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Review Essay
PAULINA MATERA* University of Lodz Rafał MateRa** University of Lodz DOI: 10.26485/PS/2017/66.4/7 REVIEW ESSAY Walter Scheidel, The great leveler. Violence and the history of inequality from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press 2017, pp. 554. THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE BY WALTER SCHEIDEL Abstract This article constitutes a review of the book “The great leveler” written by Walter Scheidel. We refer to the issue of constructing theories and pointing out the regularities in history. We present the scientific background of the author, as well as his inspirations from other publications of a similar kind, notably “Capital in the twenty-first century” byt homas Piketty. We analyse the ele- ments of Scheidel’s thesis that the levelling of income inequalities within the framework of states may come about only from violent shocks: mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics. We comment on each of these factors, offering a critical approach to the author’s interpretation and directions for further research. We also argue that for the studies of income disparities the estimation of data about the middle class is * Dr hab., prof. Uł, Department of american and Media Studies, faculty of International and Political Studies; e-mail: [email protected] ** Dr hab., prof. Uł, Department of History of economic thought and economic History, Faculty of Economics and Sociology; e-mail: [email protected] 126 PaUlIna MateRa, Rafał MateRa crucial, as the lack of or small scope of it is the most dangerous for domes- tic stability. -
A Historiography of the Study of the Roman Economy: Economic Growth, Development, and Neoliberalism Author: Matthew S
Paper Information: Title: A Historiography of the Study of the Roman Economy: Economic Growth, Development, and Neoliberalism Author: Matthew S. Hobson Pages: 11–26 DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/TRAC2013_i_iii Publication Date: 04 April 2014 Volume Information: Platts, H., Pearce, J., Barron, C., Lundock, J., and Yoo, J. (eds) 2014. TRAC 2013: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, King’s College, London 2013. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Copyright and Hardcopy Editions: The following paper was originally published in print format by Oxbow Books for TRAC. Hard copy editions of this volume may still be available, and can be purchased direct from Oxbow at http://www.oxbowbooks.com. TRAC has now made this paper available as Open Access through an agreement with the publisher. Copyright remains with TRAC and the individual author(s), and all use or quotation of this paper and/or its contents must be acknowledged. This paper was released in digital Open Access format in July 2017 A Historiography of the Study of the Roman Economy: Economic Growth, Development, and Neoliberalism Matthew S. Hobson Introduction This paper attempts a historiography of the study of the Roman economy over the last forty years. It is argued that a new paradigm, used in the sense of a broad set of values, assumptions and concepts shared by those within the field, began to emerge during the 1980s, reaching its most concrete form in the middle of the last decade with the publication of the Cambridge Economic History of the Graeco-Roman World (Scheidel et al. 2007a). The new paradigm manifests itself most clearly in the adoption of the ideological outlook of development economics, a body of economic theory which first came into being in the immediate post-war period with the ostensible motive of removing poverty from the ‘underdeveloped’ parts of the globe (Escobar 1995: 3–12, 21–54). -
Morris Short CV
Ian Morris Current position Willard Professor of Classics and Fellow of the Archaeology Center, Stanford University Education B.A., June 1981, Birmingham University; Ph.D., October 1985, Cambridge University Previous positions Contributing Editor, Stratfor Visiting Professor in the Executive MBA Program, Business School, University of Zurich Philippe Roman Visiting Professor of International Relations and History, London School of Economics University of Chicago, 1987-95. Depts. of History and Classics, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College; Associate Member, Dept. of Anthropology Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge, 1985-87 Books Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2015. Translated into 5 languages War! What is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization, from Primates to Robots. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2014. Translated into 7 languages The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Determines the Fate of Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2013. Translated into Chinese Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2010. Translated into 13 languages The Dynamics of Ancient Empires. New York: Oxford University Press 2009 (editor, with Walter Scheidel) The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007 (editor, with Walter Scheidel and Richard Saller) The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2005 (editor, with Joe Manning) The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall. 1st ed. 2005; 2nd ed. 2009 (with Barry Powell) Archaeology as Cultural History: Words and Things in Iron Age Greece. -
D226-12 Bagnall.Pdf
Pragmateiai 27 ESTRATTO - OFF PRINT Bari 2014 © 2014 Edipuglia srl L’autore ha il diritto di stampare o diffondere copie di questo PDF esclusivamente per uso scientifico o didattico. Edipuglia si riserva di mettere in vendita il PDF, oltre alla versione cartacea. L’autore ha diritto di pubblicare in internet il PDF originale allo scadere di 24 mesi. The author has the right to print or distribute copies of this PDF exclusively for scientific or educational purposes. Edipuglia reserves the right to sell the PDF, in addition to the paper version. The author has the right to publish the original PDF on the internet at the end of 24 months. RogeR S. Bagnall laTe RoMan DaTa ColleCTion Modern attempts to quantify aspects of life in the ancient world tend to rely mainly on the collection or creation of data from documents or artifacts. We clas- sify and count, whether individuals in households or names or pots or shipwrecks. Most of the papers in this volume refer to investigations of this type, and so do most of my own past forays into quantification of social and economic phenom- ena. 1 on such studies is based the recent synthesis of the economic history of an- tiquity in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. 2 This approach has been driven in large part by the fact that ancient authors do not tend to give us the kind of statistics we are accustomed to in the modern world and ar- dently desire for antiquity, but also by widespread and often well-founded distrust of most of the numbers preserved in ancient authors. -
The Impact of the Roman Army (200 BC – AD 476)
Impact of Empire 6 IMEM-6-deBlois_CS2.indd i 5-4-2007 8:35:52 Impact of Empire Editorial Board of the series Impact of Empire (= Management Team of the Network Impact of Empire) Lukas de Blois, Angelos Chaniotis Ségolène Demougin, Olivier Hekster, Gerda de Kleijn Luuk de Ligt, Elio Lo Cascio, Michael Peachin John Rich, and Christian Witschel Executive Secretariat of the Series and the Network Lukas de Blois, Olivier Hekster Gerda de Kleijn and John Rich Radboud University of Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands E-mail addresses: [email protected] and [email protected] Academic Board of the International Network Impact of Empire geza alföldy – stéphane benoist – anthony birley christer bruun – john drinkwater – werner eck – peter funke andrea giardina – johannes hahn – fik meijer – onno van nijf marie-thérèse raepsaet-charlier – john richardson bert van der spek – richard talbert – willem zwalve VOLUME 6 IMEM-6-deBlois_CS2.indd ii 5-4-2007 8:35:52 The Impact of the Roman Army (200 BC – AD 476) Economic, Social, Political, Religious and Cultural Aspects Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Roman Empire, 200 B.C. – A.D. 476) Capri, March 29 – April 2, 2005 Edited by Lukas de Blois & Elio Lo Cascio With the Aid of Olivier Hekster & Gerda de Kleijn LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. -
Elio Lo Cascio & Paolo Malanima
Ancient and Pre-Modern Economies GDP in the Roman Empire and Early Modern Europe Elio Lo Cascio & Paolo Malanima (2011) Venezia, March 21st- 25th 2011 Estimates of per capita and aggregate GDP in the early Roman Empire are pre- sented, discussed and tested. Then a comparison is proposed between these es- timates and GDP in late medieval and early modern European economies. The re- sult is that Roman per capita GDP two thousand years ago was the same as that of other pre-modern agrarian economies before modern growth. Pre-modern product per capita in ancient Mediterranean civilisations underwent cycles of rise and de- cline within a narrow range. A long-term progressive path from Antiquity to the eve of modernisation is not confirmed by the available evidence. 1. Diverse estimates 2. A similar method 3. The procedure 4. Testing the data 5. Roman and pre-modern economies 6. The conclusions by Goldsmith and Maddison 7. Per capita GDP in sesterces, wheat and dollars 8. The poverty line Conclusion Elio Lo Cascio [email protected] Paolo Malanima [email protected] Ancient and Pre-Modern Economies GDP in Roman Empire and Early Modern Europe Elio Lo Cascio & Paolo Malanima Were the ancient Greeks and Romans richer or poorer than medieval and early modern European inhabitants? Was the productive capacity of the ancient Euro-Mediterranean economies comparable to that of the late Middle Ages and early Modern European civilizations? How far was ancient per capita GDP from that of our modern advanced societies? Some 40 years after the renowned work by Finley (1973) on the an- cient economy, historians of the ancient Greek and Roman world share a very diverse perspective and stress the rising trend of product, aggregate and per capita, both in the classical Greek economy of the 8th- 4th century BC and in the Roman civilization during the last centuries of the Republic and the first of the Principate (Scheidel, Morris, Saller (eds.) 2007). -
The MEASURE of CIVILIZATION IAN MORRIS
The MEASURE of CIVILIZATION How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations IAN MORRIS 0RUULVLQGE First published in Great Britain in 2013 by PROFILE BOOKS LTD 3A Exmouth House Pine Street London EC1R 0JH www.pro!lebooks.com First published in the United States of America in 2013 by Princeton University Press Copyright © Ian Morris, 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 78125 019 8 eISBN 978 1 84765 864 7 The paper this book is printed on is certi#ed by the © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-2061 0RUULVLQGE CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xiii Preface xv 1 Introduction: Quantifying Social Development 1 2 Methods and Assumptions 25 3 Energy Capture 53 4 Social Organization 144 5 War- Making Capacity 173 6 Information Technology 218 7 Discussion: The Limits and Potential of Measuring Development 238 Notes 265 References 321 Index 375 vii 0RUULVLQGE PREFACE THE MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION IS A COMPANION VOLUME to my earlier book Why the West Rules— For Now . -
Roman Population Size: the Logic of the Debate
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics Roman population size: the logic of the debate Version 2.0 July 2007 Walter Scheidel Stanford University Abstract: This paper provides a critical assessment of the current state of the debate about the number of Roman citizens and the size of the population of Roman Italy. Rather than trying to make a case for a particular reading of the evidence, it aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of rival approaches and examine the validity of existing arguments and critiques. After a brief survey of the evidence and the principal positions of modern scholarship, it focuses on a number of salient issues such as urbanization, military service, labor markets, political stability, living standards, and carrying capacity, and considers the significance of field surveys and comparative demographic evidence. © Walter Scheidel. [email protected] 1 1. Roman population size: why it matters Our ignorance of ancient population numbers is one of the biggest obstacles to our understanding of Roman history. After generations of prolific scholarship, we still do not know how many people inhabited Roman Italy and the Mediterranean at any given point in time. When I say ‘we do not know’ I do not simply mean that we lack numbers that are both precise and safely known to be accurate: that would surely be an unreasonably high standard to apply to any pre-modern society. What I mean is that even the appropriate order of magnitude remains a matter of intense dispute. This uncertainty profoundly affects modern reconstructions of Roman history in two ways. First of all, our estimates of overall Italian population number are to a large extent a direct function of our views on the size of the Roman citizenry, and inevitably shape any broader guesses concerning the demography of the Roman empire as a whole. -
1 the Economy of the Early Roman Empire Peter Temin Draft 2.2 Why
The Economy of the Early Roman Empire Peter Temin Draft 2.2 Why should economists be interested in the economics of ancient Rome? The Roman literature we read and the ruins we visit suggest that there was a flourishing and apparently prosperous economy two millennia ago. How did they do it? How was the Roman economy organized? Recent research suggests some answers. I focus on the early Roman Empire. It followed the Roman Republic in 27 BCE with the development under Augustus of a monarchy known as the Principate. It was followed in turn by the late Roman Empire that began around 200 CE, when the failings of Imperial control led to political and economic instability and the subsequent decline of the Augustan Principate (Goodman, 1997). Most of the surviving literature comes from the late Republic or the early Empire; the ruins we see overwhelmingly date from the early Empire. I use evidence from the late Republic and early Empire, which appear to have witnessed widespread economic prosperity and possibly economic growth. A prominent ancient historian estimated that the Italian peninsula was about 30 percent urbanized in the early Roman Empire (Hopkins, 1978, p. 68). Using urbanization as an index of per capita income suggests that GDP per capita in Roman Italy was comparable to that in the late 17th century in England and Holland, the most advanced European economies before the Industrial Revolution. This very rough index is supported by an equally rough calculation of real wages, defined as wages divided by the 1 price of wheat (Allen, 2001; Temin, 2005). -
Territorio, Popolazione E Risorse: Popolazione Territorio, Nell’Economia Del Mondo Romano Mondo Del Nell’Economia
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II romano mondo del nell’economia strutture produttive e risorse: popolazione Territorio, Pubblicazioni del Dipartimento di Studi umanistici Clio. Saggi di scienze storiche, archeologiche e storicoartistiche 31 Il volume trae spunto dalle relazioni discusse nel Convegno Territorio, popolazione e risorse: strutture produttive nell’eco- nomia del mondo romano, organizzato a Napoli il 26 ottobre 2018; rappresenta il risultato di un progetto di ricerca inteso ad analizzare l’evoluzione economica, politica e sociale del terri- torio italico, principalmente della regio I, in epoca romana. Per questo specifico ambito geografico-amministrativo, si sono considerati aspetti e problemi relativi al paesaggio rurale, alle forme di produzione e al ruolo delle città, attraverso la rilettu- ra di diverse tipologie di evidence (innanzitutto fonti letterarie e documentarie), sulla base del presupposto teorico che esista una stretta correlazione tra popolazione, sfruttamento delle risorse e urbanizzazione. Territorio, popolazione e risorse: strutture produttive nell’economia del mondo romano a cura di Giovanna Daniela Merola e Alfredina Storchi Marino ISBN 978-88-6887-091-1 ISBN 978-88-6887-091-1 DOI 10.6093/978-88-6887-091-1 Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Clio. Saggi di scienze storiche, archeologiche e storico-artistiche 31 Territorio, popolazione e risorse: strutture produttive nell’economia del mondo romano a cura di Giovanna Daniela Merola e Alfredina Storchi Marino Federico II University Press fedOA Press Territorio, popolazione e risorse: strutture produttive nell’economia del mondo romano / a cura di Giovanna Daniela Merola e Alfredina Storchi Marino. – Napoli : FedOAPress, 2020. – 176 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. – (Clio. -
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics In search of Roman economic growth Version 1.0 June 2008 Walter Scheidel Stanford University Abstract: This paper seeks to relate proxy indices of economic performance to competing hypotheses of sustainable and unsustainable intensive economic growth in the Roman world. It considers the economic relevance of certain types of archaeological data, the potential of income-centered indices of economic performance, and the complex relationship between economic growth and incomes documented in the more recent past, and concludes with a conjectural argument in support of a Malthusian model of unsustainable economic growth triggered by integration. © Walter Scheidel. [email protected] Introduction In 2002, Richard Saller urged Roman historians to define their terms in discussing ‘economic growth’. He emphasized the necessity of distinguishing gross or extensive growth from per capita or intensive growth and argued that the observed upturn in economic indicators in the late republican and early monarchical periods may well be compatible with a fairly low annual rate of intensive growth of less than 0.1 percent. He also identified the need for explanations of the abatement of signs of economic expansion and the timing of this phenomenon.1 A new paper by Peter Temin meets this demand by introducing alternative models of the nature of growth that are susceptible to empirical testing. He invites us to choose between “a single spurt of productivity change whose effects were gradually eroded by Malthusian pressures” and the notion “that Roman productivity growth continued until some unrelated factors inhibited it”.2 Testable working hypotheses about the nature of Roman economic growth are essential but have so far been absent from the debate. -
Oxford University, 1968 MA
William V. Harris William R. Shepherd Professor of History Columbia University History Education Ph.D. – Oxford University, 1968 M.A. – Oxford University, 1964 B.A. – Oxford University, 1961 Selected Publications Books Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome and the Gods(Edited with Brooke Holmes) Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation Noctes Campanae: studi di storia ed archeologia dell’Italia preromana e romana in memoria di Martin Frederiksen (Edited with Elio Lo Cascio) Rethinking the Mediterranean Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece Selected Articles "Roman Governments and Commerce, 300 BC -- AD 300", in C. Zaccagnini (ed.), Mercanti e politica nel mondo antico (Bari & Rome, 2003), 279-309 (2003) "The Rage of Women", in S. Braund & G.W. Most (eds.), Anger in ClassicalAntiquity (Cambridge, 2003), 121-143 “Roman Opinions about the Truthfulness of Dreams‟, Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003), 18- 34 rev. of M. Steinby, Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae vols. V and VI, Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003), 540-544 rev. of C. Barton, Roman Honor, American Historical Review 108 (2003), 561-562 rev. of S. Settis, Patrimonio S.p.A., Times Literary Supplement, 27 June 2003, 10 rev. of M. Barbanera, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Times Literary Supplement 23 January 2004, 10 rev. of Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Times Literary Supplement 10 September 2004, 9 “The Mediterranean and Ancient History”, in W.V. Harris (ed.), Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford, 2005) , 1-42 “Can Enemies too Be Brave? A Question about Roman Representation of the Other”, in M.F.