05-11-2008, 05:21 PM
Quote:I have some issues with the notion that the absence of industrial revolution was somehow a fault of the Classical world. What about its absence in Europe? Certainly no period was more enlightened than the Enlightenment, yet no industry was put forth on a grand scale, there was no social transformation and upheaval every ten years. Romans did as well as the pre-industrial Europeans did. They had technology and built on and expanded the industrial base, built water wheels even in such university towns as Athens, and were expanding technologically on an ever larger scale. Building the baths of Caracalla was no mean feat, an impossibility for a technically-starved civilization. There's nothing anti-industrial about these chained water wheels at Arles.
There's a window into alternate history in the example of the Byzantine Empire, where nothing impressive was built after the Hagia Sophia, for the succeeding 800 years. That is different from the earlier Roman Empire, where greater and greater buildings were constructed on an ever-larger scale.
There is also the fact that how many years were the Byzantines around where they werent one or two defeats from total destruction. The Eastern Empire once Islam came along was on the ropes perpetually and things were not that much better for them against the Persian Empire.
One has to wonder if one of the kep requirements for technolical progression is a growing and hungry (for more) middle class. The upper classes have what they need and slaves to provide it. The lower classes are scraping along so barely that they can think of nothing beyond surviving day to day. Only a strong middle class with some stability yet a hunger to move higher really will generate the need for strong technological progression.
Timothy Hanna
