multifaceted answer which this video touch upon one of them: lack of capital and risk venture investors to make it viable. Toldinstone (another YT channel) adds more reasons as to why it didn't happened, namely that:
1) "Technology" as viewed in the Roman perspective is 50% just for funsies and 50% something POOR people practice.
2) The Roman educational system is not designed to create engineers. It is heavily based on logic and oration which is great for anyone practicing to be a lawyer or politician but not for engineers. It is related to the first problem about it (mechanics) being perceived as something poor people learn which doesn't mesh well with the Roman elite.
3) Their lack of a middle class to kickstart the investment of more labor intensive goods. Without a potential market that has the money to pay for their upcoming products, nobody would dare invest on it to make it viable...
Fascinating topic. Suffice it to say that the world would be unrecognizable. And we wouldn't even be here talking about it, since the disruptions in our own genealogy would have meant that we would never have been born. Others would have, but they would not be us.
Fantastic as usual
That has to be one of the best transition-to-sponsors on UA-cam
I've long wondered: water wheels seem to be something we mostly associate with Northern Europe. I'm not sure if there weren't any in Italy or if you just never see pictures of them because....
They even had one of the most amazing water mills of the Iron age.
(Barbegal mill)
Do some about pet history or gun history those are always dope 👌
Roman’s and Carthaginians would chop pets in half
@@blushdog99 Did you see this from oversimplified too
Wonderful video as usual!
But how is the music playing in the background called?
this guy is my favourite youtube video narrator
Because of cheap slave labour. And an emperor suppressing innovation which might disrupt the market.
Slave labour wasn't always cheap. Depending on how long it was since the last major foreign conquest, slaves could be pretty expensive
They also had machienes powered by water.
Even if you could not expect railroads without steel, using steam engines to pump ground water from mines or helping with manufacturing would have been possible with the invention of the piston.
They had no mines that required water pumping
Imagining Roman Empire in the Industrial Revolution age is mind-blowing. Fantastic setting for fictional series or video games.
Good transition to the sponsor, congrats!
Good video though a thing that I'd point out is that it's best to be careful when talking about how near such and such society was to industrialising because it assumes that industrialisation is inevitable once certain technologies are invented or inventable, which just isn't true. It's over generalisation from a tiny (i.e. n=1) dataset. If the Romans had eventually developed to some of the technologies that were available in the early 19th century, then maybe they would have industrialised, but maybe not. For example, blast furnaces which could melt iron and produce higher carbon steels existed in China from the 4th century onwards and the later Tang Dynasty certainly had the centralised authority and even political will to push for new technologies but they didn't have an industrial revolution. I'd also point out that the general narrative of "technology completely disappeared in the middle ages" is also wrong. Many Roman technologies (including higher carbon steels) persisted long into the early middle ages and many didn't disappear at all, it's just that without the centralised infrastructure of the Roman empire these technologies either couldn't spread or were too expensive to implement on a wide scale.
One of the lesser known evils of slavery is the slowing of progress
1:01 - Two thumbs up for contemporary usage of slang. 👍👍
This video reminded me of an old fanfic I wrote long ago (and never published tho, I was too young) that was basically steampunk Asterix from the Roman perspective.
so basically, Rome never was able to industrialize because they had slaves and never figured out steel?
Next: Why didn't dinosaurs drive cars
They did.
Dino's were really into having a green economy though.
All their technology was bio degradable. So much so that there are no traces left.
@@bugwar5545 After all this time, nothing would be left even if they had a massive industry.
Can’t wait for this
The Roman Empire survived though, until 1453, which is only a few centuries from the Industrial Revolution which did happen, and they continued to make steam engines etc., but the inventions remained, for all that time, merely tricks and curiosities to please the emperor and impress diplomats.
This chanel has great potential!
bc they were too busy tearing themselves apart
Good video!
The big thing that held them back was the enormous amount of cheap slave labor. They didnt need machines if they had so many slaves. And Ceasar alone enslaved over a million Gauls. So they had LOTS of slaves.
You are aware that steam tractors existed, right?
The locomotive isn't the only use for a steam engine. The first uses of steam engines was in the textile industry - something the Romans definitely would have been able to do.
The bigger issue was, as you stated, that there were not limited-liability corporations to collect vast sums for serious investment. (Something addressed in the alternate history/time travel story "Lest Darkness Fall".) This is why the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution went so well together.
Very interesting video