In this book, J. G. Manning introduces an integrated view of economic life in and around the Mediterranean Sea in the millennium from 1,000 bce to the start of the Common Era in less than 300 pages of text. This is a large task, and Manning organizes it as a contest between John Hicks (A Theory of Economic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) and Moses Finley (The Ancient Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

Manning quotes Hicks in the first sentence of the Preface and quotes him at the start of his Introduction, but he only refers to him a few times as the book progresses. Manning refers far more often to Finley during his exposition, even though Finley’s book has become unfashionable among ancient historians. Nevertheless, the opposition of these two views facilitates discussion of Manning’s main points.

Manning’s first point is to enlarge the open sea beyond the Mediterranean Sea. He argues for including records from Egypt and the Middle East in the Iron Age, enlarging his scope from the sea to great rivers like the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. We have more information from Egypt than from the Middle East as a result of Egypt’s dry climate and its subsequent history. Its inclusion adds to the richness that Manning can give of the Iron Age. This is an argument against Finley’s concern only with Greece and Rome in his conception of an ancient economy. Manning is correct to object to this restriction and broaden our perspective.

Manning’s second point is to stress the effects of climate change in the Iron Age. This extends the treatment of the Roman era climate by Kyle Harper (The Fate of Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). Climate is a good addition to ancient history, adding more dimensions to our knowledge of previously obscure events. It is much appreciated here, although Manning admits, “What I have provided here is very much a first step in a longer process of combining historical and natural archives” (p. 172).

Finley and Hicks disagree on the fundamentals of their stories. Finley described a stable and constant ancient economy while Hicks applauded change in the world economy wherever he found it. Hicks described the Greek city states as paragons of development, but he did not restrict his story to them. Manning favors Hicks’ dynamic view in his second major point, adding the climate to the list of variables we need to understand the past.

The book is divided into two parts that differ both in conception and readability. The first part establishes “the basic contour of first millennium bce Mediterranean economic history” (p. 106). Manning appears to be writing in this first part to ancient historians, trying to convince them of the two points noted earlier. There are many citations to other ancient historians, and the prose reads like an ongoing conversation between Manning and his colleagues.

The second part of the book applies the lessons of the first part to varying aspects of economic life in and around the Mediterranean. It starts with agriculture, the largest part of ancient economies, and progresses to climate change, demography, state formation, and contemporary economic thought. Growth, innovation, markets, and trade are discussed in a final substantive chapter. If this book sounds interesting for modern economic historians, I recommend that they start with the second part rather than at the beginning of the book.

Part two of the book opens with a letter from an agent on a wheat shipment on the Nile writing to his boss in 256 bce (p. 110). This letter reads like the letters from British and American captains in the West Indies writing to their owners in the eighteenth century. Letters like this can be found even in the Bronze Age, and the question for Manning was how commerce developed in the Iron Age. He turned to Hicks for a framework to assess how economies moved from the non-market circulation of goods to the rise of markets and concluded, “All three of Hicks’s stages existed in the first millennium bce. ... The growing use of silver coinage, increasingly integrated territory, and the greater specialization in trade drove the economic transformation in the first millennium bce Mediterranean world (p. 229).” In other words, Finley’s static view is inaccurate.

Manning noted that he described agrarian economies that did not have an industrial revolution. But he threw the baby out with the bathwater. There was a noteworthy gain in lifting water for agriculture in the first millennium bce known as the Archimedean Screw. Manning noted that water was lifted in Egypt by buckets with counterweights by the middle of the first millennium bce. But he ignored the Archimedean Screw invented by Archimedes in the third century bce after a visit to Egypt. We do not know if Archimedes was stimulated by the Egyptian buckets, but his innovation just after a trip suggests he was.

This is a curious omission because the Archimedean Screw confirms the dynamism of the Mediterranean economy in the first millennium bce. The screw was not a steam engine, but it was a dramatic change, and it is still used in Egypt to this day. While Manning is right not to overemphasize technical change before industrialization, he is wrong to ignore it. This invention also confirms the value of the expanded Mediterranean view in this book by tying Egypt and Greece together. Again, Hicks is a better guide than Finley.

The Open Sea is an innovative economic history of the first millennium bce in an expanded Mediterranean world. It is well documented with ample notes and many references. While it may be heavy going for non-specialists, it argues that the better-known advances of the Roman world benefitted from extensive economic development in the previous millennium. The Romans conquered and expanded the open sea, but they did not develop the economy from scratch.