CX260-30/CX360-30

 

How do you reconstruct an economy without hard data?
Nothing is more likely to provoke furious debate among Roman archaeologists and historians than ideas about the nature of the Roman economy. Did the Roman empire experience economic growth? Did slavery contribute to increased productivity, or did it stifle innovation? Did the empire witness technological advances that had economic consequences? Did the empire run out of gold and silver? Why was there long-distance trade in the Mediterranean, and beyond the boundaries of the empire? Was there a market economy, and was there an important merchant class in the Roman world? To these simple questions there are no easy answers, as we will discover through an examination of the textual and archaeological evidence.

This module is available in 2024/2025.

Module convenor: Professor Kevin Butcher

Summer reading

You may like to have a look at M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, Berkeley, 1999 (library class mark HC31.F56, https://warwick.summon.serialssolutions.com/#!/search/document?ho=t&include.ft.matches=f&fvf=ContentType,Newspaper%20Article,t%7CContentType,Book%20Review,t&l=en-UK&q=Finley,%20Moses&id=FETCHMERGED-warwick_catalog_b2755174x3).

Although this short book is old (it was first published in 1973) and many of its views are out of date, it had an enormous influence over the subject (and some scholars would argue that set back the study of the Roman economy for about thirty years).

Finley's position, and that of other like-minded scholars, is a topic that we will be discussing in more detail at the start of the module.

There is a foreword to the 1999 edition by Ian Morris that helps to set the book in context.