korrents

Bret Devereaux

@bret-devereaux · 25 positions · 0 changes of mind

Ancient and military historian specialising in the economy of the ancient Mediterranean, who writes the long-form blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on pre-modern economies, logistics and warfare, and on what popular history, film and games get wrong about them.

Bret Devereaux did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    Being a rich or efficient agrarian economy is not what produces an industrial revolution, or one would have happened much earlier and somewhere other than Europe.

    Their wordsThe thing is, being a particularly complex or efficient agrarian economy doesn’t seem to have been the most important thing for producing the industrial revolution or it almost certainly would have happened earlier and probably not in Europe.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 1st of 8 in this piece

    Europe

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    An invention only matters when the principle, a workable design and an economically viable use for it all arrive together; the idea on its own changes nothing.

    Their wordsThe specificity matters here because each innovation in the chain required not merely the discovery of the principle, but also the design and an economically viable use-case to all line up in order to have impact.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 2nd of 8 in this piece

    design

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    Handing an ancient society a modern machine would have achieved nothing: the Romans could neither have built a steam engine nor found a profitable use for one.

    Their wordsIf you had given the Romans the designs for a Newcomen steam engine, they couldn’t have built it without developing whole new technologies for the purpose (or casting every part in bronze, which introduces its own problems) and then wouldn’t have had any profitable use to put it to.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 3rd of 8 in this piece

    Interesting

  7. Our reading

    Long-run GDP charts hide what matters: technologies are contingent and path dependent, so the same number can describe economies that work in entirely different ways.

    Their wordsAll of which is why simple graphs of things like ‘global historical GDP’ can be a bit deceptive: there’s a lot of particularity beneath the basic statistics of production because technologies are contingent and path dependent.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 4th of 8 in this piece

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    An economy running on muscle power has a hard and low ceiling on total production, because its only real input is land and the returns to more of it fall away fast.

    Their wordsNew land can be brought under cultivation (or cultivated more intensively) of course, but marginal gains decrease rapidly (because the best land is cultivated first and because adding more labor to already cultivated land, while it can increase harvests, is less efficient than cultivating new land) and there is a fairly hard ceiling on total production of this sort that was, for the most part, fairly low.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 5th of 8 in this piece

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    Roman economic growth came from institutions rather than from technology, which is why it did not outlive the institutions that produced it.

    Their wordsRoman economic growth, because it was a product of institutions instead of technologies, was not durable in the face of those institutions collapsing.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 6th of 8 in this piece

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    The Industrial Revolution was not inevitable: it needed a set of very specific preconditions that only Britain, at that moment, actually had.

    Their wordsIn my view the key takeaway here is just how contingent the industrial revolution was: the industrial revolution that occured required a number of very specific pre-conditions which were really on true on Great Britain in that period.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 7th of 8 in this piece

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    History has no predetermined path: its course turns on unpredictable contingencies rather than on deep currents that would have produced the same outcome anyway.

    Their wordsAs much as we might want to imagine that the greater currents push historical events largely on a predetermined path with but minor variations from what must always have been, in practice events are tremendously contingent on unpredictable variables.

    ↗Collections: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?acoup.blog 8th of 8 in this piece

    Interesting
  16. 7 days earlier

  17. Our reading

    However normal the rest of Sparta is argued to have been, its enslaved majority is not: no reconstruction of the population makes Sparta anything but extraordinarily enslaved.

    Their wordsConsequently if everything else about our understanding of Sparta is made less exceptional, is made more like a normal Greek polis, we are still stuck with this absolutely wildly high percentage of enslaved persons in this society.

    ↗Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Retrospectiveacoup.blog 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    Sparta is a cautionary tale rather than a model: an over-militarised, paranoid state that added only oppression to human experience.

    Their wordsSparta was – if you will permit the comparison – an ancient North Korea. An over-militarized, paranoid state which was able only to protect its own systems of internal brutality and which added only oppression to the sum of the human experience.

    ↗Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Retrospectiveacoup.blog 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting
  20. 5 weeks earlier

  21. Our reading

    About six weeks of supply is the most a pre-railway army could buy itself by adding carrying capacity, however many wagons it brought.

    Their wordsSo there are sharp limits to how much extra range an army can get by adding carrying capacity; in practice about a month and a half’s logistics buffer is the maximum that’s possible and even doing that is expensive.

    ↗Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part I: The Problemacoup.blog 1st of 3 in this piece

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Before railways an army could not carry the food it needed: anything longer than a few days in the field forced it to live off the country it was in.

    Their wordsThe tyranny of the wagon equation is thus inescapable: an army that plans to be in the field for more than just a few days cannot bring all of the food it needs with it; it must find most of its food locally.

    ↗Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part I: The Problemacoup.blog 2nd of 3 in this piece

    Interesting

  25. Our reading

    The binding constraint on pre-modern campaigning was feeding the army every day it was in the field, not winning the battle at the end of it.

    Their wordsIn order to move this army or sustain it in place it is thus necessary to ensure a massive and relatively continuous supply of food to the army. Failure to do that will result in the army falling apart long before it comes anywhere close to the enemy.

    ↗Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part I: The Problemacoup.blog 3rd of 3 in this piece

    Interesting
  26. 6 months earlier

  27. Our reading

    The fall of the Western Roman Empire was a real loss of state capacity, not merely a change of management, and the evidence for that loss is ample.

    Their wordsOf course that assumes a loss of state capacity, but as we’re going to see, the evidence for that loss is actually quite ample.

    ↗Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutionsacoup.blog 1st of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    A heavily centralised state is the most fragile kind: when Rome’s centre failed, its successors were left without the resources or administration to do what it had done.

    Their wordsPrecisely because the late Roman system was so top-heavy and centralized, the collapse of central Roman rule mortally wounded it and left the successor states of Rome with much more limited resources and administration to try to achieve their aims.

    ↗Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutionsacoup.blog 2nd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    Urban life in the West did not merely change after Rome, it practically vanished, and had to be built again from scratch centuries later.

    Their wordsthe system of social organization that characterized the ancient world practically vanished and would have to be redeveloped centuries later.

    ↗Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutionsacoup.blog 3rd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  33. Our reading

    An institution can outlive the state that built it: the Church survived the collapse of Roman political authority when Rome’s other institutions did not.

    Their wordsBut whereas other Roman institutions didn’t survive the collapse of Roman political authority, the Church as an institution very much did.

    ↗Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutionsacoup.blog 4th of 4 in this piece

    Interesting
  34. 18 months earlier

  35. Our reading

    Farmers were the overwhelming majority of every pre-modern agrarian society — 80 to 90 per cent of it — and that single fact shapes everything else about how those societies worked.

    Their wordsBecause these folks – these farmers – make up the majority of the population of basically all agrarian societies in the pre-modern period. And when I say ‘the majority’ I mean the vast majority, on the order of 80-90% in many cases

    ↗Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!acoup.blog 1st of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  37. Our reading

    Pre-modern subsistence farmers were minimising the risk of starvation rather than maximising output, and their apparently backward practices are rational once that is understood.

    Their wordsThese small subsistence farmers generally seek to minimize risk, rather than maximize profits. After all, improving yields by 5% doesn’t mean much if everyone starves to death in the third year because of a tail-risk that wasn’t mitigated.

    ↗Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!acoup.blog 2nd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  39. Our reading

    A pre-modern countryside produces an enormous amount of food and almost no extractable surplus, which is the hard limit on everything the state above it can do.

    Their wordsThere is a ton of food in this countryside (nearly everyone is producing it) but hardly any surplus.

    ↗Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!acoup.blog 3rd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  41. Our reading

    The "lazy peasant" is a slander of the leisured classes: pre-modern farmers stopped short of maximum effort because their priorities were not served by more of it.

    Their wordsThis isn’t because they are ‘lazy’ – the ‘lazy peasant’ (or poor worker generally) is a standard hypocrisy of the literature of the leisured aristocratic class towards poor farmers, today and in the past – but because they have priorities which are simply not served by labor maximization.

    ↗Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!acoup.blog 4th of 4 in this piece

    Interesting
  42. 2 weeks earlier

  43. Our reading

    The point of academic history is to put historical knowledge into the public’s hands so that the public can make better decisions with it.

    Their wordsI am going to contend that the primary purpose of the discipline of history is to foster greater historical knowledge in the public, in order that the public can use that knowledge (and the skills that come with it) to make better decisions.

    ↗Collections: How Your History Gets Madeacoup.blog 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  45. Our reading

    The best-known popular history books are usually not written by the best historians in their fields, because writing popular history does not earn academic advancement.

    Their wordspop history will not get you tenure, which leads to neglect in the academy and consequently the big pop-history books are often not written by the best historians in their fields.

    ↗Collections: How Your History Gets Madeacoup.blog 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting
  46. 6 months earlier

  47. Our reading

    States were born in the richest and easiest country, not in hard marginal land.

    Their wordsRather than hard, difficult country being the breeding ground for the state, it is in fact the richest, softest areas that were (for those who have been to Mesopotamia and are wondering why it doesn’t seem quite so rich and soft anymore, the word you want to look up is salinization).

    ↗Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilizationacoup.blog 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  49. Our reading

    Hard peoples from harsh places are not better at war: at the dawn of civilisation it was the softest and richest societies that won most often.

    Their wordsAnd it is quite clear from that evidence, that at the dawn of civilization, it was the least Fremen societies who tended to win the most.

    ↗Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilizationacoup.blog 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting