------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (December 2007)
Joseph G. Manning and Ian Morris, editors, _The Ancient Economy:
Evidence and Models_. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
xiii + 285 pp. $60 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8047-4805-5.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Astrid Moeller, Seminar fuer Alte Geschichte,
Freiburg University.
For more than one hundred years the economic history of ancient
Greece and Rome has been a battlefield of passionate disagreement.
First, there was the Buecher-Meyer controversy; then it was Moses I.
Finley in the 1970s and 1980s whose analysis of the ancient economy
remained highly controversial. This book under review belongs to the
still ongoing debate concerning the question about the most adequate
approach to the study of ancient economic history. The book has a
high aim in being published with the intention to change the field by
building a generalizing and comparative ancient economic history,
connected both to discussions in the social sciences as well as those
in the humanities. On the other hand, the editors' self-assessment of
what the book really achieves is much more modest. It is neither a
systematic review of ancient Mediterranean economies nor a fully
developed model, but a deliberate attempt to open up further
dialogue. The book is a valuable stocktaking of the discussions in
the fields into which the history of the ancient Mediterranean is
traditionally divided and which constitute separate parts of the
book: the Near East, the Aegean, Egypt and the Roman Mediterranean.
It is, nevertheless, not yet an economic history of the ancient
Mediterranean. Its most valuable aspect for readers of EH.Net
consists in the fact that it does offer up-to-date insights for
non-specialists in each field treated: The history of research is
spread out by a number of examples illustrating different theoretical
approaches and model-building. The kinds of evidence that vary in
each field such as literary texts in Greek economic history,
supplemented by inscriptions in the case of Roman economy,
non-literary papyri in Egypt and a wide variety of texts from palaces
and temples in the Near East are discussed in a lucid manner and open
questions are identified. All this gives a good impression of the
current discussion among scholars in the various areas of the
Mediterranean.
Finley's mark on the field has not yet disappeared. Most of the
contributions take his views on the ancient economy as a starting
point. Even the whole book owes its title to two of Finley's most
important works: _The Ancient Economy_ (1973) and _Ancient History:
Evidence and Models_ (1985). Since Finley wrote on the ancient
economy, perspectives have changed and there is a desire among
scholars to break free from his overpowering influence. Nearly all
contributors acknowledge how much they owe to Finley, but insist that
it is high time to develop the field of ancient economy in new
directions.
Ian Morris' and Joe Manning's introduction not only defines the
framework, but here the most programmatic statements of the book are
given. Their methodological credo holds that theory, method and data
are inseparable and that it is not enough to classify and analyze
primary sources without building models and relating them to the
empirical material. They analyze the current state of ancient
economic history as economic history without economics, holding on to
a divided-Mediterranean model due to the separation of scholarly
fields by language and types of evidence. This is well within the
framework of Finley, who had once maintained that the Greco-Roman
economy was entirely different from those of the Ancient Near East
and Egypt. The impression from recent research in these fields
indicates that the reality was more complex than Finley's model
suggested.
The editors' other major concern lies in establishing a more
explicitly social science history that will provide the precision
needed for the comparative study of ancient Mediterranean economies.
The greater accuracy should be achieved by definition of key terms
and clarification of underlying assumptions, extra explicitness about
processes of model building, the presentation of clear propositions
with testable implications, clear statements of methods and standards
of falsification, indication of causal relationships, quantification
whenever possible, and formulation of descriptions and explanations
in ways that can be generalized to allow comparisons between
different regions and periods. One may wonder why the statement of
such methodological guidelines is at all necessary. The editors
analyze the current state of ancient Mediterranean studies as based
on the humanistic methodology of understanding, instead of the
explanation of the social scientist. These approaches are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. Since Max Weber, however, there have
been attempts to bring both approaches together. Nevertheless, the
editors' quest for explanation, falsification and quantification is a
necessary methodological step towards a new economic history of the
ancient Mediterranean.
Mario Liverani's overview of the Near Eastern Bronze Age concentrates
on the history of interpretations in this field, a genus, according
to Liverani, not yet established. The lines of tradition do not seem
to be in the minds of the scholars, since the traditional
philological approach considers the latest reading the best and
previous ones obsolete. For the study of economic history, he demands
the consideration of cultural forms in economic behavior: Economic
activities depend on social and cultural conditions, not only on
economic laws.
Peter Bedford treats the economy of the Near East in the first
millennium BC. He discusses the influence of Weber, Polanyi, Finley
and Marxist approaches on the scholarship in this field. Finley's
divided-Mediterranean model is criticized in that the conditions in
the Near East were not as fundamentally different from the
Greco-Roman world as Finley assumed. Bedford's discussion of the
evidence gives a very good impression of the material available for
model building to every non-Near-Eastern scholar. He points out that
regions and periods are different and that the Syro-Palestinian coast
has to be considered in any modeling.
Both Liverani and Bedford are commented on by Mark Granovetter who
points to the fact that the discussions in ancient economic history
are framed, on the one hand, by the ideas of Weber, Polanyi and
Finley and, on the other, by the rational actor - optimal outcome
argument. He emphasizes the one-sidedness of both Polanyi and
rational-choice interpretations. According to him, to play off
politics dominating a society against rational economic action or
vice versa is unproductive. One better asks how political, economic,
and social activities and institutions fit together and how they
produce the great variability of outcomes we see in history. Models
to cover this wealth of possibilities certainly need to be complex.
Ian Morris' contribution on archaeology, standards of living and
Greek economic history deals with the limitations and perils of the
archaeological material. Unlike most of the other papers that are
rather pieces of secondary scholarship, he works from empirical
evidence. His proposal for doing economic history after Finley is to
concentrate on economic growth. Finley and the substantivists paid
little attention on economic growth assuming that this did not much
occur earlier than 1800 AD. Nor did Finley pay attention to standards
of living, which are, however, a central issue in doing economic
history according to Morris. In identifying an increase in household
sizes in Greece by five to six between 800 and 300 BC, Morris
identifies sustained improvement in standards of living, albeit
across a rather long period of time together with a roughly ten-fold
increase in population. To link this increase in the standard of
living to quantified changes in economic output per capita does prove
difficult. Morris is convinced that we deal with a surprisingly high
level of economic growth that calls for new models and constitutes a
challenge to the current orthodoxy that agrarian economies were
essentially static before 1750 AD.
John Davies gives the third paper of his triad on ways of modeling
ancient economies visually. He points to several instances that need
to be incorporated into a realistic model of ancient economy in
contrast to the standard discourse of economic analysis: A
significant portion of production and consumption took place within
family farms and never reached markets. Elements of ostentation,
largesse, or euergetism played a major role that leaves the problem
of tracing the intended return, but to ignore social returns means to
ignore a major component of ancient economic interaction. Neither the
homo oeconomicus with his psychological profile nor assumptions of
effective price mechanisms can be applied across the spectrum of
ancient societies. No ancient economy can be defined, or was
dominated, by one particular mode without change. In creating his
highly complex model diagram, Davies concentrates on the tracing of
flows. The result drives the complexity of a two-dimensional diagram
too far; it is difficult to distinguish the important features from
the less important ones. He seems to feel the limits of such an
endeavor and suggests, among other things, exploring the
possibilities of mathematizing the language of description.
This point is called into question by Takeshi Amemiya who comments on
Davies. He is less optimistic about mathematically sophisticated
models, since they tend to distract from the important details of
historical reality. The mathematically inexperienced person has less
chance to see its weaknesses. According to him, most econometricians
are content with estimating reduced-form statistical models, which
might be useful for analyzing the Athenian economy, if there were
enough data. Amemiya expresses sympathy with Davies' quest for models
that show a high degree of intricacy, complexity, instability, and
disarticulatedness; he suggests that every economist should strive
for that.
Joe Manning explores the relationship of evidence to models in the
Ptolemaic economy. He believes that one can write an economic history
of Ptolemaic Egypt, but he is less confident about proposing a
dynamic, testable model. To him, the nature of the ancient economy
renders it more descriptive than analytic. His main question is: How
does the type of evidence shape the way of model building? The
well-known evidence from Egypt is papyri whose study remains the
domain of specialists; Greek and Demotic are generally treated as two
different fields without much communication. The Ptolemaic economy
once neither received much treatment in the context of broader issues
of economic history, nor in an Egyptological context, since for
Egyptologists this was part of the less interesting Late Period. Over
the last two decades, however, a renewed general interest was driven
by Sa?d's _Orientalism_ (1978) and papyrological studies made the
evidence more accessible. Moreover, there was a revival of reading
Demotic texts. In contrast to Finley's approach to the ancient
economy, the study of the Ptolemaic economy has been driven by the
study of documents. It was Michail Rostovtzeff who created the
influential model of the state-centralized economy which can no
longer be sustained; Finley did not consider any change from the old
system in Egypt by the new foreign rulers. A new model is emerging
through a regional approach (Fayyum looks rather more special than
the Nile valley) that shows local power alongside state power and
considers institutional change.
Roger Bagnall treats evidence and models for the economy of Roman
Egypt. Starting with criticism of Finley for his tendency to consider
Egypt unique on the assumption that papyri had no relevance to other
parts of the Mediterranean, Bagnall considers the uniqueness argument
obsolete: Egyptian-style documentation has been found in other places
and Egyptian papyri can be used for major issues of Roman economy.
Not yet presenting a new model, Bagnall describes areas where real
progress has been made: the models of colonate and feudalism, the use
of tenancy in agriculture and the operation of large estates have
been under close scrutiny. We now know that Oxyrhynchos had more
textile industry than Finley thought. The producer/consumer dichotomy
in the urban economy, transportation and social status has recently
received study. The Romans did not leave the Ptolemaic system
untouched: They set out to dismantle the remains of the Ptolemaic
state; professional bureaucracy was largely replaced by liturgical
service; land was turned over large scale to private ownership, in
particular the old Ptolemaic military allotments. The aim should be a
working model of the economy of Roman Egypt, of a particular Roman
province, with both its universal and its particular dimension. This
task should be possible as there is enough evidence.
R. Bruce Hitchner makes a case for economic growth in the Roman
Empire. He describes the empire as the most stable, resource-rich,
culturally integrated, and economically developed state of antiquity.
Thus, the conditions for real economic growth between the later first
century BC and the early third century AD were favorable. Economic
growth refers to a rise in the average real income per head and a
corresponding rise in population, but it is not so easy to determine
whether growth occurred in historical societies where statistical
information on income and population is lacking. Hitchner does not
seek refuge in the creation of proxy statistics, but in the
application of what is called the "cliometric methods of debate." He
supports his case for economic growth by analyzing environmental
conditions, infrastructure, the rule of law and secure institutions,
technological advancement without spectacular innovations, the
development of a non-agricultural production sector, and increased
trade. Surely, economic growth was not universal in the Roman Empire,
but Hitchner's set of indications is impressive and calls for models
of the pre-modern economy that are able to incorporate such growth.
Yet again, the Finley orthodoxy is called into question.
Richard Saller contributes to the debate on economic growth in the
Roman Empire, but is far less optimistic than Hitchner. He starts by
asking why the thought of Rostovtzeff and Finley, who had much more
in common than is generally believed, has been distorted. According
to him it was the polemical tone that characterized the reaction to
Finley's _Ancient Economy_ that encouraged polarization. The lack of
data to find a satisfying conclusion and the debate over the value of
new archaeological finds does not help either to find a more
objective view of what the representatives of both directions in
ancient economic history actually said. Saller looks at five points
that are commonly identified as causes for growth in per capita
production by modern economists and applies those to the Roman
Empire: Development of trade compared to the importance of the
agricultural sector remained restricted; capital investment was
restricted by the rentier mentality; technological improvement was
not remarkable; improved living standards in the urban sector,
education and training remained a reserve of the elite without much
benefit to increased productivity; while the institutional framework
might be a test case for Douglass North's neo-institutional theory.
However, he concludes that in Italy there was a less consistent
growth than one would expect. The little growth that we detect
between 100 BC and 200 AD was significant from the perspective of the
period of Roman annexation of the Mediterranean. From the perspective
of the industrial age the growth was, however, imperceptible.
Finally, Avner Greif comments on Hitchner and Saller and suggests
that we should look at Rome's positive contributions. To him, the
Roman waterwheel constitutes a conceptual breakthrough, and the legal
tradition as well as the language left a long-term and significant
mark on the European culture. He proposes to ask how the Roman Empire
shaped the process through which modern economic growth has developed.
The volume is witness to the lively debates currently held on ancient
economic history. All the authors are resolved to go beyond the
orthodoxies established by Finley; they actually do incorporate
questions and methods from economic history and theory of other
periods without exposing themselves to the accusation of formalism or
modernism. The papers bring together specialists of different periods
and regions, thus serving the development of shared methods. The book
sets out core issues in each area that will need to be addressed
before a proper comparative history can develop. This book is an
important step towards an economic history of the ancient
Mediterranean.
Astrid Moeller is Associate Professor for Ancient History at Freiburg
University (Germany). Her research interests include the economic
history of the ancient Mediterranean. She contributed to _The
Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World_.
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