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Bret Devereaux

What Bret Devereaux thinks about Europe

@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.

6 dated positions, 2022, in their own words. Our reading of what Bret Devereaux has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingBeing 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

  3. Our readingHanding 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

  5. Our readingRoman 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

  7. Our readingThe 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

  8. 7 days earlier

  9. Our readingHowever 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

  11. Our readingSparta 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