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The cover of Escape from Rome

Escape from Rome

Walter Scheidel, 2019

See why Europe's lasting fragmentation after Rome, not any virtue of its own, opened the road to modern growth, and what China's repeated reunifications closed off.

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22 parts, about 46 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Argues that the modern world grew from one condition: Rome fell and no empire ever again united Europe
  • Recasts debates on coal, trade, science and institutions as stories that quietly assume a fragmented, competitive Europe
  • Walter Scheidel tests his claim with population data, a close comparison with China and carefully disciplined counterfactuals

Who it is for

  • Readers asking why industrial growth began in Europe
  • Fans of Roman and Chinese history who like big comparisons
  • Economists and historians interested in how states and competition shape growth

What the summary covers

  1. A Break in the Curve1 min
  2. One Condition: Competitive Fragmentation2 min
  3. Comparison and Counterfactuals1 min
  4. Measuring the Anomaly2 min
  5. The Roman Core: Cheap Citizenship, Costly Service2 min
  6. A Periphery Made for Conquest1 min
  7. The Nearest Opening: Alexander2 min
  8. Eight Attempts, None Close6 min
  9. The First Great Divergence2 min
  10. Follow the Money1 min
  11. Nature: The Steppe, and Its Limits3 min
  12. Culture Ran Downstream2 min
  13. Almost Every Explanation of Modernity Presupposes the Missing Empire2 min
  14. Institutions: Church, Estates, Communes1 min
  15. War, Taxes and the Race for Revenue2 min
  16. China as Foil, Not as Despotism2 min
  17. New Worlds, and Why Empires Stayed Home2 min
  18. Rotating the World2 min
  19. Knowledge and Values2 min
  20. The Synthesis2 min
  21. Why We Escaped2 min
  22. What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?4 min

Recommended by

  • Francis FukuyamaAuthor of The End of History and the Last Man
    A challenging and counterintuitive hypothesis.
  • Peter FrankopanAuthor of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
  • Joel MokyrAuthor of A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy
    Astonishingly learned, hugely ambitious, and deeply thoughtful

About the author

  • Walter ScheidelProfessor of ancient history at Stanford University
    • Born 9 July 1966; Austrian historian
    • Studied ancient history and numismatics at the University of Vienna, doctorate 1993
    • Finley Research Fellow in Ancient History at Darwin College, Cambridge, 1996 to 1999
    • Joined Stanford Classics in 2003, professor 2004, Dickason Professor in the Humanities 2008

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