The Roman economy has been enjoying a vivid interest in the past few years. The start of the Oxford Roman Economy Project in 2005 and the publication in 2007 of the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (henceforth CEHGRW), with the programme it set out based on North's ‘New Institutional Economics’, have thoroughly changed the research context.
This Companion offers a state of the art thematic survey in sixteen chapters, organised in five sections on ‘Theory’, ‘Labour’, ‘Production’, ‘Distribution’ and ‘Outcomes’. They target a broad audience but are written by leading experts. The overall quality is very high. S.’s introduction, ‘Approaching the Roman Economy’, offers the best available guide to the subject and will also prove useful to economic historians of other pre-industrial societies.
Based mainly on archaeological datasets most scholars today see the Roman economy as performing exceptionally well compared with other pre-industrial economies. However, the old issue of whether or not this performance was driven by market dynamics remains unresolved and also runs windingly through this book.
Temin, ‘The Contribution of Economics’, argues that the tools and models of economics are valuable even if the Roman empire would not have had a market economy. The principles of supply and demand, comparative advantage and Malthusian effects are universal. Whether or not they lead to a market economy and on which scale depends on geography (transport costs) and institutions (transaction costs). Temin believes that this happened on an unprecedented scale in the Roman empire. Kron, ‘Food Production’, similarly views the Roman rural economy as the most advanced rural market economy in pre-industrial times. Hawkins, ‘Manufacture’, argues that professional collegia mitigated transaction costs for manufacturers forming sub-contracting networks, allowing them to overcome fluctuations in demand.
Kehoe is more cautious in his chapter, ‘Contract Labour’. Wage labour was important on large estates and in the building sector, but the labour market remained largely restricted to unskilled labour and wages remained close to subsistence. Land-owners generally preferred stable incomes and long term relations to high but unpredictable profits. Von Reden, ‘Money and Finance’, shows how the Roman monetary system transformed local economies throughout the empire, but rejects interpreting this as a sign of integration in terms of market prices and production (p. 275). Local/regional economies became monetised, but remained local/regional.
Other chapters stress non-market phenomena. Bang, ‘Predation’, and S., ‘Slavery’, show the important role of coercion. S.’s chapter on ‘Physical Well-being’ warns that even if Roman economic performance was high, it did not lead to longer or healthier lives.
The divide between scholars who emphasise the role of market activities and those who emphasise non-market factors is clearest in the contributions on trade. These are bundled in ‘A Forum on Trade’, in which five leading scholars briefly state their views. Wilson stresses the indisputability of the high levels of long-distance trade in the Roman empire. The contributions by Silver, Bang and Morley, however, show how this may be explained in very different ways depending on whether one stresses markets (Silver) or coercion, reciprocity and state administration (Bang, Morley). Erdkamp argues that supply and demand in itself failed to generate a trade in grain. But a commercial trade in grain could develop in regions where commercial networks supplying large urbanised zones existed. This in turn boosted urban economies in those regions.
Erdkamp also tackles the question of ‘Urbanism’. He shows that the divide between urban and rural economy was thin. Urban elites were predominantly land-owners. Their rents fuelled urban production. In that sense most Roman cities were consumer cities. But non-agricultural production also took place outside cities and peasant farmers provided wage labour needed for the urban economy.
The volume is closely connected to the CEHGRW. Both acknowledge the importance of studying the visible manifestations of economic performance – material remains as well as texts – but strongly emphasise the importance of theories and models to explain this performance and plead for comparison with other societies to understand the specific causes of Roman development.
Although neither is committed to a single theoretical model, New Institutional Economics provides the main source of inspiration. It is presented as a ‘way forward that has the potential to bridge the gap between formalist or neo-classical notions of comparative advantage and a benign state and more substantivist or fiscalist models of commercial development’ (p. 9). Unfortunately, the key problem for using NIE in economic history is not addressed: what drove institutional change? To what extent (if any) did institutions change to lower transaction costs and increase economic efficiency? This has become a central problem in early-modern economic history (cf. S. Ogilvie, ‘Whatever is, is Right? Economic Institutions in Pre-industrial Europe’, Economic History Review 60 [2007], 649–84). Only Bang takes a clear position on this issue. Inspired by North, Wallis and Weingast's Violence and Social Orders (2009) he argues that Rome's rent seeking elites prevented the ‘dynamics of “creative destruction”’ (p. 211) – the hallmark of modern capitalism – from changing the institutional set-up of society. Comparing this view and the intellectual authorities behind it with Temin's shows that although NIE may bridge the gap between market-centred and power-centred narratives, it might not bring them any closer.
The volume is advertised as ‘a comprehensive and innovative introduction’ (back cover and website). It is certainly innovative, but not comprehensive. It even appears never to have been intended as such. The editor describes it as ‘a companion to the predominantly chronological narrative of the CEHGRW’ (p. 16) and urges readers to read and use both side by side. As a free standing project there are indeed important chapters missing. For instance, there is no chapter on demography or ecology, even though the importance of both is acknowledged (pp. 10–12), or on household production or on technology. Instead the reader is referred to the CEHGRW (p. 16) where these topics are treated in depth. Unfortunately, the match is awkward: chapters in the CEHGRW are longer, more detailed and not limited to the Roman economy.
Ecology and geography rarely show up in this volume. Technology, however, repeatedly does. Vivenza refers to the old unresolved question of whether slavery was a brake on innovation (‘Roman Economic Thought’). Wilson discusses technological advances in ‘Raw Materials and Energy’. Adams shows that the limitations of ancient transport technology were less drastic than often believed (‘Transport’). Various other chapters note the advanced state of Roman technology, but Saller argues that investments in human capital and formal education were too low to ensure a steady stream of technological innovation (‘Human Capital and Economic Growth’). Temin, nevertheless, seems to suggest technological innovations pushed the Malthusian equilibrium upwards.
As far as chronology is concerned, the stress is on the Principate, but developments in the Late Republic are taken into account and the ‘failure of the system’ in the third century receives considerable attention. The chapter on ‘Post-Roman economies’ by Loseby provides a welcome introduction to the transitional period from the early fifth to the late seventh century c.e. But it rather complements Giardina's chapter on the transition to Late Antiquity in the CEHGRW than discuss the theme of economic ‘outcomes’.
The book ends with a useful ‘further reading’ section, which unfortunately contains almost only works in English.
The volume provides a very good introduction, which I have no hesitation in recommending. But the editor is right that its full potential is only realised when used together with the CEHGRW.
