PERSPECTIVES ON ROMAN TECHNOLOGY

Summary. This paper considers the very different views on Roman technology expressed by K.D. White, O. Wikander and J.P. Oleson. The concept of Roman technology is explored in the light of recent archaeological research into boats, vehicles, water-lifting devices and water-mills. It is argued that the application of appropriate, evolving, and occasionally innovative technology can be detected in several spheres of civil and military engineering, such as water-supply and architecture. However, the application of technology is most impressive in the context of food production and transport. Whilst agreeing that the Roman empire was not fertile ground for an Industrial Revolution of the kind experienced in eighteenth-century England, I hope to demonstrate that this conclusion does not require a wholesale rejection of the possibility of technical innovation.     

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SAGEBRUSH REBELLION

The Sagebrush Rebellion began in the late 1970s with the objective of transferring various categories of federally owned lands to the states. The movement was centered in western “public lands” states, where nearly half the total land area is in federal ownership. Within a relatively short period of time this objective was changed to one of “privatizing” federal lands, of selling these land into private ownership. While the Sagebrush Rebellion has been highly political in its activities, the movement can be viewed in the perspective of historical land disposition policies in the U.S. These policies were changed near the turn of the century from alienating public lands into private ownership to their retention and management by the federal government. Confusion over the economics of building a free enterprise system based on private property rights, and the costs associated with building such as system, appear to have been major factors in changing land policies. Two important aras in which this occurred were the Homestead Act of 1862 and timber. The provisions of the Homestead Act imposed heavy costs on settlers, and these costs caused a reaction against the economic system that was being built.     

POLICY ISSUES IN AMERICAN SECURITY POLICY AND POLICY-MAKING USING AND CONTROLLING NEW WEAPONS

NATO may be confronting a crisis over the cruise missiles. Some allies may seek longer-range, nuclear-armed missile which could enable them to strike at Soviet MR/IRBMs and at other targets inside the USSR; others (along with many Americans) aim at restricting both the range and the missions of cruise missiles. The first option could jeopardize detente, inhibit further progress in SALT and conceivably weaken American control over the uses of nuclear weapons in time of war. The second could cause strains between the United States and its European allies. The best policy would seem to be to (1) delay any decision on cruise missile development and deployment in Europe; (2) seek a two-year freeze on all deployment of new nuclear delivery vehicles in Central Europe and of additional Soviet SS-20 IRBMs; (3) use this “breathing space” to seek agreement on the limitation of cruise missiles, MR/IRBMs and other “gray area” weapons in the region “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”     

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON CHANGES IN RURAL AREAS

The author advances an interesting and somewhat controversial argument for the dismal state of affairs in central Russia's countryside. Programs addressing problems in the countryside should focus not on reversing the tide of outmigration and agricultural employment loss, but on reducing labor intensity in agriculture and recognizing social and other realities working to the disadvantage of remote rural areas. What is needed is not expensive and unfeasible “revitalization” of the countryside, but the regulated decline of its agricultural workforce and the selective introduction of new labor-saving technologies and alternative land uses. Translated by H. L. Haslett, Leamington Spa, UK from: Evolyutsiya rasseleniya v SSSR, Chast' I (Evolution of Settlement in the USSR, Part I), G. M. Lappo, Zh. A. Zayonchkovskaya, and P. M. Polyan, eds. Moscow: Akademiya Nauk SSSR and Pol'skaya Akademiya Nauk, 1989, pp. 43-59.