On the fringe: Trade and Taxation in the Egyptian Eastern Desert (original) (raw)

Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

Wilson, A. I. and Bowman, A. K. (eds) (2018). Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman world (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018

This interdisciplinary volume presents eighteen papers 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. An introductory chapter by the editors sets the scene within the context of scholarly debate over the scale, nature and importance of Roman trade since the mid twentieth centuries. 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. Many of the major institutional factors are discussed in the first section: taxation by Alan Bowman (chapter 2); the legal structures by Boudewijn Sirks (chapter 3); market regulation and transaction costs by Elio Lo Cascio (chapter 4); Republican financial institutions by Philip Kay (chapter 5). A picture begins to emerge of heavy state involvement in establishing institutional frameworks conducive to trade, including provision of transport infrastructure, and, notably, interventions in the market to distort flows of particular goods, whether staples such as grain or olive oil, or luxuries such as marble, to particular concentrations of demands, principally Rome and the army garrisons. But this seems to have been done by the engagement of private contractors, in a way which stimulated private trade on the back of it: Colin Adams’ chapter on Nile transport (chapter 6) points out the incentives or subsidies carrying a private cargo as a supplement to a state cargo, and thus how the imbrication of state and private transport subsidised private trade. The second and third sections concentrate on internal and external (long-distance) trade, respectively. Among the underlying questions of economic performance, we include: how widely available were different kinds of goods, and what determined differences in availability? How successfully did transport infrastructure provision enable goods to be moved, or did high transport costs deter long-distance land movement? The (predominantly archaeological) evidence reviewed in Part II gives the impression that access to resources via long-distance trade corrected some imbalances in natural reserves, for example in timber (chapter 7), and that traded goods (glass, chapter 9; pottery, chapters 10–12; and metals) were widely and effectively distributed. In normal circumstances, the transport systems, institutional framework, market concentrations of demand, worked pretty well for a preindustrial society. But there is anecdotal evidence of famines which could not be alleviated in time, given the slow transport and communication speeds of a preindustrial world. Although much of the evidence for the scale and reach of Roman trade comes from pottery, since that is one of the most archaeologically durable and traceable commodities, a particularly important feature of this volume is that several papers show what can be done with other goods: timber (William Harris, chapter 7), glass (Daniele Foy, chapter 9), stone (Ben Russell, chapter 8), and even the service industry in cleaning textiles (Ivan Radman, chapter 13). A chapter by Emanuele Papi (ch. 14) examines a particular province, Mauretania Tingitana, and demonstrates how recent archaeological work and a synthesis of what is known about amphorae production sites radically alter the perception of that province as largely isolated from Mediterranean trading networks. The third and final section deals with trade beyond the boundaries of the empire, especially with India and the far East, a topic on which a mass of new data has become available in the last decade, largely as a result of archaeological excavations. David Graf provides a magisterial survey of the evidence for the development, extent and nature of trade via the so-called ‘Silk Roads’ (chapter 15) The Silk Road trade at the Chinese end originated epiphenomenally on the practice of state tribute and diplomatic embassies, as tribute in kind and diplomatic gifts were resold by their enterprising recipients. As trade developed along the routes westward and gained its own momentum, its value was harnessed by the Chinese and Roman states in the form of heavy customs dues. Roberta Tomber and Dario Nappo argue, on the basis of ceramic and numismatic evidence respectively, that contrary to a widespread view trade between the Roman world and India had not declined by the mid second century, but remained buoyant at least until the Antonine period. Barbara Davidde’s paper illustrates the role that Arabian ports played in this trade with India and also with the products of Arabia. Qana’ was receiving Campanian, Laodicaean and Egyptian wine, and even wine from Spain and the Black Sea. Some of this was clearly traded in return for frankincense from the interior of Yemen; but some will have been bought for onward shipment to the ports of northern India, and Indian goods would have gone the other way. Overall, the papers suggest a mixed picture of the development of patterns of trade across the empire, especially in the third and fourth centuries, and no definitive or widely applicable conclusion about ‘economic collapse’. 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.