Mark Koyama tackles a question that sounds like academic fantasy but cuts to the heart of why some societies thrive while others stagnate: could the Roman Empire have sparked an industrial revolution? By weaving together a counter-factual novel, new archaeological data, and deep economic history, Koyama moves beyond the cliché that ancient people were simply too primitive to innovate. He forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that the conditions for modern growth were closer to the surface in antiquity than we admit, yet a specific cultural and institutional blind spot may have kept the gears from turning.
The Myth of Ancient Stagnation
For decades, the prevailing wisdom among historians was that the ancient world lacked the "economic rationality" necessary for sustained growth. Koyama dismantles this view by citing recent scholarship that paints a picture of a surprisingly modern Roman economy. He highlights Kyle Harper's research, noting that the empire fostered a "capillary penetration of markets everywhere" through peace, law, and infrastructure. The evidence is no longer just textual; it is physical. Koyama points to Willem Jongman's findings on "dramatic aggregate and per capita increases in production and consumption" from the third century BCE through the second century CE.
The archaeological record supports this narrative of prosperity. Koyama describes a world where "credit is the lubricant of commerce, and in the Roman empire the gears of trade whirred," with financial intermediation levels not seen again until the 17th or 18th centuries. This reframing is crucial because it removes the excuse of technological impossibility. The Romans had the markets, the currency, and the legal frameworks. As Koyama writes, "The clearing of piracy from the Mediterranean in the late Republic may have been the single most critical precondition for the burst of commercial expansion that the Romans witnessed."
"Roman banks and networks of commercial credit offered levels of financial intermediation not attained again until the most progressive corners of the seventeenth-eighteenth century global economy."
Yet, despite this "growth efflorescence," the empire never tipped into modern economic growth. Koyama argues that the Romans lacked a culture of invention, a large class of skilled tinkerers, and the labor scarcity that often drives automation. The economy was efficient, but it was not transformative. This distinction is vital: a wealthy empire is not the same as an industrial one.
The Counter-Factual Path
To explore what might have been, Koyama turns to Helen Dale's novel, Kingdom of the Wicked, which imagines a Rome where Archimedes survives and a series of technical innovations trigger rapid growth. Dale's hypothesis is provocative: she locates the potential for an industrial revolution in the early to mid-2nd century BCE, before the massive influx of slave labor from the conquests of Greece and Carthage. The logic is sound within economic theory. If the supply of cheap labor had been constrained, the incentive to invent labor-saving machinery would have skyrocketed.
Koyama explains that in Dale's timeline, Rome avoids the trap of relying on chattel slavery, which historically acted as an "insurmountable barrier to the adoption of labor-saving technology." Instead, the empire follows a path where "factor prices were crucial," and high wages might have driven the invention of steam engines or spinning jennies. This aligns with the economic historian Bob Allen's theory that the British Industrial Revolution was driven by a unique combination of high wages and cheap energy.
"Had wages been high and energy, and capital relatively cheap, would the Romans have put their engineering mindsets to the invention of steam engines and the equivalent of the spinning jenny?"
Critics might argue that this economic determinism overlooks the deep structural inertia of Roman society. Even without an influx of slaves, would the Roman elite have valued mechanical invention over military conquest or agricultural expansion? Koyama acknowledges this tension, noting that while the economic conditions could have been right, the social incentives were likely misaligned. The Roman world did not suffer from a lack of intelligence, but perhaps from a lack of direction.
The Cultural Barrier
The most compelling part of Koyama's analysis is his engagement with the cultural arguments for industrialization. He contrasts the economic views of Bob Allen with the cultural perspectives of Deirdre McCloskey and Joel Mokyr. While Allen focuses on price signals, McCloskey and Mokyr argue that a "Culture of Growth" and "Bourgeois Dignity" were the true catalysts. Koyama suggests that Rome failed to develop this specific cultural ethos.
He notes that there is no evidence of a "rhetorical change in attitudes towards commerce" in the Roman world. Unlike the 17th-century Dutch Republic or 18th-century England, Rome never developed a new-found respect for traders and merchants over soldiers and adventurers. The social status of the merchant remained low, and the distain for commerce persisted. Koyama writes, "If these cultural attitudes were the binding constraint in late medieval and early modern Europe, then they were equally binding in antiquity."
This cultural deficit is compounded by the Roman relationship with science. Koyama points out that the Roman Empire lacked a "competitive Republic of Science." Without a culture that celebrated the systematic pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, technological breakthroughs remained isolated curiosities rather than a cumulative process. Dale's novel even touches on this, suggesting that the absence of Christianity's prohibition on dissection might have accelerated medical and biological advances, but Koyama remains skeptical that this alone would have been enough.
"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."
The implication is stark: the Roman Empire had the hardware of a modern economy but lacked the software of a modern mindset. They had the markets, but not the culture of invention. They had the capital, but not the dignity of the bourgeois. This suggests that economic growth is not just a matter of resources or laws, but of a society's collective belief in the value of progress.
Bottom Line
Mark Koyama's analysis is a masterful exercise in historical counter-factuals that reveals more about our present than the past. The strongest part of his argument is the dismantling of the myth that ancient economies were primitive; the evidence for Roman prosperity is overwhelming. However, the piece's most significant vulnerability lies in its reliance on the "culture of growth" argument, which can be difficult to quantify or prove definitively. The reader should watch for how modern societies are addressing similar cultural barriers to innovation today, as the Roman case suggests that even the most advanced systems can stall without the right cultural soil.