Trade, commerce, and the state in the Roman world / edited by Andrew Wilson and Alan Bowman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wilson, Andrew, 1968- editor.

Bowman, Alan K., editor.

Orville H. Bullitt Classics Fund.

Series:

Oxford studies on the Roman economy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Commerce--History--To 500.

Commerce.

History.

Rome--Commerce--History.

Rome.

Rome (Empire).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 volume : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

This innovative monograph series reflects a vigorous revival of interest in the ancient economy, focusing on the Mediterranean world under Roman rule (c.100 bc to AD 350). Carefully quantified archaeological and documentary data are integrated to help ancient historians, economic historians, and archaeologists think about economic behaviour collectively rather than from separate perspectives. The volumes include a substantial comparative element and will thus be of interest to historians of other periods and places. This volume presents nineteen papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists discussing trade in the Roman Empire during the period c.100 bc to ad 350. It focuses especially on the role of the Roman state in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. As part of a novel interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the chapters address its myriad facets on the basis of broadly different sources of evidence: historical, papyrological, and archaeological. They are grouped into three sections, covering institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome's external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance, but it is in the eastern part of the Empire itself where the state appears to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, ultimately let in the longer term in slightly different forms in the East and the West to a fundamental change in the political character of the Empire. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Trade, Commerce, and the State 1

Part I Institutions and the State

2 The State and the Economy: Fiscality and Taxation 27

3 Law, Commerce, and Finance in the Roman Empire 53

4 Market Regulation and Transaction Costs in the Roman Empire 117

5 Financial Institutions and Structures in the Last Century of the Roman Republic 133

6 Nile River Transport under the Romans 175

Part II Trade Within the Empire

7 The Indispensable Commodity: Notes on the Economy of Wood in the Roman Mediterranean 211

8 Stone Use and the Economy: Demand, Distribution, and the State 237

9 An Overview of the Circulation of Glass in Antiquity 265

10 Procurators' Business? Gallo-Roman Sigillata in Britain in the Second and Third Centuries ad 301

11 The Distribution of African Pottery under the Roman Empire: Evidence versus Interpretation 327

12 The Supply Networks of the Roman East and West: Interaction, Fragmentation, and the Origins of the Byzantine Economy 353

13 Prices and Costs in the Textile Industry in the Light of the Lead Tags from Siscia 397

14 Exports and Imports in Mauretania Tingitana: The Evidence from Thamusida 427

Part III Trade Beyond the Frontiers

15 The Silk Road between Syria and China 443

16 Egypt and Eastern Commerce during the Second Century ad and Later 531

17 Money and Flows of Coinage in the Red Sea Trade 557

18 The Port of Qana', a Junction between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea 579

19 Trade across Rome's Southern Frontier: The Sahara and the Garamantes 599.

Notes:

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Orville H. Bullitt Classics Fund.

ISBN:

9780198790662

019879066X

OCLC:

1016402196