This updated English translation of B.’s two-volume L’économie de la Grèce des cités is extremely welcome. In preparing it B. has taken account of subsequent scholarship in so far as it affects his text and expanded and updated the bibliography, but the book is in essence the same (p. xxv).
B. opens with a dense but stimulating survey of scholarship on the economic history of ancient Greece, from the Bücher–Meyer controversy to Finley and beyond. He situates his own interpretation within the field of New Institutional Economics, an approach to economic analysis which focuses on the social and legal ‘rules’ within which economic activity took place. In this case, he argues, it is the city-state (polis) which fundamentally determined the direction that the Greek economy took and its remarkable success.
The first half of the book, ‘Structures and Production’, corresponds to volume 1 of the French original. It deals with ecology, climate and demography; energy and transport costs; the polis as the context of economic activity; and production. Much here is familiar, though the discussion abounds with points of interest. B. argues that on the whole Greece was cooler and wetter than today, especially in the Classical period, which may have contributed to the prosperity of the generally dry Aegean region. The early age at which women usually married, together with mortality rates lower than commonly assumed, meant an average of approximately ten births per married woman and the potential for a ‘permanent demographic explosion’ (p. 50). B. emphasises the cost advantage of sea over land transport: the wind was the ‘secret hero of Greek economic growth’ (p. 79). Several features of the developing polis created an environment that led to strong economic growth: private ownership of land; the regular production of surpluses; the existence of markets; low taxes and the absence of an exploiting class.
In his discussion of farming, B. argues for gradual improvements in yields through the breeding of plants and animals, and the use of terracing and drainage to extend the percentage of cultivatable land. Fallowing and a shortage of manure limited yields, though there are traces of the rotation of crops. Much farming was geared towards the creation of a saleable surplus, often for export. B. concludes that ‘the image of the family farm producing exclusively for the needs of the household and selling only its occasional surplus must be radically abandoned’ (p. 174). Beyond farming, fishing was important, and fish products were widely traded. Textiles were often mass-produced for the market, with raw materials such as wool and dyes being imported. Productive loans were commonly taken out to start up businesses. Athens itself was a centre for both the production and the export of artisanal goods. Overall the economy of Greece grew at an annual rate of perhaps 0.4%, low by modern standards, but not at all indicative of stagnation.
The second half of the book, ‘Market and Trade’, focuses more narrowly on market exchange. Here B. emphasises the importance of the domestic market as a regulated space which benefited both buyers and sellers by guaranteeing fair dealing and minimising transaction costs. The invention of coined money and the availability of credit, especially at Athens, were not economically neutral developments, but strongly encouraged growth throughout the Aegean region. Greek poleis saw trade as an important source of tax revenue, and consequently had an interest in encouraging it. They created the emporion as a space for international trade and established legal mechanisms to facilitate the settlement of commercial disputes. The polis was itself an economic actor, both seeking to influence prices and on occasion directly buying staples for the benefit of its citizens. B. emphasises the scale and complexity of seaborne trade, based on a ‘vast international division of labor’ (p. 347) and associated gains in productivity.
B. uses a wide range of literary sources, inscriptions and archaeological material to draw a kaleidoscopic picture of the economy of Greece in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Athens is prominent throughout, but the book ranges widely, with examples taken from across the Greek world. One of many fascinating passages is a revelatory discussion of the economy of Hermione in the Argolid (pp. 361–4). B. is formidably knowledgeable, and it is a rare reader who will not learn a considerable amount from working through this book. That said, for all its length, it is not a systematic handbook, and B.’s primary concern with exchange and growth results in a somewhat uneven treatment of the economy of Greece as a whole. For example, there is little here on mining and almost nothing on quarrying. Public finances also attract little interest: we hear about various taxes levied on commerce, but not about how that money was spent.
The book clearly represents a sustained assault on M.I. Finley's The Ancient Economy (1973). Against Finley's picture of a sluggish economy hobbled by the values of a land-owning elite, in which trade played a marginal role, B. describes a booming market-oriented economy from which it was barely possible for either city-states (Sparta is an exception) or individuals to isolate themselves, in which everyone was driven by the need to turn a profit. Various sacred cows – the self-sufficient oikos, the consumer city – are summarily dispatched along the way. It is easy to be swept along by its central thesis, which is presented with a mass of detailed evidence and considerable elan.
B.’s thesis I find largely convincing, but in places the argument is pushed rather hard. Space permits me only to mention a few specific issues. First, it is mildly troubling that the key figure of c. 0.4% for the annual rate of growth of the economy of Greece seems to be based entirely on the proxy evidence of the size of houses. Second, I wonder about the impact of histoire événementielle, and of war in particular, on the model of steady economic growth that B. argues for. It seems prima facie implausible, for example, that the economy of Attica grew at all between, say, 430 and 360 b.c., not least because of the demographic collapse that the city suffered during the Peloponnesian War. To be sure, B. envisages a period of zero or even negative growth, but does his neo-Braudelian approach take sufficient account of the turbulent history of the period? Third, his general picture of Greek economic growth and social development is consistently, some may feel excessively, upbeat. For example, he regards commonly accepted estimates of mortality rates in Greece as too pessimistic because of the Greeks' high levels of hygiene, as evidenced by the design of houses, the provision of public water supplies and the availability of doctors. The court of Louis XIV, we are told, could have taken lessons in cleanliness from the ancient Greeks (p. 47).
B. engages with the views of other scholars less than one might expect. It is surprising, for example, that a book which so strongly emphasises maritime connectivity and specialisation has so little to say about P. Hordern and N. Purcell's The Corrupting Sea (2000). Again, the rather thin discussion of lending (banks do not appear in the index) could have benefited from consideration of E. Cohen's Athenian Economy and Society: a Banking Perspective (1992), whose argument, that by offering credit Athenian bankers greatly increased the money supply and thereby facilitated trade, would lend valuable support to B.’s overall view.
In a work of this scale and ambition, there will always be points about which one might disagree. Let me conclude, however, by emphasising that B. has written an extremely important book, wide-ranging and provocative in equal measure. It is certain to be very influential and deserves to be read and pondered by every historian of ancient Greece.
