Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
External Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Different Sources

This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular 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. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: 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, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.

Globalisation vs the state? Macro- and micro-perspectives on Roman economies

Antiquity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (366) ◽  
pp. 1674-1676
Author(s):  
Martin Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
The State ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Roman Italy ◽  
The Impact

There can be few topics in Roman archaeology and history that are contested with such vigour and widespread interest as the Roman economy. In part, this present situation arises as a legacy of older debates on the significance of ancient economic growth and long-distance trade, in which key twentieth-century figures such as M.I. Finley, M. Rostovtzeff and K. Hopkins continue to loom large and provide compelling insights. More recently, the debate has been re-cast around questions of state involvement vs free markets, and the extent of market integration, as this pair of edited collections demonstrates. On the one hand, Trade, commerce and the state in the Roman World (edited by Andrew Wilson and Alan Bowman, hereafter TCS) takes a big picture view on the role of the Roman state in long-distance trade, arising from a conference that took place in 2009 as part of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘The Economy of the Roman Empire: Integration, Growth and Decline’. In contrast, The economic integration of Roman Italy (edited by Tymon de Haas and Gijs Tol, hereafter EIRI) brings together a series of typically smaller-scale studies focused on understanding the impact of economic changes on rural communities in Roman Italy. It emerges from another conference, held in 2013, this time as part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research project ‘Fora, Stations, and Sanctuaries: the Role of Minor Centres in the Economy of Roman Central Italy’.

scholarly journals Veterinarians and Public Health: Food Control in the Professionalization of Veterinarians

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. e1806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kari Tove Elvbakken
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The State ◽  
Food Control ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Food Inspection ◽  
Core Practice ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

This article explores the role of food control in the professionalization of veterinarians in Norway. Veterinarians became engaged in public health through food control and market inspection, which were the responsibility of Norway’s city boards of health from the 1860s. Food inspection served a double purpose: to ensure honest trade and to maintain the safety of food. I argue that food control, which was associated with cities’ efforts to secure public health and order, was important to the legitimacy of the veterinarian profession. This activity is not what one today sees as a core practice of veterinarians, which is the prevention and curing of animal sickness. Exploring boundary activities at the fringes of a profession, and especially activity connected to the city and the state, may shed light on the more general sources of professional influence and legitimacy in the Norwegian profession state.

scholarly journals Could Pushkin Have Repaid His Debts?

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-191
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Accurate Data ◽  
Publishing Activity ◽  
Estate Management ◽  
The City

The article states the necessity of creating an economic chronicle of Alexander Pushkin’s life. His economic life includes four aspects: publishing activity, estate management, playing cards, and life in the city. It is mentioned that the existing literature lacks accurate data on Pushkin’s incomes and expenses. The article studies a notorious episode concerning Pushkin’s loan received from the Moscow Savings Treasury. It is shown that there are certain questions connected with distribution of the money received and with Pushkin’s deposit in the Moscow Savings Treasury. Besides, the article analyses Pushkin’s loans from the State Treasury. The role of Egor Kankrin, Minister of Finance, in providing to Pushkin his credit conditions, and the attitude of Emperor Nicholas I towards the poet are emphasized. They resulted in the lending conditions being extremely soft: the loans were long-term and interest-free. However, Pushkin still needed money and had to borrow large sums from private persons. After his death, debts to the State Treasury and to private persons amounted to 138,988 rubles 33 kopeks. The author raises the question: did Pushkin have a real opportunity to repay his debts? Data from a Pushkin Trust report concerning incomes collected from the posthumous edition are analyzed. The article provides calculations confirming that Pushkin’s financial bankruptcy was far from being inevitable. Had he survived after the duel with d’Anthès, Pushkin would have been exiled to his village. He would have continued his literary work and, according to the optimistic estimate, could have repaid his debts within approximately four years.

Urban Mobility and Politics in Mexico City

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Sosa López
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
The State ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Toll Road ◽  
The City

Study of the struggle of a social movement, the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía, to stop the construction of an urban toll road in the southwestern end of Mexico City reveals that investments in transportation assumed to benefit the larger public are in fact creating new landscapes of infrastructural and democratic exclusion. Examination of the forms of citizen mobilization, alliances among diverse actors, and the role of accountability institutions as spaces for democratic experimentation suggests that struggles against large infrastructure projects allow citizens and the state to redraw the limits of authoritarianism and the meaning of sustainability and democracy in the city. El movimiento social Frente Amplio contra la Supervía se organizó para detener la construcción de una autopista de peaje urbana en el extremo suroeste de la Ciudad de México. El análisis de las luchas del Frente revela que las inversiones en la transportación que se suponía que beneficiarían a un público amplio en realidad están creando nuevos espacios de exclusión infraestructural y democrática. El análisis de las formas de movilización ciudadana, de las alianzas entre diferentes actores y del rol de las instituciones de rendición de cuentas como espacios de experimentación democrática sugiere que las luchas contra los grandes proyectos de infraestructura les permiten a los ciudadanos y al estado volver a trazar los límites del autoritarismo y el significado de la sostenibilidad y la democracia en la ciudad.

Introduction

2009 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Near East ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The State ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
City Of God ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

This chapter provides an overview of Book V of Augustine's The City of God. It analyzes how Rome has extended her imperial sway throughout Europe and the Near East in spite of the moral bankruptcy of the Roman state. It also reviews the solution offered by some philosophers about the expansion and consolidation of empire as the outcome of chance or fate. The chapter discusses how providence has endowed Roman leaders with traditional virtues that the aims of glory and honour for the individual, and dominion for the state that are at odds with Christianity's application of the virtues. It reviews the key to Augustine's philosophy of history, in which the Roman empire has spread and is maintained in existence by divine providence.

scholarly journals The Return of the Sacral King

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
The City

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.

‘The Pots on Our Roads’

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-88
Author(s):  
Gerald Chikozho Mazarire ◽  
Sandra Swart
Keyword(s):  
Chaotic System ◽  
The State ◽  
City Council ◽  
The Self ◽  
Traffic Police ◽  
Regulatory Instruments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vehicle Fleet ◽  
The City

This article explores the role of the ‘diaspora fleet’ in Harare’s urban commuter system. Imported vehicles in the form of haulage trucks and commuter buses were one of the popular and visible forms of diasporic investment over Zimbabwe’s difficult decade spanning from 2000 to about 2010. The article argues that this diaspora fleet occupies a significant place in the history of commuting in Harare. Diasporic investment introduced a cocktail of European vehicles that quickly became ramshackle and ended up discarded in scrap heaps around the city. These imports and the businesses based on them destroyed the self-regulatory framework existing in the commuting business. This disruption was facilitated by the retreat or undermining of the state and city council regulatory instruments, which in turn created a role for middlemen, who manoeuvred to perpetuate a new and chaotic system known as ‘mshika-shika [faster-faster]’, based on a culture of irresponsible competitive gambling. This chaotic system remains in place today to the chagrin of city council planners and traffic police. Its origins, we argue, lie in the cultures and practices introduced by the diasporan vehicle fleet.

scholarly journals Working for the State in the Urban Economies of Ankara, Bursa, and Salonica: From Empire to Nation State, 1840s–1940s

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 213-241
Author(s):  
M. Erdem Kabadayi
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The City ◽  
Of Greece

AbstractIn most cases, and particularly in the cases of Greece and Turkey, political transformation from multinational empire to nation state has been experienced to a great extent in urban centres. In Ankara, Bursa, and Salonica, the cities selected for this article, the consequences of state-making were drastic for all their inhabitants; Ankara and Bursa had strong Greek communities, while in the 1840s Salonica was the Jewish metropolis of the eastern Mediterranean, with a lively Muslim community. However, by the 1940s, Ankara and Bursa had lost almost all their non-Muslim inhabitants and Salonica had lost almost all its Muslims. This article analyses the occupational structures of those three cities in the mid-nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, tracing the role of the state as an employer and the effects of radical political change on the city-level historical dynamics of labour relations.

scholarly journals “RESIDENTIAL -“ MAHALLA QUARTERS ”ON THE TERRITORY OF THE CITY OF OSH AND PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT

2020 ◽  
pp. 223-230
Author(s):  
A.E. Satenov ◽  
T. S. Keneshov
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Residential Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Planning Practice ◽  
General Plan ◽  
Architectural Monument ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
The City

The article discusses the place and role of the formation of a specific type of individual residential development on the structure of the city of Osh. Research methods and the possibilities of their application in architectural and urban planning practice are considered. The problems of the state of individual residential development are discussed. The author proposes the use of modern methods of maintaining the protection of an architectural monument. Within the framework of “museumification, restoration, and renovation, it is proposed to take into account the influences of cultural and historical features of residential development in the formation of urban planning documentation and the general plan.

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