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Bad alt-history question: Hero of Alexandria's little ball of steam was clearly not a firm basis for an Industrial Revolution in Antiquity. For one thing, a lot of the financial mechanisms and intellectual practices which helped get the proper Industrial Revolution just didn't exist in Ye Classical times, like joint-stock companies, the printing press, the Scientific Revolution, modern banking, and plenty of other massively important ideas and techniques. How many of those conceivably had a chance to come into being and thrive in ancient Athens or Rome? Some of them, like putting stamps with letters on the underside of a screw press, surely can't have been too far outside the realm of conception.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:49
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Ofaloaf posted:Bad alt-history question: Hero of Alexandria's little ball of steam was clearly not a firm basis for an Industrial Revolution in Antiquity. For one thing, a lot of the financial mechanisms and intellectual practices which helped get the proper Industrial Revolution just didn't exist in Ye Classical times, like joint-stock companies, the printing press, the Scientific Revolution, modern banking, and plenty of other massively important ideas and techniques. I think part of the reason why that never happened is that if you have a dozen slaves just standing around, it's just easier to tell them to write it. People like to take the path of least resistance.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:56
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Perhaps, but that shouldn't be used to discount that the ancients simply would not have been able to build the things that powered our Industrial Revolution, simply because their metallurgy wasn't up to snuff. An Aeolipile is cool, but all our steam powered stuff worked by keeping steam under large pressures, which would have been beyond the people of the time. Then add all the stuff Ofaloaf mentioned. Slaves might have been part of the reason why mechanized power never emerged in the ancient world, but if you remove slaves, they're still not about to start building trains or powered looms. Cast_No_Shadow posted:I also remember hearing or reading, maybe in this thread, at various points it was a thing to be over the top with your slaves. That is when you have guests you have a slave to turn the door knob, a different one to open it, a third to close it, a fourth to show you to your seat, a fifth to pull out your chair, a sixth to push you in and so on. So it might be pretty boring being seat pulling slave #15 but it doesn't seem back breaking.] Wouldn't really surprise me. Demonstrating your wealth is a key part of being an elite worthy of respect in political matters. It's the same reason mausoleums exist, and why Germans and late Romans were burying perfectly useful items with their dead.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:36
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Paxicon posted:I think part of the reason why that never happened is that if you have a dozen slaves just standing around, it's just easier to tell them to write it. People like to take the path of least resistance. To bring this post back more to the relevant times, I have to assume that this attitude prevailed in pre-modern times as well. The real catalyst for the kind of efficiency that steam power creates wouldn't be seen until the Black Death ravaged Europe and drove down the available labor pool, making each laborer significantly more valuable. That, combined with the decline of feudalism in Western Europe, was what ultimately made efficiency a focus, as throwing more people at a problem made increasingly less economic sense as individual laborers began costing more and more.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:44
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Paxicon posted:I think part of the reason why that never happened is that if you have a dozen slaves just standing around, it's just easier to tell them to write it. People like to take the path of least resistance.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:53
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The Romans also had gigantic corporations.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:55
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euphronius posted:The Romans also had gigantic corporations. How did they work? What are some examples?
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Jul 29, 2013 21:57
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euphronius posted:The Romans also had gigantic corporations.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:57
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The technical details are all locked up in academic journals. Here is a link http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40697762?uid=3739864&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102188889573
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Jul 29, 2013 21:59
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euphronius posted:The technical details are all locked up in academic journals. Here is a link http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40697762?uid=3739864&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102188889573 quote:The Accounting Historians Journal
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Jul 29, 2013 22:09
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What prevented metallurgy from developing faster than it did? Wikipedia tells me the Romans had a kind of steel they could produce in a bloomery, but the Chinese were making steel in blast furnaces in 200 BC, right? Did the Chinese keep this a secret like the silk, and if so did the Romans not care or did they try to steal the secrets as they did with silk worms?
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Jul 29, 2013 22:52
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Jack B Nimble posted:What prevented metallurgy from developing faster than it did? Wikipedia tells me the Romans had a kind of steel they could produce in a bloomery, but the Chinese were making steel in blast furnaces in 200 BC, right? Did the Chinese keep this a secret like the silk, and if so did the Romans not care or did they try to steal the secrets as they did with silk worms? Technological advancement generally develops as solutions to problems. The Romans never encountered the sort of problems that led them to developing any kind of steel processing industry. They could build everything they needed out of stone or wood, powered by slaves or water. It never dawned on them that iron could be useful as a construction material. They were good enough at ironworking for armaments. That's about all they cared about.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:01
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Deteriorata posted:Technological advancement generally develops as solutions to problems. The Romans never encountered the sort of problems that led them to developing any kind of steel processing industry. They could build everything they needed out of stone or wood, powered by slaves or water. It never dawned on them that iron could be useful as a construction material. They used iron to reinforce concrete, as a construction material.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:14
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Jack B Nimble posted:What prevented metallurgy from developing faster than it did? Wikipedia tells me the Romans had a kind of steel they could produce in a bloomery, but the Chinese were making steel in blast furnaces in 200 BC, right? Did the Chinese keep this a secret like the silk, and if so did the Romans not care or did they try to steal the secrets as they did with silk worms? It's simply hard to brute-force your way to high quality alloys, especially when you don't even have a concept of what exactly elements and metals really are. Several civilizations throughout history lucked into properly creating the right alloys for consistent quality steels - sometimes it appears to have been due to the kinds of ores and mineral deposits around. You also get a basic kind of steel simply from making your iron in an environment where a lot of carbon from what you're burning to create the heat gets mixed in properly - but you can quite easily end up with too much to produce good steel, instead producing what's known as "pig iron" which isn't very useful on its own but can be remelted with effort and produced into usable iron or steel. One key aspect of later metallurgy was that techniques were developed to keep consistent output of whatever particular alloy you really wanted. In general, ancient civilizations hadn't developed those things, and you need consistent qualities to reliably produce, say, multiple steam engines capable of doing hard work. Tiny fractions of a percent changes in the alloyed material can produce radically different end results, and it's hard as heck to properly measure it back then. And of course the consequences of failed alloys and metals are obvious: you end up with swords falling apart after barely any use, or creating some metal that you don't have the technology around to actually work into a usable shape or object, or your primitive steam engine's boiler blasting apart and showering you and your buds with blistering hot steam and high velocity shrapnel! I've said it before, but it's quite likely that people were repeatedly attempting to build steam engines throughout time, but a lot of records have been lost and a lot of them also would have suffered serious injury or death from mis-made devices. Even small time successful devices, you'd probably not have them getting stone inscriptions for them, or news of them getting around to enough places to ensure surviving records came down. They'd probably eventually break and have the remains of the device melted down to attempt to recover the material - high quality metals were somewhat valuable after all! We just know for sure that they didn't end up catching on .
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Jul 29, 2013 23:52
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Tangentially related, but for a long time the Vikings had some of the best steel in the world. They had crucible steel which they presumably learned about/acquired via trade in Central Asia. There are swords dating from the 800s-1000s AD that are made of crucible steel (Ulfberht swords) then suddenly you stop seeing them again. Either they stopped trading for the steel or they forgot how to make it, who knows. Anyway, I just think it's neat because Europe wouldn't be able to manufacture higher quality steel than that for nearly 1000 years, during the Industrial Revolution.
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Jul 29, 2013 23:52
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canuckanese posted:Tangentially related, but for a long time the Vikings had some of the best steel in the world. They had crucible steel which they presumably learned about/acquired via trade in Central Asia. There are swords dating from the 800s-1000s AD that are made of crucible steel (Ulfberht swords) then suddenly you stop seeing them again. Either they stopped trading for the steel or they forgot how to make it, who knows. Anyway, I just think it's neat because Europe wouldn't be able to manufacture higher quality steel than that for nearly 1000 years, during the Industrial Revolution. Well the early to mid 1000's is when they began to lose access to a lot of the trade routes they used to get to Central Asia and you stop seeing Viking hoards full of silver currency they collected in trade with the Abbasids. That seems to coincide with the decline in quality of steel, suggesting they lost access to the source rather then the technique.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:10
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cafel posted:Well the early to mid 1000's is when they began to lose access to a lot of the trade routes they used to get to Central Asia and you stop seeing Viking hoards full of silver currency they collected in trade with the Abbasids. That seems to coincide with the decline in quality of steel, suggesting they lost access to the source rather then the technique. That's true, but crucible steel can still be very difficult to work with, which suggests at the very least some master blacksmiths.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:27
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canuckanese posted:Tangentially related, but for a long time the Vikings had some of the best steel in the world. They had crucible steel which they presumably learned about/acquired via trade in Central Asia. There are swords dating from the 800s-1000s AD that are made of crucible steel (Ulfberht swords) then suddenly you stop seeing them again. Either they stopped trading for the steel or they forgot how to make it, who knows. Anyway, I just think it's neat because Europe wouldn't be able to manufacture higher quality steel than that for nearly 1000 years, during the Industrial Revolution. Nova did an episode called Secrets of the Viking Sword that deals with this, it's on Netflix now.* *I assume you've seen it, canuckanese.
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Jul 30, 2013 01:38
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Grand Fromage posted:He shouldn't be a dick, but he is correct. My policy in the thread is to call them the Roman Empire, because Byzantine is a term invented by later historians that has no relevance to anything. It's just the Empire. But trying to get everyone to stop saying Byzantine is tilting at windmills; just mentally replace Byzantine with Eastern Roman or Medieval Roman or plain ol' Roman.
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Jul 30, 2013 02:02
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Halloween Jack posted:Um, it depends. I wouldn't want to be a slave in Cato the Elder's vineyard, as he made no bones about working slaves like livestock until they were no good for labour, then selling them to whoever would have them for whatever he could get. A whole family of assholes.
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Jul 30, 2013 02:02
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canuckanese posted:If you were educated or otherwise valuable, it might honestly be better to be a slave than a poor citizen in some cases. If you were an educated slave you were better off than 90% of the people in the empire, for sure. An educated slave was a fine life. We've talked about this a lot so in short: Roman slaves had rights, and gained more and more rights over the centuries. Slavery still sucked but not like American slavery. If you were a mine slave you were fuuuuuuucked, a field slave sucked, a house slave depended on the master but could be an okay life, an educated slave was one of the upper crust of society. Slaves could be freed, freeing slaves was not at all uncommon, and freedmen were often merchants; in some cases extremely wealthy ones. The descendents of slaves could be citizens, and some patrician families started as slaves. Social mobility existed, even for slaves. Azathoth posted:When asked, the North Korean minders said something to the effect of "but if we don't give them work here, what work will they do?". Clearly expressing that they prefer the inefficient labor, since they have plenty of people to do the work. This attitude still exists in Japan and here in South Korea, actually. Japanese businesses have all kinds of jobs that could be replaced by a single Excel spreadsheet, but they don't do it because they have employees for that. I have a lot of friends who work at Hyundai in my city, and they've told me how the shipyard is highly inefficient purely to have more workers. Eustachy posted:The problem is Rome and the Romans and Latins did not just stop existing. I was reading an account of the crusades somebody wrote in this thread where they kept talking about "Rome" and I was loving baffled because after a certain time into the middle ages, when people say this or that about Rome they are usually referring to the Pope and his schemes. And this was in the context of a conflict between the crusaders and Constantinople. Very confusing. That is true, so I usually say Medieval Rome or the Roman Empire to distinguish. Though, 95% of the time when someone is talking about Rome the city in the Middle Ages, they're using Rome as a metonym for the Pope/Church so it can be replaced. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 02:39
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Grand Fromage posted:If you were a mine slave you were fuuuuuuucked, a field slave sucked, a house slave depended on the master but could be an okay life, an educated slave was one of the upper crust of society. Is it true that mine slavery wasn't quite like normal slavery, but a sentence to death by hard labour?
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Jul 30, 2013 02:47
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Halloween Jack posted:Can you tell me some more about field slaves? I read a bit of historical fiction once which said that vineyard slavery was practically a punishment, being exhausting work. A book on the history of wine claims that Cato included in De Agri Cultura figures for how long a slave could work the vineyards before dropping dead, but damned if I can find the relevant passage. Field slavery was basically what it sounds like, I'm not sure what you want to know. Slaves went out and worked in the fields tending/harvesting crops, which is lovely backbreaking labor. I don't know any laws specific to them, but there probably were some. Mine slavery is effectively a death sentence but it's not really intended as such. It's just that working in a mine is incredibly dangerous and your lifespan was, if I recall correctly, about two years. There were mine collapses, lack of air, toxic gas, the toxic materials you were using to do the mining (mercury, specifically), injury from being in a cave with almost no light, beating to death if you tried to sneak out any precious metal. It was the worst place to be. I am sure people were specifically sent to the mines with the knowledge that they would die that way before they could cause any trouble.
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Jul 30, 2013 02:52
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Grand Fromage posted:Field slavery was basically what it sounds like, I'm not sure what you want to know. Slaves went out and worked in the fields tending/harvesting crops, which is lovely backbreaking labor. I don't know any laws specific to them, but there probably were some.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:10
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Azathoth posted:This reminds me of a very odd anecdote from modern history that backs up this claim. When I was reading Under The Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, Bradley Martin reports a conversation between a Westerner and his North Korean minders that occurred while visiting a factory or a refinery (I can't locate it to give exact details). The Westerner noticed that many of their processes were very labor intensive when they did not have to be (i.e. there were simple, obvious changes that could be made to get the same work done by fewer people). When asked, the North Korean minders said something to the effect of "but if we don't give them work here, what work will they do?". Clearly expressing that they prefer the inefficient labor, since they have plenty of people to do the work. I've heard a few different versions of this anecdote. My favorite one being: an American engineer is visiting China to consult on a dam building project. While he's watching the workers he notices that they're doing all the digging with shovels even though there is heavy machinery at the site being unused so he asks the foreman "Why aren't you using the machinery?". The foreman replies "Don't you know why we're building this dam? We don't need another dam, we just need to create jobs for the people here." The American engineer laughs and says "If you want to create work for them you should take away their shovels and give them spoons!". Anyway, I had an actual question too so this post isn't a waste! Do we have any idea on what the ratio of slaves that were doing heavy labor versus those that were house slaves? From what I understand the majority of the slaves were operating in conditions similar to chattel slavery in mines or on farms while only a minority were the house slaves or body slaves that got to have any rights or privileges.
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Jul 30, 2013 08:10
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Ithle01 posted:Anyway, I had an actual question too so this post isn't a waste! Do we have any idea on what the ratio of slaves that were doing heavy labor versus those that were house slaves? From what I understand the majority of the slaves were operating in conditions similar to chattel slavery in mines or on farms while only a minority were the house slaves or body slaves that got to have any rights or privileges. Not really. We don't even have anything better than a good estimate as to how many slaves there were in total in particular regions, let alone with the breakdown was. This paper discusses the Roman slave supply and the problems in trying to reconstructing it. (Short form of "the problems": we don't have much in the way of data)
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Jul 30, 2013 13:03
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I assume the manual labor slaves were more likely to be non-Roman (either as in the city or the Republic/Empire) but were there entire families of slaves, with children being born into slavery? How would a free person (Romans/allies/client states) enter slavery outside of being taken essentially as a war prize? Is it just like "Gaius Albinus lost a bet, is now a slave until whenever?"
FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 13:36
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The children of female slaves were themselves considered to be slaves, so -- well, "family" might not always be the best word for it, but you get the idea. As for ways you could enter slavery, there was a formal legal process for selling yourself into slavery. In addition to that "voluntary" way, it was also a legal punishment for certain crimes, such as dodging the draft, refusing to participate in the census, being a branded undesirable within a certain distance of Rome, being a woman who lived with a slave against the slavemaster's will, and so on. Free status was technically unalienable except by legal actions of the state (the selling yourself into slavery process or judicial punishments), but in pragmatic terms life was terrible and people were forced into slavery against their will. Bandits and pirates were said to kidnap travelers and sell them into slavery, which is plausible but probably didn't account for more than a trickle of the total slave population as the state had an interest in fighting brigandage. Infants who were unwanted at birth might be sold into slavery rather than exposed to the elements or abandoned. (That sort of infanticide was a relatively common practice among many ancient communities; presumably the Romans took a more pragmatic approach.) It was also possible that children could be sold into slavery by their parents, though there's some question whether this was an actual thing that happened or whether references to it were a rhetorical device used as a trope of "people in extreme poverty". In either case, these practices created some strange legal issues, because free status was technically protected -- so if one of these children could ever prove their free birth, they would have to be manumitted immediately. In practical terms this was probably exceptionally rare, but a possibility. Also, apparently there was some kind of ancient scam where a free person would collude with a slave-trader and pretend to be a slave for sale. Once he was purchased and money had changed hands, the "slave"'s free status would suddenly come to light and he'd have to be immediately released, while his partner the slave-trader had skipped town with the money. Being convicted of participating in this sort of scam was another crime that was punishable by being reduced to actual slave status.
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Jul 30, 2013 15:08
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Ofaloaf posted:
The real weird things is journals and specialty publications like this are the only things that make money in the publishing world anymore.
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Jul 30, 2013 15:36
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let us not forget the story of the Spanish General in 169 AD who was sold into slavery after an imperial coup and later proved his status as a free man in the Amphitheater of Hadrian by killing the Emperor. We have some uncannily good source material on that, can't believe you guys missed it.
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Jul 30, 2013 18:01
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Boatloads. I mean, Cincinnatus, Narcissus, Spartacus, and one or two other guys, that's a bunch of sources right there. They based him on a gladiator, a wrestler, and a couple generals just for as much historicalness as they could get.
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Jul 30, 2013 18:29
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Xguard86 posted:let us not forget the story of the Spanish General in 169 AD who was sold into slavery after an imperial coup and later proved his status as a free man in the Amphitheater of Hadrian by killing the Emperor. I believe you mean "Iberian."
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Jul 30, 2013 18:37
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yes it really is fortunate that Rome's greatest hero emerged when we needed him most. I shudder to think what might have happened if Commodus had really inherited the Empire. I mean imagine if the Empire had fallen: we probably wouldn't even know about the 2nd monolith.
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Jul 30, 2013 18:38
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The Entire Universe posted:I assume the manual labor slaves were more likely to be non-Roman (either as in the city or the Republic/Empire) but were there entire families of slaves, with children being born into slavery? How would a free person (Romans/allies/client states) enter slavery outside of being taken essentially as a war prize? Is it just like "Gaius Albinus lost a bet, is now a slave until whenever?"
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Jul 30, 2013 18:42
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Xguard86 posted:yes it really is fortunate that Rome's greatest hero emerged when we needed him most. I shudder to think what might have happened if Commodus had really inherited the Empire. I mean imagine if the Empire had fallen: we probably wouldn't even know about the 2nd monolith. He becomes emperor in the movie dummy, jeez, this is the history thread, get it right.
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Jul 30, 2013 18:44
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I believe you mean "Iberian." You Cattoi and your insistence on Latin. Wake up old man, SinoKoine has been the true universal language for 100's of years. I bet you don't even sacrifice to John Zhu Palaiologzhi IX. Edit: ^ psshh "technically". I count the Damnatio Memoriae of 2 ARIIC (934 AUC in traditional system) as law. Xguard86 fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 18:45
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Halloween Jack posted:Varro encouraged childbearing among his slaves, whereas Suetonius says that Cato prostituted his female slaves to the males as a means of controlling them (Cato was a dick). A HUGE dick. Didn't he end up marrying one of his slaves when he was super old and have some kids with her as well? After decades of mistreating his slaves and telling everybody how to be morally upstanding people. Also as an aside, I am loving Suetonius' Twelve Caesars. Julius Caesar and Augustus get very respectful, serious work as he discusses major milestones in their personal and professional lives etc, and even Tiberius and Caligula's stuff is mostly respectful at first before he details some of the darker tales about their perversions. But once he hits Nero the book basically becomes this gossipy old man excitedly telling tall tales and reveling in a series of horrifying stories that probably have their source in bar-room jokes and disgruntled soldiers talking poo poo.
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Jul 31, 2013 01:22
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How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian?
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Jul 31, 2013 02:29
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karl fungus posted:How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian? Republican Romans really hated kings. I mean, they really hated kings. Wouldn't even let them step foot into the city even as dignitaries. Octavian got himself the big chair by not technically being a king. Oh, also, decades of bloody civil war being fought between a series of Strong Men trying to make themselves sole ruler of Rome eventually weeded out all of the competitors except for Octavian and the people went for it because after the aforementioned decades of civil war nobody really cared anymore and Octavian was actually kind of a nice guy to most people.
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Jul 31, 2013 02:35
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karl fungus posted:How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian? People would go out of their way to take you down if you even dared to call yourself such a thing as a king or sole ruler.
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Jul 31, 2013 02:38
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