Why Didn't the Roman Empire Industrialize? | Sidequest | History Teacher Reacts

The Romans were the most technologically advanced civilization of the ancient world. Why didn't they have an industrial revolution then? Were they close? Sidequest gives their take, and Mr. Terry gives his!
Original Video: • Why Didn't the Roman E...
Links:
Gaming channel: / mrterrygaming
Discord - / discord
Twitter: / mrterryhistory
Twitch: / mrterryhistory
Tik Tok: / mrterryhistory
Instagram: / mrterryhistory
Facebook - / mr-terry-history-10913...
TeeSpring - mr-terry-histo...
Patreon - / mrterry
Streamlabs - streamlabs.com...
PayPal - paypal.me/mrte...
For all business inquiries: [e-mail]

[@MrTerry]

What would the world look like today if the Industrial Revolution began in Ancient Rome?

[@LostMexican]

Unimaginable

[@stargazer-elite]

We would likely be far more advanced than we are now HOWEVER history would be EXTREMELY different we would likely have colonized the moon and Mars by now but many nations that exist today would likely not exist assuming this advancement saved the Roman empire of course

[@ChatGPT_ChatbotTest]

Based

[@mobbofmobs8937]

If the ultra violent Romans managed to industrialized I imagine that they would have used it to further conquer territory and expand well bound what was reasonable. Then ww1 probably would have been a civil war with Rome. I also wouldn't be surprised if f that version of WW2 would have had a few more atomic bombs go off than ours simply because the way Roman thinking works. Through it is possible that the changes Christianity was making would have caused changes by then.

[@ChatGPT_ChatbotTest]

@@mobbofmobs8937 Why does there have to be a WW1 and 2 equivalent? Why couldn't there just be peace or smaller wars?

[@spartandud3]

I tend not be a fan of reaction videos but I enjoy yours because you add to the discussion rather than just looking shocked and going "No way..."

[@ClericOfPholtus]

Most Reaction content is the side line characters in your average Shonen Anime lol 'Woa!' 'My gosh!' 'This is amazing!'

[@Merennulli]

Definitely agree. I've only seen a few that added something of value, which is the only reason I'll re-watch content with someone else talking over it. The only ones I've found other than Mr. Terry are T. Folse Nuclear (nuclear engineering knowledge), and The Charismatic Voice (vocal coach explaining how singers construct their sound and breaking down what makes certain performances work). There was a fourth who I sadly lost track of that explained rap when I was trying to understand the musical aspects of Epic Rap Battles of History.

[@MrTerry]

Thank you so much!

[@davepx1]

@@MrTerry I appreciated the informed and constructive critical treatment too, a refreshing change from the standard "Hey, wow!" or "These guys are d-u-m-b!". Keep up the good work!

[@IulianYT]

Regarding "what if they industrialized" - I remember "first Punic war", (as related by oversimplified) and I kind of saw the stubbornness and motivation of Romans, fail, try again, fail, try again and so on. So if they had the necessity to industrialize, I think they would have found eventually how to make steel. I am not sure if the process of industrialization would be as fast as actual industrial revolution, after all - there was still a lot of theoretical work in the meantime, ways to produce (and use) electricity were invented also later in the history. But, if they would have managed it - they could have survived to this day, as an empire, with railways the communication between different provinces would have been eventually much faster and there wouldn't be necessity to split, also railways could be used to faster deploy troops, so that to detour external threats. And eventually they could have reach similar to current development level let's say in the years 1200-1300, and where would have the civilization go in the remaining centuries - it is sci-fi.

[@MrTerry]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[@caleblarsen5490]

Side quest is one of the greatest history channels on KZbin. Please do more from them. I think you'll like their stuff.

[@MrTerry]

This was my first time watching them. This video has been pretty popular, so I think I’ll need to return shortly!

[@Nostripe361]

I remember another thing I heard was that Romans were not a fan of radical new ideas or tech. They preferred traditional stuff and slow improvements implemented over long time They would definitely not like the fact that industrialization would strengthen the lower classes and give a lot of plebeians and slaves a lot of free time to ponder their position and why they have to serve the Roman elite

[@MrTerry]

Your second paragraph is definitely a factor when it comes to innovation in history.

[@Seriously_Unserious]

Whoever said that was categorically WRONG. Rome was VERY fond of innovation. When pressured by the Carthaginians, they captured or hired foreign sailors and captains to train the Romans in how to be great seamen, and INNOVATED to become the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean. When Rome needed water to quench the thirst of large, urban populations, they INNOVATED and developed a system of aqueducts to bring water to the cities. When they found disease and filth became a problem in their big cities, they innovated sewage systems to safely move that filth out of the cities. When Rome was sacked by the Gauls, they innovated their military strategies to better defend themselves, and get their stolen treasury back. When their system of government didn't serve them adequately, they changed it. Rome started as a Kingdom, ruled by, you guessed it, a KING. Then they reformed when a monarchy didn't serve them into the Roman Republic, ruled by an elected Senate. Then, when that system no longer worked, they adapted again, forming the Roman Empire that existed until the fall of the civilization. Rome was very much ready to embrace new ideas to adapt to both external and internal threats.

[@davepx1]

Good point: I think such concerns are pretty universal in pre-industrial societies, among the rulers and the ruled. Industrialisation may seem a no-brainer to us with 2-3 times pre-modern lifespan, vastly higher average incomes and lifestyle opportunities unimaginable in the past, but its implications are actually horrific for ancient patrician and plebeian alike, ripping the existing social, cultural and institutional order apart. Make no mistake, I prefer my 70-80 years of life to their 25-30, but I can see why societies from ancient Rome to early modern China (or even 18th-century England) might recoil in horror at the prospect of a world that to them would seem a descent into madness. Perhaps it is, but crazed god-emperors, bloody arena "entertainments" and enslavement of millions aren't indicative of a healthy society either.

[@whiskeythedog578]

Besides the fact that humans dont like to change unless we have to, I think printing was a major contributor. And better, faster and more reliable ways of communicating ideas, so the accumulated knowledge over time, was more accessible for those so inclined, without having to reinvent everything every time.

[@popcat1787]

Preventing people from saying first

[@davestylehenry]

First

[@emtheslav2295]

The hero we don’t deserve, but the one we needed 🫡

[@ClericOfPholtus]

You underestimate the deceitful nature of internet denizens

[@-----REDACTED-----]

first

[@Nicarand]

People still do that?

[@Nicarand]

Man, this is a video that really needed your added commentary. I feel like that channel in particular has a pretty weird understanding of history sometimes or at least presents it in a strange way.

[@MrTerry]

Thanks for watching. Glad I could help!

[@PetruRatiu]

I recently saw a tweet explaining how in the Philippines appliance stores don't stock dishwashers, since people who afford them usually hire maids instead.

[@joelthomastr]

I always enjoy watching you but you really shined in this one, very informative

[@facedeer]

One thing that I often think is overlooked in these sorts of what-if scenarios is that industrialization didn't have to follow exactly the same path that Britain took, there are other ways that you could get a similar sort of "large factories and specialized mass production" pattern. There's a Roman archaeological site called the Barbegal aqueduct and mills where they had a "factory" powered by a series of water wheels fed through an aqueduct, for example. Britain didn't have the geography to provide large-scale hydro power but there were places in the Roman empire well suited to that, perhaps they'd end up going that route instead of the steam engine approach the British went.

[@DenUitvreter]

The Dutch Republic industrialized ship building with the invention of the wind powered saw mill, through a crank, it just didn't make it to an industrial revolution on the scale of 2 centuries later.

[@davepx1]

Water-power was actually huge in the first phase of Britain's industrial revolution too: there are lots of good strong rivers nearer the uplands, the island being reasonably rugged and notoriously wet. Even in the cotton textile sector that was at the forefront of manufacture, steam only became dominant in the 19th century, particularly from c.1820: most coal went into iron production and domestic heating as late as 1850. And Rome too had Britannia and its coal resources, had it chosen to exploit them, along with all of Italy's fast-flowing rivers that became so newsworthy in 1943-44: you're right that the Empire didn't have to be coal-led, but its problems were in any case societal and economy-wide rather than rooted in motive power.

[@davepx1]

​@@DenUitvreter "Why didn't the Dutch have the first industrial revolution?" is indeed a far more interesting question than speculations about Rome, China, India or any of the other putative (and absurd) candidates. Holland at least had the prosperity to plough into manufacture (a good part indeed helping to finance England's industrialisation), and despite its smaller domestic market it too enjoyed ready access to consumers across north-western Europe and beyond, as well as to nearby territories' raw materials. My theory (and at this stage it's just a theory) is that empire got in the way as the VOC's exploits drew in Dutch investment capital and manpower (many of the men never to return, like the ships that ended their days in inter-Asian trade). Britain with 4-5 times the United Provinces' population could sustain such an effort with plenty left over as agricultural productivity rose in 1650-1850 (thanks largely to innovations borrowed from Dutch counterparts), but the Netherlands had less to spare. The problem with such a model is why did Dutch incomes and urbanisation stagnate over those two centuries while England's more than doubled? If labour had been in short supply, wages should have risen to procure more workers, thereby expanding the home market and providing an incentive for labour-saving innovation. 1672 evidently cast a long shadow, but there's something more I've yet to incorporate.

[@mrdrfez]

Most of Britain was under Roman rule for almost 400 years. And the Romans did conduct extensive mining operations (including coal mining) in Britain. But they might not have much incentive to industrialize due to the abundance of cheap slave labor.

[@ivanmp3e48]

Aparently slaves werent cheap as the owner still needed to pay to mantain them plus whatever they cost was. A device that could replace a few slaves would still be benefitial

[@ChrisinOSMS]

Dang, Mr. Terry made me think about the Roman Empire directly today.

[@leonvoelker7639]

The romans did have steel. Many tools and weapons had a steel surface through surface carborisation and pieces steel often were added through fire welding to make the edges of weapons and tools, which could be heat-treated by quenching to harden them. Though they couldn't really produce the quanteties of steel in larger pieces needed for the things in the video like he explained, but they probably could have figured it out after some time. In later roman eras their swords are monosteel of a low grade and with some having a highcarbon tip or other high quality gladii found are medium/highcarbon. One other thing that is wrong is that rome didn't have banks. They did have a (private) banking system up to the third century, which was very sophisticated for the time and wasn't matched untill much later. The roman "bankers" were called argentarii.

[@Merennulli]

One of the large factors is the leisure time of the wealthy elite, as painful as that is to give credit to. We didn't get Leibniz and Newton without the stable environment that provided time to invest in leisure and seek things that weren't immediately profitable. Leibniz was the son of a lawyer, Newton was the nephew of an influential minister, and those connections enabled them to live a life where they could think about such things, publish them and share them with other similarly wealthy intellectuals and have their contributions acknowledged. You have that in Roman times, but you don't have as high of concentration of wealth in so many people as you do over Europe. Rome was too efficient of a hierarchy, particularly when the Emperor was actively worshiped, to be efficient at gaining the knowledge needed for the industrial revolution to spark. The wealthy of the Roman Empire weren't exclusively caught up in the power struggles, with Pliny the Elder being a great example, but you had fewer of them than you have across all of Europe in the following centuries. I do see a Rome that never fell eventually getting its industrial revolution, just not nearly as fast as Europe did after it fell.

[@Nostripe361]

Another big problem is that industrialization would be to the determent to the elite. They had all their money and power from land and slaves so they saw no reason to “waste” resources to make something their slaves are already able to do. Also would provide the most benefit to people who didn’t have resources who could now have the power to compete with established power.

[@MrTerry]

Thanks for sharing!

[@DERP_Squad]

One major benefit the UK had for industrialisation was the high energy content and good burning qualities of the anthracite coal found in a lot of the UK.

[@jimnicholas7334]

Talking about economics and governments is talking around the core issue which is Rome's society and culture would've worked against it.

[@nineomite]

I find it hard to believe Rome could have industrialized with such widespread slavery. Free labour seems to undermine the economic case for industrialization - why make the capital investments required to, say, develop a steam engine when you can simply purchase more slaves?

[@Jump3RPictur3s]

I believe the main reason the industrialization of Roman Empire never came to be is the competitive nature of Romans themselves. There were not enough other inventions at that time that would benefit from industrialized upgrades, as such Rome had no use for it at that time. If Rome had no use, Romans had no use, and no use means no attempts. If they spent precious resources on industrializing anything unnecessarily for them, their enemies and rivals could use their achievements and find the reasons and goals and necessities to industrialize and that would give THEM the advantage over Rome. Rome was not about that. They'd happily let someone else waste time, money, people and reputation to industrialize first and then they would take it to the natural to them conclusion of stealing it and doing it better. Not the other way around. No advantage = no reason. No reason = no effort. No effort = no result. That is the Roman pipeline (which works without the "no"s too).

[@malone7655]

The wisest thought that is in everyone's minds today is to invest in different income flows that do not depend on the government, especially with the current economic crisis around the world. This is still a good time to invest in gold, silver and digital currencies (BTC, ETH.... stock,silver and gold)

[@rickybishop8388]

As a newbie you’ll need to invest in a company that is working towards sustainability,like that ofexpert Angela Mae McClain,and her abilities in handlinginvestments are top notch

[@AnthonyRusso93]

Per this rudimentary definition of industrialization could it not be said that the Incarnation of China contemporary to Rome was industrialized and they talk about Iron vs Steel cast iron actually has more carbon than steel which I would think should technically make it steel but no apparently not. The Chinese of the time would repeatedly remelt cast iron and stir the ever loving crap out of it till an appropriate about of the carbon was oxidized and floated away. Apparently this was just absolutely terrible for the lungs and overall bodily health of the workers converting cast iron into high quality steel.

[@willymassey8273]

Wise and wealthy people do not invest in digital currency.

[@paulyokoyama7162]

This would also explain why the US south was late to industrialize. It only happened after the the civil war and slavery ended.

[@tacitdionysus3220]

The original clip needed more emphasis on motivation. Britain converted to coal from timber because the latter was becoming scarcer. Coal mines close to population centres like London had flooding issues, so the incentive arises for machines to pump them out. Boats provide transport for coal to population centres, but that limits transport to navigable streams. Coal mines used tracks and rail carts to transport coal to outside the mine. Extending the concept created rail transport where rivers didn't exist. The steam engines developed for pumping were adapted to driving rail trains. And so on.

[@Sarge80]

The only question remains where did that number 300 years come from, that has to be a guestimation because in all the roman history ive read i have never come across a solid number like that.

[@davepx1]

It does seem nonsense. The eastern Empire had not just another 300 but nearly 1000 years, and got nowhere.

[@onliwankannoli]

Perhaps an even better question is why didn’t Byzantium industrialize? If Rome was supposedly only 300 years away from industrialization and the Eastern Empire lasted another 900 years. In all that time, fairly stable, surprising that they did not advance more technologically. But perhaps, again, there wasn’t the need to drive the technology, same as the long fairly stable Chinese civilization.

[@davepx1]

"You can't industrialise just because you want to" is a good way of putting it. And few wanted to: even Britain characteristically blundered into it 1500 years later as it came up against the limitations of the pre-industrial "organic economy". Resources are part of the problem, though these don't have to be in your own territory (think Lancashire's cotton supplies, or Britain's 18th-century import of Swedish iron to supplement its own): they just have to be accessible and available. The bigger hurdles (assuming you could get at the needed raw materials) are availability of labour for industry, and access (again not necessarily at home) to a mass market of customers with the disposable income to consume mass-produced manufactures on a scale sufficient to underpin self-sustaining industrial growth as more earners + higher productivity = more consumers + higher purchasing power. And nobody had those until the 18th century. Rome did have a labour shortage which might in theory have triggered investment on labour-saving technology, but it was partly self-inflicted: the classical age will never be a byword for freely-chosen honest toil, even if peasant cultivators and independent urban cratfsmen & labourers far outnumbered the slave minority, at least outside Italy. But Rome's answer to needing workers was the dumbest imaginable: more slaves, and more free manpower siphoned off into the army to add more territory and captives, and then to defend the resulting over-extended frontiers and maintain the associated brutal & economically backward social order. Instead of the high-wage economy of 18th-century England, Rome pursued a zero-wage economy for millions (thereby narrowing earning opportunities for millions more), limiting both its consumer base and incentives for the labour productivity gains needed to generate the surpluses for industrial investment & exchange. And underpinning all else was a pitiably unproductive agriculture, wonderful for olives & grapes but a bit rubbish for sustaining population growth to provide more workers and buyers. Grain doles and abundant shipwrecks may look like a booming economy with largesse to spare, but they actually indicate the scale of regional deficits, particularly in Italy (and above all in Latium) which was meant to be at the forefront rather than a parasitical laggard. So a Roman industrial revolution? There wasn't a hope in hell without dismantling the backward Empire and starting over with a decentralised contractual social order that might get there in a millennium or so, beginning in regions that faced the ocean rather than clustering around an attractive but economically limiting inland sea that was at risk of becoming a backwater even by the 17th century.

[@straightrippnable706]

8:05 "would it?" sez Mr. Terry I had just begun to think it through, As much as i like Sidequest and Sam O'Nella video Depends on how you define "outcompete" i think If youve got the rails and the steam, travelling 1000km would undoubtably be faster witg train but that's an investment. If youre "getting up and delivering a material or an object" 1000 km you need to feed and water your burden but you could expect to make that trip many times before there are 1000 kilometre of rail

[@IulianYT]

3:38 - wait a minute, but Roman Empire wasn't "just Italy", it controlled even parts of nowadays UK at its peak.

[@ghyslainabel]

They were in Britain, but there were not much more than military outposts. To have innovation, rapide innovation, a society needs a concentration of knowledge and wealth at the same place. As far as I know, there were no university hub in Britain at the time of the Roman Empire.

[@magnemoe1]

yes. and that spinning ball was an toy. First steam engines was very inefficient, Only relevant in coal mines to pump out water as coal was cheap at the mine. it used vacuum as over-pressure has the danger of exploding if not build correctly. And as you say the real effect of the industrial revolution was that investment in industry had an huge return so people reinvested in industry

[@florenmage]

Imagine a golden craft lands on the moon. A man with a horse hair helmet space suir walks out and plants a flag in the moon dust. "THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR A LEGONAIR ONE GIANT STEP FOR THE EMPIRE!!!..." XD

[@thomasciarlariello]

They have to of had industrialized to construct megaliths of how depictions of locomotives were mislabeled as "Battering Rams" or "Phallic Sculptures". Warsaw Pact had constructed "Tank Traps" of soft ground to stop NATO's armored aggression.

[@TheTrueAdept]

The core problem that I've discovered is that to get to genuine steam engines, you have to have the technological context (i.e. the sum of human knowledge and its applications) first... and to get to a genuine steam engine, you need roughly millennia of technological knowledge evolution in multiple fields. It's great if you have the theory, but it doesn't work if you can't put that theory into practice.

[@reluctantuser6971]

we'd probably have our flying cars by now.

[@marksmadhousemetaphysicalm2938]

300 years may be how long it took England to go from the equivalent of Roman TL to early Industrial TL…TL3 to TL4?

[@herrerasauro7429]

To me the question is absolutely pointless and preposterous because it misses one of the biggest points of the Industrial revolution: The tecnical innovations in production are enabled by the balance of power of a society and how it serves the upper rungs of said society. The Roman political organization was predicated on land and agricultural production, it may have been urbanized, but the centers economic output were the reason for the power. An industrial revolution would never happen in Rome as it only did in China, which in fact had even more resources, more population, more wealth, more technology and, specially, more lomgevity than Rome, after the toppling of millenia's old political system. The old political system was so powerful that it was able to weather the storm of it's neighbours industrialization and internal turmoil from before Rome up until the cusp of the XX century.

[@JKa244]

Imo people as property is a huge disincentive for transitioning to orphan crushing machines. Which was mentioned quite early - cheap labor

[@hakonsgaming535]

I wouldn't say this was a particularly insightful video, primarily because every objection he makes to roman industrialization also applies to pre industrial England, save one, that he didn't actually explore very far. The only real difference between the two situations was slavery, England more or less ended slavery in the early years of William the Conqueror's reign, and that seems to have been mostly a ploy to generate quick cash that ended up altering the entire future of the planet by accident. But even that doesn't entirely account for the difference in course. The real truth is that the world is random, chaos theory is right, just because something can happen doesn't mean it will happen, the romans had all the ingredients but no one thought to do it England had all the same ingredients that Rome did pre industrialization, and not really in that much greater abundance either, both had the mechanical precursors (water and wind mills, mechanical pumps, etc.) the difference is that someone had a good idea at the right time in England, and not in Rome. If 90% of what this video cited were insurmountable barriers to industrialization England would never have industrialized.

[@charliemurphy6457]

Because of lead water pipes? Guessing before the video starts

[@zesky6654]

The reason it didn't industrialize is the same reason we're not doing a 3rd industrial revolution right now. Why invest in increasing production when you can leverage slave labour for less money?

[@Merennulli]

In some respects we ARE seeing it right now, just with resistance. We have a system where people perceive they "can't survive" if they don't work (ironically while many others are saying no one will work if we have programs that help people survive), so they fight against the new wave of automation that very likely will fully replace human labor without creating new jobs like past changes have done. Our problem right now isn't the availability of labor but the societal addiction to it.

[@Bova-Fett]

@@MerennulliIts naive to think that the replacement of labor will lead to the rich just handing out money to the poor. If anything it empowers the rich to do what they want, and they want more money, so they will keep it out of the hands of the public.

[@Merennulli]

@@Bova-FettWhat is money if there is nothing to spend it on? The poor just exit the equation for the rich when machines replace labor. And without the need for labor, there is no need to make the poor do what they need. And coupled with that, the poor aren't just going to sit by while the wealthy live and they starve. We've seen throughout history how that plays out. Robot security is only going to get the wealthy so far. A society without a need for labor can't maintain wealth disparity because the underlying need that wealth disparity functions on ceases to exist. The only remaining "wealth" is ownership, and we've seen throughout history that ownership changes hands from the wealthy if they push the disparity too far. I'd like to believe we'll see philanthropic impetus to the change rather than a globalization of France's national razor, but one way or the other, the destruction of labor means meaningful wealth disparity can't be sustained. And I don't think the philanthropic impetus necessarily requires the wealthy to have a good heart or fear uprising. The one enduring value of wealth in such a system is governance. If, on paper, you own the resources that society runs on, you can influence the government so long as the people are placated. So you placate the people in the transition to create that new shape of power. It will erode over time anyway, but the one thing the wealthy are good at is seeing which way the wind is blowing and investing in ways to retain power.

[@MrTerry]

Aren’t we pushing for automation right now to replace human labor?

[@dobermanownerforlife3902]

​@@MrTerryetymology of the word robot.....

[@lapsedpacifistrou5354]

I always figured it was cause slavery there is less incentive to create labour's saving tools when you have slaves 1:38

[@terryshrk]

I love this question and think its a very useful thought experiment. Because on many levels the requirement to make work easier,..and the motivation to make labor more efficient comes from NOT having those two things, or in simpler terms,.NO SLAVES TO BOSS AROUND! Nobody,.. ,.and i mean.,.NOBODY cares how hard slaves have to work ( for the most part)as long as they're "efficient enough" to be easily replaced by more slaves,.LOL! (I'm looking at YOU,..Eli Whitney) Once your particular society gets so large & complex, if for whatever reason, it should happen to loose said easily replaced semi-efficient workforce,..then you've suddenly got the "NECESSITY " for invention. Free people won't and probably cant do meaningless hard labor tasks day in and day out for decades until they age and die. Even if said hard labor sort of ensures a superior standard of life, there needs to be economies of scale and the necessary resources in abundance to spark innovation. Ancient Rome had a basic steam engine but with all the free labor doing just fine at supporting their society, there wasn't any real pressing need or motive to make the lives of said slaves labor force better or invest to increase their efficiency. The motive to even really consider adding that carbon atom the the iron making process, apparently comes from the requirement to make a whole group of potentially rebellious ( potentially rebellious and often outright rebellious,..LoL) free people work a whole lot faster and more efficiently ,.and BOOM industrialization !!

[@warsawpacked418]

If Rome had industrialized, then someone alive today could very well be the last person, or one of the last, in the world. Roman industrialization would have led to modernization and the resulting collapse of fertility rates centuries earlier. So, by now if a solution had not been found humanity would have a very low population. It would probably just be small clans of hunter-gatherers living amongst the ruins that they don't fully understand.

[@Seriously_Unserious]

One thing that Shadiviersity discovered when he was doing his series of videos on metallurgy and smelting in ancient to medieval times, is he discovered historical evidence that people dating WAY farther back then most historians generally THINK we discovered steel were actually making steel, pretty much around the same time as ancient people started smelting and forging iron. The process of smelting iron ore into iron involves a very hot fire, usually achieved by burning coal or charcoal, whichever is the cheapest and must abundantly available, which would invariably have some of the iron get carbon mixed in with it, forming steel. By the Middle Ages, they'd refined their smelting processes with better technology and were able to produce steel at varying carbon amounts with a great deal of accuracy. Meaning steel, while not widely available, cheap or of the same quality of later steel, was available in Rome, and they did know how to make small quantities of it. So with advances or pressures leading to a need to industrialize, Rome could and likely would have also advanced in their smelting processes, developing the technology to produce high carbon steel with few to no impurities, and of a high quality, along with low carbon steels, and produce the carbon-iron ratio they'd have wanted.

[@SioxerNikita]

I think it is wrong to say "most historians", historians are in general experts in their study of history, so they wouldn't really comment on things like "First steel manufacturing" unless it was their expertise. I think you should rather say "WAY farther back than is assumed in general history", as in more of the history known to the public.

[@Seriously_Unserious]

@@SioxerNikita I think it's implied, when talking about a clearly defined subject, that I'm referring to those who deal with that subject and ONLY those who deal with that subject. I think it's pretty self explanatory that if a historian does not study when a particular type of metallurgy was invented in a particular region, they won't comment on it one way or the other. I think most people are smart enough to pick up on that rather obvious inference without me having to beat them over the head with it.

[@SioxerNikita]

@@Seriously_Unserious But then your argument doesn't work at all? Because historians have known for quite a long while that steel is really old. So what is your argument, that Shadiversity found something that the historians already found, or? I am really confused frankly.

[@Seriously_Unserious]

@@SioxerNikita That many historians attribute steal to the early industrial revolution. This teacher is a prime example of this, as he discounts Roman steal entirely, talking about steal only in reference to industrialization. While it is true that making steal in quantity wasn't feasible until industrialization, steal did exist before that. Yet Shad provided many examples of how historians largely overlooked or discounted that steel.

[@SioxerNikita]

​@@Seriously_UnseriousA teacher is not a historian, a teacher is a history teacher in many cases. And again, steel in Roman times was not "really a thing", in terms of society. And yeah, steel has existed in various cultures for a long time. We also find iron tools before the iron age.

[@OverusedChewToy]

I'm wondering if necessity is the crux of the explanation for the industrial revolution vs. the counterfactual of Rome not industrialising. Consider it this way: Every terminal illness is necessary to cure, or as necessary as it comes, especially with society-wide catastrophes like the Atonine Plague. If they didn't find a cure for that absolute necessity, I don't see why they would have re: industralisation. My hunch is that the difference is a bit deeper than that. The way we think about problems in our lives can differ from how the ancients saw it (though of course it often highly overlaps or matches), namely that we believe that enough knowledge can solve even the most pressing issues. When the latest pandemic arrived people expected a cure, even though we'd never made a vaccine for that kind of virus before. And we did, in record time. The Romans just had to endure, or so they believed. It sounds radical but perhaps the key to cumulative, ongoing progress (even if it's more like a jagged line than a purely upward trajectory) is at its core an optimism about the creation of knowledge, and the understanding that creating knowledge comes from strict error correction? (which I guess is the scientific method, or something like it). Maybe if they worked that out, then the rest could have been a function of time and effort.

[@PhycoKrusk]

I feel like by the point in time mentioned, the inertia of internal social pressures could not have been overcome.

[@Suno-ta-sei]

What if instead of steam engines they figured out how to make hand cranked rail carts. They could have made wood rails and there wouldn't be a need to know how to make steel for a long time. Plus they could make a sever hand cranked cart that soldiers could use as transportation.

[@MrTerry]

Are those efficient?

[@dobermanownerforlife3902]

​@@MrTerrywooden rails that oxen or horse could pull more weight easier.

[@Suno-ta-sei]

@@MrTerry kinda. Wood rails used to be used along side cast iron back in the 1800's so they are feasible but they do have a limit to how long they last. For the cart it is kinda a toss up between tiring the crank operator out and having the correct pace. And if anything it would actually be a good workout especially for he time period.

[@DenUitvreter]

A lot is in the execution. The concept of the internal combustion engine was already there in the 1600's in the Dutch Republic, where the crank did so much good for the shipbuilding's industry's saw mills. But making an ICE work with gun powder and the 1600's levels of metallurgy is different matter.

[@ghyslainabel]

There were breakthroughs in sciences in the 1700s and the industrial revolution happened in the 1800s. Assuming the Roman began industrialization, I wonder if science would have catch up. I an industrial revolution even possible without the century or so of science that Europe had?

[@emilianoantoniopanciera4979]

I think that the industrialisation could have happened, but only if Rome did not conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms. This way there would have been the competition necessary for an industrialization

[@achvi_rw7095]

I love Side Quest

[@MrTerry]

I think this was my first time watching. Should I cover more?

[@dobermanownerforlife3902]

They didnt industrialize because communication/education was not commonpace. The creator of an idea often is not the one who makes it fruitful. Innovation comes in stages. One persons work building on anothers. Recording an idea and have it sit on a shalf does not progress a society.

[@stargazer-elite]

Amazing channel I’m glad your checking them out please check out more videos from them

[@cptmiller132]

A more realistic question... i wonder what would have happened if rome would have figured out how to put carbon in that iron

[@Pestsoutwest]

Industrialization requires precision. Without a metal lathe, you can't get anything close to precise. First invented in 1781, kicking off the true industrial revolution.

[@spiffyavatar3611]

yeah saying steampower caused the industrial revolution is a bit short-sighted

[@insanemakaioshin]

4:02 - False! Vitruvius invented it between 30 & 20 *B.C.* or earlier.

[@charlieblocher7456]

Wars! What are they good for? Determening who is in charge, of course. It would depend on who got it and how far they made it. But without military applications, would it have made a difference? What it would really require is a a cohesive Roman state or another Triumerverate situation. Rome would have a stable ruler for a time, but unless the empire itself was stable, it wouldn't make a huge difference. Industrial Rome would still fall apart, just a few centuries later. If Rome developed steel and guns and cannons, a unified Rome come out on top ... until they disintegrated in civil wars. Lead poisoning is bad, and you'd have the same basic polotical structure and problems. Unless Rome lucked into a stable dynasty or a some system of seizing power that didn't involve devistatinf civil wars emerged it ends in with the Roman civil wars destroying a great deal of expensive infrastructure. Who knows, maybe Britania, with its more accessible coal and harder to assault position becomes a fortress nation, if it can survive blockades.

[@rustylidrazzah5170]

5 minutes in and a thought came to me. Roman numerals may have been a limiting factor too. Not having a zero, or the ability to multiply and divide, would make scaling much more difficult. At least with my recency bias I can’t machine factory settings without Indian/Arabic numerals.

[@Merennulli]

We actually don't know how Roman math worked. We know their abacus DID have a way of denoting zero, the use of it just isn't well documented. And that actually might be the real problem - they didn't document their mathematics as heavily as other societies did, meaning sharing of math wasn't as common.

[@rustylidrazzah5170]

@@Merennulli fair, but it’s not a complete mystery.

[@Merennulli]

@@rustylidrazzah5170My point is we can't say they didn't know certain things. We know, for example, they took on Greek knowledge and expanded upon it. Famously, Julius Caesar spoke Greek among his fellow elites. And it's likely Roman elites who felt mathematically inclined might have used Greek notation (which did have a zero) but we just don't know.

[@rustylidrazzah5170]

@@Merennulli there were limits to Roman numerals. No fractions, no decimals, most say there was no 0. The Roman numeral were placeholders for a total. They were not for arithmetic. Otherwise they wouldn’t have needed an abacus. I’m no expert, but I’m going to lean on the experts opinions rather than a stranger on Facebook.

[@Merennulli]

@@rustylidrazzah5170I literally gave you another notation they were likely to have used. And in reply you tell me I'm on "Facebook"... I'll be blunt - we're both going off experts. The difference is you stopped at their analysis of Roman numerals and didn't keep reading.

[@batchicken1415]

Maybe because it was the year 1

[@batchicken1415]

What where factories

[@YAH2121]

They didn't industrialize because they were a slave society and didnt have much economic competition ( besides china i guess?) So not much reason to innovate at a level we saw in our timeline

[@tristanmorrow6447]

He use England a lot here and Rome had it and Rome market was not like ours. please Rome empire was having trouble with not having people one because of it slavery and 2nd because it needed people in every field.

[@derrickstorm6976]

Might i suggest the next title, Why didn't the British Empire become Hindus

[@anathardayaldar]

Because if they did, humanity would have nuked themselves back to the stone age by now.

[@DenUitvreter]

Industrialization is not the same as the industrial revolution. The steam engine sparked the industrial revolution, the late 1500's Dutch Republic already had industrialization, not by accident also the inventors of modern capitalism. The crank, wind power, the standardization, nothing that was out of reach for the Romans. Not all relevant history happened first in the country where it was described in what happens to be your language.

[@FelipeSalesGuitar]

If they did, we'd all be speaking latin.

[@992ras]

What needs to be stated is one you need the science and two you needed the math which did exist but guess what Romans didn’t except those things(not all the science or math either, the important ones are founded in the 1800’s). Do people not realize Romans tried to kill scientists that doesn’t help progression that’s what slowed much of the progression down. The most important time to science is 1800’s to the 1900’s which is the start of the science that lead to the Industrial Revolution. Rome itself isn’t a people, Rome was made up of first Italic and Greek people. The biggest reason industrial production wasn’t ever a thing in ancient times is because there is no concept to it, industrial concepts come from modernization of the world. Now the reason Roman history is so one sided is because it’s told by them and what they wanted you to know which is how powerful they were because they believed the world belonged to Rome, without a understanding of how big the world actually was.

[@cassandra2445]

I think another video of yours you say not a lot of viewers of yours are women. I love your channel and I’m a 30y women 😅❤

[@nolan4339]

Probably need the social reform before you have the incentive for the technological reform.

[@sirjaroid4725]

35th

[@LostMexican]

I am early as hell

[@tonytiger76ffs34]

THIS EASY THE ROMANS AINT BRITISH THATS WHY

[@ashardalondragnipurake]

if rome had industrialized they could have stopped the rise of islam that could have caused a lot of progress for humanity but on the other hand they did bow to christianity, so maybe im expecting too much from them

[@EliC796]

Hii

[@MrTerry]

👋