Based on what we know from recorded history, the lack of technological creativity was not the key obstacle to economic growth. The windmill, horse technology, the printing press, telescope, barometer, and mechanical clock—to name just a few—were all invented before the eighteenth century. The reason that we tend to attribute the beginning of meaningful technological change to the Industrial Revolution is that then, for the first time, there was progress that eventually translated into significantly higher average incomes. Hence, even though the historical record is one of uneven technological progress, 99 percent of human history can with some exaggeration be regarded as a great stagnation in economic terms. The first part of this book seeks to explain why. By reviewing the key technological advances in the West—where the Industrial Revolution first took place—and their respective applications in production, the objective is to shed some light on why technological progress in the preindustrial world failed to achieve anything like the comfort and prosperity that followed the technological achievements of the eighteenth century. The explanations in the literature are of course plentiful. One popular theory is that before the Industrial Revolution the world was caught in a Malthusian trap, where greater prosperity simply translated into larger populations, leading to no real gains in per capita income. The Malthusian view is not irrelevant, but living standards in Britain had already improved between 1500 and 1800, albeit slowly. The real conundrum is that most of the wave of gadgets that we associate with the Industrial Revolution could have been developed and put into widespread use long before the eighteenth century, yet they were not. Besides the steam engine, the eighteenth century didn’t witness any breakthroughs that would have “puzzled Archimedes.”2
The preindustrial history of technology illustrates an important point: resistance to worker-replacing technologies has been the norm rather than the exception. Innovation flourished before the eighteenth century, but it rarely took the form of capital that replaced labor—and when it did, fierce opposition typically followed. This should not be taken to imply technological backwardness. However, it does help explain why the job-replacing technologies of the Industrial Revolution did not arrive earlier.
1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PREINDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
Though preindustrial societies were clearly less productive than later ones, technological creativity has existed in some form throughout human history. The majority of our most basic technologies, such as fire-making equipment, tools for hunting and fishing, the domestication of animals, agriculture, irrigation, pottery and glazing, the wheel, and spinning and weaving techniques were invented before any historical record was made. The most transformative of these inventions was agriculture, because it allowed the first civilizations to emerge. As Bertrand Russell explains: “Civilized man is distinguished from the savage by prudence, or, to use the slightly wider term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures.… This habit began to be important with the rise of agriculture.”1
Before the Neolithic revolution, which began about 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers were preoccupied with finding food. Hunting required no planning but did involve sharing what was caught, as there was no technology for storing meat or other foods that had been foraged for—which meant that instant consumption was the only option. Therefore, there were no property rights in the modern sense and no need for them. Like chimpanzees, hunter-gatherers would inhabit and often fight over a territory, but because no one was able to accumulate any meaningful surplus, there were no assets to establish ownership over. The development of agriculture—the growing of crops and the cultivation of animals—changed that and allowed food to be stored in granaries and in the form of livestock for the first time. This in turn enabled people to accumulate significant food surpluses, which led to the development of the concept of ownership and new forms of social organization for the protection of property rights.
Like hunter-gatherers, early Neolithic communities consisted of family members, but instead of foraging for plants and hunting wild animals, everyone worked in farming. Technological efforts were therefore mainly directed toward agricultural needs, and the tools and skills needed for farming were very different from those of hunter-gatherers. Farmers needed axes to clear the land of trees, digging sticks and stone-bladed hoes to cultivate the soil, and sickles with sharp edges for harvesting. By definition, the tools of the Neolithic era were made out of stone. Although these tools were simple, the megaliths and stone monuments that remain from that time reveal that people were capable of building impressive structures even before the first major civilizations emerged. But because people devoted most of their time to cultivating the land to produce the food they needed, construction took many years. A large food surplus was required to feed full-time construction workers before large-scale hydraulic engineering projects and the construction of cities became feasible. In due course, improvements in agricultural productivity allowed for the production of more food and the expansion of cities—in which the jobs of artisans, smelters, smiths, and others became full-time occupations—where increasingly skilled workers specialized in the development of better technologies that allowed agricultural productivity to increase further.2 This meant that larger populations could be supported, permitting additional specialization that gave rise to more technologically sophisticated civilizations.
The first great civilizations to appear were the Minoan civilization, which was destroyed by a volcano eruption on Crete, and the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. In these societies the bulk of the population were still farmers, who grew an abundance of beans, wheat, lentils, barley, onions, and so on. They also raised cows, pigs, sheep, donkeys, and goats. And most importantly, they produced a food surplus that enabled people to engage in activities other than farming. Some people were construction workers, artisans, merchants, or warriors. Others worked as servants to the ruling classes, whose members were the political, religious, and military leaders. With a growing share of the population outside the agricultural sector, inventive contrivances were no longer confined to agriculture. For the modern world, the most important enabling technology inherited from ancient civilizations is writing, which still allows us to store and transmit information across time and space. Among other significant inventions was the potter’s wheel, which first appeared in Mesopotamia during the fifth millennium. Although wheeled carts and wagons, drawn by oxen, became increasingly common in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C., their wheels were made of heavy planks, which could not be used in rocky terrain and often sank into soft soil. The wheel’s impact on productivity at this time was therefore negligible. Long after the invention of the wheel, caravans of donkeys were still used for the transportation of goods.3
In terms of labor-saving technology, the most important achievements of ancient civilizations were probably in the discovery and exploitation of metals. Copper was first to be exploited, and there were a number of innovations in the techniques used to harden it, by adding tin to make bronze (thus initiating the Bronze Age, which lasted from around 4000 to 1500 B.C.) or zinc to make brass. Gold and other soft metals were discovered and became the basis for currencies. And iron eventually emerged (thus starting the Iron Age, from around 1500 to 500 B.C.) and was soon widely adopted, as ancient smiths found it to be a much stronger and harder metal. These developments, in turn, led to a range of other technological advances. Tools previously made of wood or stone could now be made with more durable but also malleable metal. And entirely new tools could be made—such as saws, scythes, picks, and shovels—that would have been unthinkable without advances in metallurgy.4 Though there were no machines to relieve workers of their burdens, even the simplest tools could save a considerable amount of labor: “A man with a spade will do as much work as twenty men who only have their nails to scratch the ground with.”5 All the same, while these tools clearly helped people, advances in metallurgy also led to some undesired disruptions. Warriors with steel weapons were a
ble to conquer civilizations whose weapons were made of stone and wood. The old civilizations of Eurasia had lasted for millennia, in part because their elites had little to gain and plenty to lose from new technologies that could threaten their leadership. Their status came to be challenged only after the invention of iron and the domestication of the horse. The nomadic warriors that disrupted Mesopotamia were the first to use iron weapons. Thus, at the height of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Elder describes iron as
the most precious and at the same time the worst metal for mankind. By its help we cleave the earth, establish tree-nurseries, fell trees, remove the useless parts from vines and force them to rejuvenate annually, build houses, hew stone and so forth. But this metal serves also for war, murder and robbery; and not only at close quarters, man to man, but also by projection and flight; for it can be hurled either by ballistic machines, or by the strength of human arms or even in the form of arrows. And this I hold to be the most blameworthy product of the human mind.6
Much like the fears surrounding the disruptive effects of artificial intelligence (AI) today, with scholars like Stephen Hawking and Nick Bostrom suggesting that it could spell the end of human civilization, people in preindustrial times worried that technology could destroy their much smaller and more isolated world. This was not just a worry of Pliny the Elder but the intuition that shaped attitudes toward technological progress among elites throughout classical antiquity (around 500 B.C. to A.D. 500). For political leaders concerned with conserving their power, technology was not always welcome.
Oppressed by Tradition
While most early scholars have argued that classical civilizations did not achieve much technological progress, such accounts are now seen as understating the breakthroughs of classical times.7 This perception was largely due to the fact that new technologies were rarely developed with economic objectives. As the classical scholar Moses Finley has argued, our view of technological progress in antiquity often involves imposing our own value systems on civilizations that had little interest in industrial pursuits.8 Because the chief function of technology since the Industrial Revolution has been to improve industrial processes, products, and services, we tend to think of technological progress in such terms. In contrast, technological advances in classical times typically served the public sector, rather than private interests. Instead of promoting technological development to increase productivity, leaders focused on advancing public works that helped them gain popularity and safeguarded their political power.9 As documented by the historian Kyle Harper, “A proud inventory from the fourth century claimed that Rome had 28 libraries, 19 aqueducts, 2 circuses, 37 gates, 423 neighborhoods, 46,602 apartment blocks, 1,790 great houses, 290 granaries, 856 baths, 1,352 cisterns, 254 bakeries, 46 brothels, and 144 public latrines. It was, by any measure, an extraordinary place.”10
In particular, classical civilizations are famous for their advances in civil and hydraulic engineering and architecture.11 “The Rome of 100 A.D. had better paved streets, sewage disposal, water supply, and fire protection than the capitals of civilized Europe in 1800.”12 Water conduits to supply fresh water first emerged in early classical Greece and later spread to Rome.13 Beginning with Appius Claudius in 312 B.C., the water system in Rome was gradually expanded, and by around A.D. 100, when the water superintendent Frontinus was writing, Roman homes were being supplied with running water. A central heating system was developed to serve public bathhouses, and the demand for bath buildings led to technological advances in heating methods, such as the hypocaust for heating floors.14 An enabling technology for many of the grand structures of Rome was the discovery of cement masonry, which has been called the only great invention of the Romans.15 That is certainly an exaggeration, but it is true that the Romans barely made any contributions to industrial development. This was not because they lacked the technological creativity or the technical skills. Roman rulers simply had no interest in industry. To paraphrase the historian Herbert Heaton, Roman leaders regarded war, politics, finance, and agriculture as the only activities to which they might put their hands.16 Even the advances made in mechanics—including the development of cranes, pumps, and water-lifting devices—were largely a set of ancillary inventions to support construction and hydraulic engineering efforts. As far as we can tell, these devices did not have any meaningful impact on private-sector productivity. Spillovers to the private sectors of the economy were rare, although hydraulic engineering found some applications in irrigation and drainage. Labor-replacing inventions in agriculture were few: there is evidence of some harvesting machines, but they were last mentioned in the fifth century A.D., and their disappearance suggests that they failed to find widespread use.17 In textile production, there were no noteworthy advances in mechanization. Spinning and weaving remained highly labor-intensive activities. Spinning was done using a spindle and whorl, which meant that it took some ten spinners in continuous employment to keep one loom supplied with yarn. Even the waterwheel—the most famous invention of the Roman Empire—probably had no significant impact on aggregate productivity. The waterwheel described by the Roman engineer Vitruvius during the first century B.C. was primarily used for flour milling by the fifth century A.D., and even in flour milling its use was seemingly limited.18
It is quite telling that most classical writers did not bother much with machinery. Vitruvius, who wrote extensively on technical matters, devoted only one of the ten books of his De Architectura to mechanical devices, and about half of that book was on military machines. The relative importance of military machinery speaks to the fact that technology in classical civilizations served as a tool to conserve and extend political power, rather than serving economic interests: even Roman roads and bridges were built mainly for military purposes.19 Later perceptions of De Architectura also well summarize the important achievements of the time. While it came to have profound impacts on leading writers and architects of the Renaissance (including the likes of Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and Niccolò de’ Niccoli) its impacts on later developments in machinery were insignificant. The famous drawing of the Vitruvian man by Leonardo da Vinci—one of the great inventors of the Renaissance—was based on the concepts of proportion put forward by Vitruvius, as the name suggests. But da Vinci found the inspiration for his ideas of machines elsewhere.
The main mechanical achievements of classical civilizations were to understand some of the principles and features of machines. By applying mathematics to discover the law of lever, and the principles of hydrostatics, Archimedes (287–212 B.C.) laid the foundations for some of Galileo’s later work, which would become essential to the development of more complex machines.20 Moreover, Mechanika (commonly attributed to Aristotle, but presumably written by someone else) includes extensive discussions of the lever, wheel, wedge, and pulley, but the applications discussed suggest limited interest in their practical use. And other elements that can be found in classical literature—such as the gear, cam, and screw—were mostly applied to war machines.
In other words, classical civilizations witnessed a number of technological advances that had virtually no meaningful economic impact, the reason being that for inventions to improve material standards of living, they need to serve economic purposes and must be applied in production. To assert that this was not a period of technological creativity would therefore be severely misguided. In fact, classical times were an era of tremendous technological sophistication. Brilliant inventors, such as Hero of Alexandria, developed the first vending machine, the first steam turbine, and a wind wheel that operated an organ.21 While these inventions were mere toys, they show the sparks of technological genius of classical times. In particular, the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical computing machine used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses, on a wreck near Crete in 1900, reveals the astounding technological creativity of Hellenism. The mechanism, which was built in the first century B.C., led Derek Price, who reconstructed it, to urge histori
ans to “completely rethink our attitudes toward ancient Greek technology. Men who could have built this could have built almost any mechanical device they wanted to.”22
The key question therefore is why so little of this technological creativity was translated into economic progress. Part of the answer probably lies in the fact that slavery provided disincentives for the introduction of worker-replacing technology. Although the historian Bertrand Gille has been critical of this thesis—arguing that science and technology flourished in the ancient world—the abundance of slaves might still explain why few technological insights were applied to production.23 In addition, the persistence of slavery meant that a large share of the population in classical civilizations was not free to pursue industrial activities. A related explanation put forward by John Bernal, a scientist and historian, suggests that the reason why the classical period failed to produce the machines of the Industrial Revolution was lack of economic incentive. The wealthy, he argues, could afford handmade items, and slaves could not afford to buy anything that wasn’t a necessity.24
Furthermore, technological advances were blocked at times. For example, Pliny the Elder tells a story from the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when a man had invented unbreakable glass. Instead of rewarding the inventor for his creativity, Tiberius had the man executed, fearing the possibility of angry workmen rebelling. More direct evidence of the government’s seeking to control technological progress is provided by Suetonius, who describes how Emperor Vespasian, who ruled in 69–79 A.D., reacted to the introduction of worker-replacing technology. When Vespasian was approached by a man who had invented a device for transporting columns to the Capitoline Hill, Vespasian refused to use the technology, declaring: “How will it be possible for me to feed the populace?”25 Because columns were large and heavy, transporting them from the mines to Rome required thousands of workers. Even though this was a huge expense to the government, the concern that depriving Romans of work might be politically destabilizing made conserving jobs by maintaining the technological status quo the more politically appealing option. Transporting columns provided workers with livelihoods, kept them busy, and thereby minimized chances of social unrest.26
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