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A good article with an opaque headline that gives no clue that it compares the ancient Roman economy to the early modern one. I agree slavery was very importan

A good article with an opaque headline that gives no clue that it compares the ancient Roman economy to the early modern one. I agree slavery was very important but, early modern Europe had slavery too. It begs the question to just say slavery was less important to the modern economy: why was that? One difference is that early modern Europe, for all its wars, had no dominant apex predator like the Roman Republic. True, the Republic fostered advanced trade -- it was wise enough not to destroy provincial economies. But aristocrats still lived off the taxes and bribes payed in conquered lands. This meant that if you had some wealth, the best investment for it was to bribe your way to a government post. This general pattern lead to the empire, and to its corruption. It also explains the rentier culture that the article describes.

PeterisP 10y ago
Yes, it's important to read such claims exactly and literally - as the OP states, "Roman Italy had comparable per capita income to the Dutch Republic in 1600". Assuming that this is true, it is still clear that Roman Empire and even more so Roman Egypt did not have a comparable income. Roman Italy was fed and clothed by products of non-Italian economies; It's easy to get a multiplier of your GDP if you have landowners that "farm" overseas land with overseas slave labor that isn't part of your economy consumption.
- abecedarius 10y ago
  There's a recent book by Ober, _The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece_, pointing out that the pre-Roman Greek world had per-capita income that high. I think a better question is why did that culture not keep advancing, and maybe the biggest part of the answer is that they got conquered by Rome.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    But first they were conquered by Macedonia -- was Greek in many ways, but it did not have the political culture that Ober says distinguished the Poleis.
    - abecedarius 10y ago
      I'm including the Hellenistic era. It continued to grow economically at well above normal preindustrial rates (according to Ober), if not quite as high as in the classical period. Technological progress might've been even faster then -- it was the time of Archimedes and the Antikythera device, and much else. (Russo, The Forgotten Revolution.) Ober concluded with a post-Alexander chapter: the Hellenistic cities were not completely at the mercy of empire-building despots because a walled city at the time was very hard to conquer (instead of starving out) leaving a Nash equilibrium where cities paid substantial taxes but weren't messed with too much in their internal politics, so that much of that culture survived for quite some time. (From my memory of a book I read a year ago.) I'd guess that even without Rome, military technology & organization would've made cities increasingly vulnerable, and it'd have been a race between increasing despotism from such developments and the fact that freer more dynamic societies also have a kind of military advantage (see Archimedes again at Syracuse). But of course I'm indulging in total speculation.
  - flukus 10y ago
    I assume that's not counting the slaves? My understanding is that the greeks had some of the highest percentages of slaves to citizens in history.
    - abecedarius 10y ago
      The slavery makes me very uncomfortable in wondering about this, yes. It varied a lot between the poleis, like Sparta vs. Athens, and I don't think the Rome of the original post was an improvement.
deleted 10y ago
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PeterisP 10y ago

Yes, it's important to read such claims exactly and literally - as the OP states, "Roman Italy had comparable per capita income to the Dutch Republic in 1600". Assuming that this is true, it is still clear that Roman Empire and even more so Roman Egypt did not have a comparable income. Roman Italy was fed and clothed by products of non-Italian economies; It's easy to get a multiplier of your GDP if you have landowners that "farm" overseas land with overseas slave labor that isn't part of your economy consumption.

abecedarius 10y ago
There's a recent book by Ober, _The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece_, pointing out that the pre-Roman Greek world had per-capita income that high. I think a better question is why did that culture not keep advancing, and maybe the biggest part of the answer is that they got conquered by Rome.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  But first they were conquered by Macedonia -- was Greek in many ways, but it did not have the political culture that Ober says distinguished the Poleis.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    I'm including the Hellenistic era. It continued to grow economically at well above normal preindustrial rates (according to Ober), if not quite as high as in the classical period. Technological progress might've been even faster then -- it was the time of Archimedes and the Antikythera device, and much else. (Russo, The Forgotten Revolution.) Ober concluded with a post-Alexander chapter: the Hellenistic cities were not completely at the mercy of empire-building despots because a walled city at the time was very hard to conquer (instead of starving out) leaving a Nash equilibrium where cities paid substantial taxes but weren't messed with too much in their internal politics, so that much of that culture survived for quite some time. (From my memory of a book I read a year ago.) I'd guess that even without Rome, military technology & organization would've made cities increasingly vulnerable, and it'd have been a race between increasing despotism from such developments and the fact that freer more dynamic societies also have a kind of military advantage (see Archimedes again at Syracuse). But of course I'm indulging in total speculation.
- flukus 10y ago
  I assume that's not counting the slaves? My understanding is that the greeks had some of the highest percentages of slaves to citizens in history.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    The slavery makes me very uncomfortable in wondering about this, yes. It varied a lot between the poleis, like Sparta vs. Athens, and I don't think the Rome of the original post was an improvement.

deleted 10y ago

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