XPost: talk.politics.misc, soc.history.what-if, alt.history.what-if   
   From: aspqrz@tpg.com.au   
      
   On Sat, 07 Dec 2019 21:12:24 -0600, Ned Latham   
    wrote:   
      
   >> I am at a bit of a loss to explain why Rome missed the boat.   
   >   
   >Christianity stultified it.   
      
   Christianity had little or nothing to do with it.   
      
   The real problem was economic ... slavery.   
      
   By the early medieval period slavery was gone (or going) almost   
   everywhere in the Mediterranean world and its peripheries ... replaced   
   by Serfdom, which was more efficient, economically speaking, and that,   
   too, was being replaced, albeit slowly, by the end of the medieval   
   period in most places.   
      
   Slavery made mechanical and industrial innovation uneconomic in the   
   early, usually expensive, stages.   
      
   Phil McGregor   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)