Re:Why no Roman industrial revolution?
by WorldMaker on Friday August 26, 2022 @06:37PM
(#32613543)
> Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia
Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well).
That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests.
It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)
Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well).
That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests.
It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)