I have to second this comment. As a classicist, the common factor throughout a lot of Roman stagnation is that you just simply do not have the incentive to create mechanical options if you have a (seemingly) limitless number of slaves to do your tasks for you, from working in mills to mining silver to being your doctor and your tutor and so on. It’s also probably one of the factors that led to such a total and sudden loss of knowledge on a lot of subjects once the entire thing collapsed, because once you’re no longer forced to stay with your “owner” on pain of violence you leave.
Roman/Greek/Mediterranean slavery was technically much more livable than say, 19th century American chattel/racialized slavery, but it was still very bad, and very ubiquitous. And you can actually see parallels to the question in the 19th Century American Slave-owning South; it would have been much more financial expedient for the South to have mechanized, but the planters were ideologically attached to the slave system, and chose being plantation owners with slaves over more efficient industry.
I do think the Roman empire actually had the preconditions for some kind of industrialization, though maybe not an entirely familiar one; there were Greek inventors who created small steam-powered devices, after all. But these, like a lot of things that would seem familiar to us, were considered mostly intriguing toys, because once again, there is no reason to make a labor-saving device when you can simply go somewhere and steal people to do that labor.
I am still not convinced. Slaves, although seemingly limitless, are not free. At the very least, you have to feed them. Why not give them mechanical tools to increase their productivity?
I have to second this comment. As a classicist, the common factor throughout a lot of Roman stagnation is that you just simply do not have the incentive to create mechanical options if you have a (seemingly) limitless number of slaves to do your tasks for you, from working in mills to mining silver to being your doctor and your tutor and so on. It’s also probably one of the factors that led to such a total and sudden loss of knowledge on a lot of subjects once the entire thing collapsed, because once you’re no longer forced to stay with your “owner” on pain of violence you leave.
Roman/Greek/Mediterranean slavery was technically much more livable than say, 19th century American chattel/racialized slavery, but it was still very bad, and very ubiquitous. And you can actually see parallels to the question in the 19th Century American Slave-owning South; it would have been much more financial expedient for the South to have mechanized, but the planters were ideologically attached to the slave system, and chose being plantation owners with slaves over more efficient industry.
I do think the Roman empire actually had the preconditions for some kind of industrialization, though maybe not an entirely familiar one; there were Greek inventors who created small steam-powered devices, after all. But these, like a lot of things that would seem familiar to us, were considered mostly intriguing toys, because once again, there is no reason to make a labor-saving device when you can simply go somewhere and steal people to do that labor.
I am still not convinced. Slaves, although seemingly limitless, are not free. At the very least, you have to feed them. Why not give them mechanical tools to increase their productivity?