Why Didn't the Roman Empire Industrialize?

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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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Have a fancy historical idea you'd like me to cover? Drop a comment and let me know!

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Further Reading:

[thethorpius]

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.

[sandervdbrink]

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.

[eybaza]

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.

[edwardcamp]

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.

[TacitusKilgore]

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

[ScorpoYT]

Can't imagine seeing Romans fighting the Huns using helicopters and tanks

[steinway]

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.

[sirrliv]

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.

[AncientHistoryGuy]

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!

[Emanmonster]

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!

[joshuacollins]

"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.

[Epsilonsama]

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.

[mhsmmahmod]

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

[MyRegardsToTheDodo]

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.

[changer_of_ways_]

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.

[ScreamingSturmovik]

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

[TheyCallMeHacked]

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.

[miniaturejayhawk]

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.

[OopsFailedArt]

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

[benoitterneyre]

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