Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods And Problems (Oxford Studies On The Roman Economy)
What you can read on the book description:
This collection of essays is the first volume in a new series, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Edited by the series editors, it focuses on the economic performance of the Roman empire, analysing the extent to which Roman political domination of the Mediterranean and north-west Europe created the conditions for the integration of agriculture, production, trade, and commerce across the regions of the empire. Using the evidence of both documents and archaeology, the contributors suggest how we can derive a quantified account of economic growth and contraction in the period of the empire's greatest extent and prosperity.
My review:
this is the starting point of an ambitious project, quantify the effectiveness of the Roman economy and verify some known patterns, such as the economic crisis of the third century.
The book and the project aim to provide a whole view, and considering the data we own, this is really, maybe too much ambitious. So, this book is mainly focused on the problems and the methods, providing some trends that help us to have a global view about what was happening.
For doing so, the book is focused on several main area:
- demography
- agriculture
- trade
- coinage
- living standards
The attempt is to find symptoms of growth (e.g. increasing level of urbanization), providing analysis of the data to see change and variability, development over time, variations over space and time.
Difficulties are rally big. Sometime the data are just valid for a geographical area and it is difficult to provide a global reply. Other time it is difficult top collect data to reflect time variation.
As said, this is a first book, and it is focused on problems and methods. Don't expect to find final replies (but you can find some replies on several topics we often discuss here
), but the book is worth of the time you will spend on it.
Personal note, on some chapter the book is effectively able to show the change over time, so the trends in different periods, in other chapter not really. I hope in the following books there will be more space for this analysis.
What you can read on the book description:
This collection of essays is the first volume in a new series, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Edited by the series editors, it focuses on the economic performance of the Roman empire, analysing the extent to which Roman political domination of the Mediterranean and north-west Europe created the conditions for the integration of agriculture, production, trade, and commerce across the regions of the empire. Using the evidence of both documents and archaeology, the contributors suggest how we can derive a quantified account of economic growth and contraction in the period of the empire's greatest extent and prosperity.
My review:
this is the starting point of an ambitious project, quantify the effectiveness of the Roman economy and verify some known patterns, such as the economic crisis of the third century.
The book and the project aim to provide a whole view, and considering the data we own, this is really, maybe too much ambitious. So, this book is mainly focused on the problems and the methods, providing some trends that help us to have a global view about what was happening.
For doing so, the book is focused on several main area:
- demography
- agriculture
- trade
- coinage
- living standards
The attempt is to find symptoms of growth (e.g. increasing level of urbanization), providing analysis of the data to see change and variability, development over time, variations over space and time.
Difficulties are rally big. Sometime the data are just valid for a geographical area and it is difficult to provide a global reply. Other time it is difficult top collect data to reflect time variation.
As said, this is a first book, and it is focused on problems and methods. Don't expect to find final replies (but you can find some replies on several topics we often discuss here
), but the book is worth of the time you will spend on it.Personal note, on some chapter the book is effectively able to show the change over time, so the trends in different periods, in other chapter not really. I hope in the following books there will be more space for this analysis.
