ahorbinski: text says "in capitalist America, bank robs you" (we are the 99%)
Andrea J. Horbinski ([personal profile] ahorbinski) wrote2014-02-21 02:59 pm

Review: Chapters from the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World

Bibliographic Data: Jongman, Willem M. “The Early Roman Empire: Consumption.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, ed. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller, 592-618. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Main Argument: Jongman argues that "Roman National Income" (= per capita income x population) "was indeed larger than that of any pre-industrial European state, and was only suppressed much later by then more populous empires such as pre-modern China" (596). Also, "Roman per capita incomes too were remarkably high for a pre-industrial economy. Rome may well have been what Wrigley has called an advanced organic economy, constrained by the Malthusian ceiling, but hugging it as closely as possible" (ibid). However, while "this high standard of material culture was enjoyed by relatively large segments of the population" for a while, it did not last, and wealth (i.e. the surplus) was increasingly unequally distributed as time progressed from the Republic to the high empire and after the third century crisis.

Argument, Sources, Examples All the indicators Jongman musters tell, in aggregate, the same general story: the standard of living increased over the late Republic and the early empire, which must mean that per capita incomes were increasing. However, beginning in the late 2ndC CE (possibly as a result of the Antonine Plague? [not clear why an epidemic should have such dramatic social results; must look up death rates. 30% death rate = extreme social dislocation. possibly cemented by 3rdC crisis?]), the gains of ordinary Romans were reversed and elites came to control more and more of the wealth, with the result that they were crowded out of the competition for economic surplus, along with, ironically, the state. Whereas earlier consumption had been more broadly equal across classes (i.e. the rich acquired less property because they put their wealth into public works), after the 2ndC CE they acquired more and more land. [NB: Jongman's population figures are huge.]

Bibliographic Data: Kehoe, Dennis P. “The Early Roman Empire: Production.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, ed. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller, 543-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Main Argument: Kehoe is looking at the question of production: to what extent the Roman economy did or did not look like those of early modern Europe, in which the rural to urban transfer of wealth enabled the emergence of urban manufacturing and commercial sectors which acted as wealth multipliers because they then exchanged goods with the countryside and other cities. He argues that there was little structural transformation in the early imperial economy because agriculture remained its basis [this is true of all economies prior to the IR; not sure why this is remarkable] and because markets remained highly imperfect [again, totally usual]. He also argues that public spending did not cause as much wealth as investing in technological development would have [does he not know about the water mills? This seems weirdly anachronistic]. Kehoe concludes that the "modest economic growth that characterized the early imperial period" created demand for basic manufactures, namely ceramics and textiles, which gave elites the chance to supply raw materials and gave artisans and workers the chance to undertake the actual production of these goods (568). [This is basically a "they didn't have capitalism!" argument. Well, yes. But that doesn't mean they didn't have high economic production for premodern societies. Not sure if it quite counts as proto-industry in the de Vries model. That's a good question.]

Argument, Sources, Examples Kehoe doesn't appear to know about the water mills; he argues that "the most important technological change affecting agricultural productivity involved the dissemination of olive and wine presses throughout the Mediterranean" (552). [Why not the water mills?] Moreover, the late Republican villa model of Italian production, centered around intensive viticulture, gave way by the end of the 2ndC to the latifundia model, which was widespread throughout the provinces (hence the provincialization of the core) and which was focused on a more mixed economy. Kehoe is also pessimistic about agricultural production, claiming that landowners had difficulty keeping their land under cultivation and that urban starvation was probably not uncommon.

Bibliographic Data: Lo Cascio, Elio. “The Early Roman Empire: The State and the Economy.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, ed. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller, 619-50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Main Argument: Lo Cascio is looking at whether the unparalleled, for a premodern economy, heights that the Roman economy reached in the first two centuries of the Principate were in spite of the state or because of it. This is partly an unfolding of Hopkins' "taxes and trade" model, which is predicated on the notion that "the amount of taxes necessary for the state to finance its expenditure must have been small to allow the extraction of private rents" and that taxes must therefore have been low and the ratio of GDP to state budget, high (622). Lo Cascio concludes that "the economic integration of the empire was facilitated by the existence of a unified political and fiscal organization and the concentration of the wealthiest landowners in Rome and Italy" (646). Moreover, the Hopkins model needs to be made more dynamic, since the growth in Mediterranean maritime commerce cannot be explained simply as a result of the relationship between taxes and trade. Moreover, over the course of the high empire, the economic relationship between the core and the periphery mirrored the social changes in the Roman elite and in the empire itself: "the core became less of a core while the periphery was rendered less peripheral" (647).

Argument, Sources, Examples Lo Cascio argues that we must explore the economic history of the Roman empire not through unrecoverable data (i.e. per capita income) but by proxies, principally the degree of urbanization (unsurpassed until the 20thC in many areas under Roman domination) and the pollution of the troposphere for smelting etc as recovered from Greenland ice cores and Sweden lake beds: again, not surpassed until the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, the Romans had a lot of different kinds of taxes, many of which are poorly attested in the sources. For at least the first two centuries of the principate, the empire appears to have acted to reduce transaction costs, most notably in the creation of a single monetary area (and, one would add, institutions of credit that pertained throughout it), but also in the suppression of piracy, spread of law and property laws, etc etc. Furthermore, the monetized portion of the Roman economy was much greater proportionally during this period than during the eras before or after, to say nothing of the sheer quantity of coinage, most of which entered circulation via public expenditure. Lo Cascio notes that the emperor "acted as a private [economic] individual but also set the rules of the game," which ambiguity "helps explain why even the expansion of imperial economy did not change the market character of the imperial economy" (641), since imperial property was always exploited in a dual model: private contractors acting within a market framework.

Bibliographic Data: Morley, Neville. “The Early Roman Empire: Distribution.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, ed. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller, 570-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Main Argument: Morley argues that "the mobilization and distribution of resources, human and material, was the key to Roman power," and that "the political and cultural integration of the empire went hand in hand with, in the broadest sense, its economic integration, as widely separated regions came to be connected through the movement of goods" (570-71). His question is "how far distribution under the empire differed in volume and nature from the constant 'Brownian motion' of cabotage and periodic rural markets that had long characterized the Mediterranean region" (572). Morley's picture is of expanding production during the high empire and, after the 2ndC CE, of local production expanding to depress intra-regional distribution as well as the stagnation of demand as first Rome and then cities in general became less important as centers of demand. In Morley's view, then, "the economy of the Roman empire was integrated only to a limited degree" in that developments in one area did not necessarily affect developments in every other area.

Argument, Sources, Examples Archaeology of the Roman period shows "regular, large-scale, intraregional distribution of "products which were consumed by the mass of the population, but which in the past had been produced locally or not consumed at all by the majority" because "a great number of people under the Roman empire chose or found themselves compelled to obtain a greater proportion of their needs (nutritional and social) from outside their immediate locality on a regular basis" (574). Romanization created consumptive desires that could not be satisfied locally along with the means to satisfy them (i.e. the expansion of distributive activities). The expansion of inter-regional distribution was powered by the demand of two groups: the state and the great landowners, the state's needs being driven by the army, the urbis Romanum, and the urban population in the rest of the empire. Moreover, no part of the empire was ever self-sufficient; there was always demand for goods that could not be produced locally or in sufficient quantity at all levels of the urban hierarchy. Moreover, although Romans lacked certain early modern European commercial practices "that have sometimes been identified as prerequisites" for economic development, "it is not clear that they lacked the commercial structures that they actually needed" (587).

Critical assessment: I am highly suspicious of Kehoe's overall argument, but the rest of these articles seem pretty solid. (See future posts for caveats about the generally optimistic tone of being able to know the Roman imperial economy in toto, however.)

Meta notes: It's the economy, stupid.