Should-Read: Mark Koyama: Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?: "First... those... think... market expansion is sufficient for sustained economic growth...
...They will be inclined to favorably quote Adam Smith from his lectures on jurisprudence that “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice”. Many libertarian-learning economists are in this category but few active economic historians. Second... colonial empires or natural resources like coal were crucial... the “world systems” theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Perhaps the most sophisticated exponent is Ken Pomeranz... little support among economic historians. Third... ultimately only innovation can explain the transition to modern economic growth... the majority of economic historians... those who seek to explain the increase in innovation in purely economic terms and those who... argue that the answer has to be sought elsewhere, perhaps in something that can be broadly defined as culture.... Deirdre McCloskey and Joel Mokyr... agree that the inventive and enterprising spirit that characterized 18th century England cannot be explained in terms of simple incentives... argue that it required recognition of “Bourgeois Dignity” or a “Culture of Growth”.
Adherents of the... view that trade, commerce, and market development were... sufficient... should find the Roman Industrial Revolution counterfactual highly appealing.... The Roman empire... had its colonies... a periphery to exploit... little intrinsic reason why it should have been less successful than the early modern world system in generating economic growth....
Those persuaded by Bob Allen’s high wage theory of the British Industrial Revolution should be at least intrigued by Dale’s alternative Roman history.... If factor prices were crucial to British industrialization, then could there have been a Roman industrial revolution under similar conditions?... But... any such break-though would have to have come in the 2nd century BCE, a period of rapid economic change, urbanization, and commercialization.... Regardless of whether this is right, there is no doubt that the demand for slaves soared after 200 BCE, and that their ready supply encouraged landlords to practice commercial agriculture on a vast scale. Such an economy was ill-suited for modern economic growth....
McCloskey and Mokyr suggest greater skepticism.... The more one buys into Mokyr’s emphasis on the importance of a competitive Republic of Science, the less likely is it that the Roman empire would have offered a conducive environment for science and innovation..... Similarly, I am not aware of evidence of the kind of rhetorical change in attitudes towards commerce in the Rome world that McCloskey documents in the 17th century Dutch Republic or 18th century England.... I’ve speculated in an earlier post on the ways in which slavery and other Roman institutions reinforced a cultural ethos that was hostile to trade-based economic betterment (here). But I would be eager to read counter evidence. Perhaps specialists do know of evidence of a change in Roman attitudes to commerce during this period?
All of this suggests that a better understanding of why sustained or modern economic growth did not occur during earlier “efflorescences” can help us better understand which factors were important in the explaining the transition that did take place after 1800...
