Escape from Rome. The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity.

SCHEIDEL, W.,

ISBN 10: 0691172188 / ISBN 13: 9780691172187

Published by Princeton University Press, 2019

About this Item

Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford, 2019. XV,670p. Gilt titled hard bound with pictorial dust wrappers. Fore edge with some smaller stains. 'Walter Scheidel says in his acknowledgements that he proposed to write a short book on this topic, but he ended up with this long book. He seems to have written two books, as suggested by his subtitle: one about the fall of the Roman Empire and one about the Industrial Revolution. His aim is to connect these two events in a monocausal stream. (.) Scheidel summarizes his 500-page book as follows: 'I wrote this book to establish ? two simple points: that interlocking forms of productive fragmentation were of paramount importance and indeed indispensable in creating the specific set of conditions that gave birth to modernity, and that the divergences that precipitated this outcome in only one part of the world but not in others were highly robust (p. 27).' Alternatively, why did Europe rather than China have an industrial revolution? (.) Escape from Rome is a well-written survey of an enormous literature on the history of the world. If you have time to read 500 pages, it is fun and interesting to read. Economic historians might want to start with Part IV to evaluate Scheidel?s thesis. My summary is that this is an admirable book that would have benefited from an additional edit which included the current Epilogue in Part IV. Whether Rome had to rise and fall before we could have an Industrial Revolution remains speculative and worthy of discussion after reading through Scheidel?s history and counterfactual speculations.' (PETER TEMIN on Economic History Net, March 2020).

Seller Inventory # 64066

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Escape from Rome. The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity.
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691172188
• ISBN 13: 9780691172187
• Binding: Hardcover

About this title

Synopsis

The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world

The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world?

In an absorbing narrative that begins with ancient Rome but stretches far beyond it, from Byzantium to China and from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, Scheidel shows how the demise of Rome and the enduring failure of empire-building on European soil ensured competitive fragmentation between and within states. This rich diversity encouraged political, economic, scientific, and technological breakthroughs that allowed Europe to surge ahead while other parts of the world lagged behind, burdened as they were by traditional empires and predatory regimes that lived by conquest. It wasn’t until Europe "escaped" from Rome that it launched an economic transformation that changed the continent and ultimately the world.

What has the Roman Empire ever done for us? Fall and go away.

About the Author

Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. His many books include The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton). He lives in Palo Alto, California. Twitter @WalterScheidel