How ancient Mediterranean trade thrived through state institutions From around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This process of growth coincided with a process of state formation, culminating in the largest state the ancient Mediterranean would ever know, the Roman Empire. Subsequent economic decline coincided with state disintegration. How are the two processes related? In Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean, Taco Terpstra investigates how the organizational structure of trade benefited from state institutions. Although enforcement typically depended on private actors, traders could utilize a public infrastructure, which included not only courts and legal frameworks but also socially cohesive ideologies. Terpstra details how business practices emerged that were based on private order, yet took advantage of public institutions. Focusing on the activity of both private and public economic actors—from Greek city councilors and Ptolemaic officials to long-distance traders and Roman magistrates and financiers—Terpstra illuminates the complex relationship between economic development and state structures in the ancient Mediterranean.
Maritime Archaeology and Ancient Trade in the Mediterranean comprises twelve papers that look at the shifting patterns of maritime trade as seen through archaeological evidence across the economic cycle of Classical Antiquity. Papers range from an initial study of Egyptian ship wrecks dating from the sixth to fifth century BC from the submerged harbour of Heracleion-Thonis through to studies of connectivity and trade in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Antique period. The majority of the papers, however, focus on the high point in ancient maritime trade during the Roman period and examine developments in shipping, port facilities and trading routes.
Three millennia of cross-Mediterranean bonds are revealed by 18 expert summaries in this book, shedding light on environmental factors; the formation of harbors; gateways; commodities; cultural impact; and the way to interpret the agents such as Canaanites, "Sea Peoples," Phoenicians and pirates.
This book uses network ideas to explore how the sea connected communities across the ancient Mediterranean. We look at the complexity of cultural interaction, and the diverse modes of maritime mobility through which people and objects moved. It will be of interest to Mediterranean specialists, ancient historians, and maritime archaeologists.
*Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of ancient accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading The concept of international trade was born in the ancient Mediterranean, which provided the perfect set of circumstances needed to produce an intricate trading system whose influence can still be seen in present-day economic practices. The ancient Mediterranean was home to a diverse range of cultures and landscapes, encompassing deserts, forests, islands and fertile plains. Different natural resources were available in different geographical areas, and with the advent of sailing ships around 3000 BCE, people were suddenly able to travel much further afield than ever before. This created an opportunity to trade local resources in international markets in exchange for exotic goods not available at home. At the same time, this shift in Mediterranean trade from a local to international scale was a catalyst for immense social, political and economic changes that helped to shape the course of Western Civilization as a whole. Starting with the Egyptians and Minoans around 3000 BCE until the decline of the Roman Empire at the end of the 5th century CE, ancient trade in the Mediterranean brought cultures into increasingly close contact with one another, and just as in the globalized world today, these cross-cultural influences came to shape the development of belief systems, languages, economics, politics, and art throughout wide expanses of land. Traders introduced foreign goods, but also foreign ideas and new methods of expression, and they in turn took new ideas home with them from the places they visited. Sometimes these mutual exchanges make it difficult to determine whether a particular process or idea originated from the buyers or the sellers, and in some cases the meeting of disparate cultures produced entirely new ideas unique from anything that existed in either culture prior to their interaction with one another. At the same time, interactions with foreign peoples also brought about new ways of viewing one's own identity. Ancient cultures could now be more clearly defined in terms of their differences from other distinct cultures. This sense of distance between the self and the "other" helped form national and communal identities, made famous by the ancient Greek identification of non-Greeks as "barbarians." Over the centuries, the profits generated from trade helped establish wealthy nations and fuel economic development across the sea. By taxing imports and exports, governments could afford large infrastructure projects, like the construction of roads and harbors, which in turn helped to further increase trade and wealth. As a result, wars were fought for control of important trade routes and to maintain access to crucial commodities such as grain and precious metals. Economics became a primary consideration when establishing government policies and dealing with international relations. Some cities, most notably Rome and Athens, even built empires on the back of their mercantile success. Furthermore, the question of how or why trade developed in the way that it did, and what kind of cause-and-effect relationship existed between trade, wealth and technology, can become similar to that of the chicken and the egg. Did the rise of wealthy civilizations create the demand for increased trade, or did successful trading give birth to wealthy civilizations? Ancient Mediterranean Trade: The History of the Trade Routes Throughout the Region and the Birth of Globalization examines how the systems formed and developed, the goods involved, and the impact it had on Europe, the Near East, and Africa. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about ancient Mediterranean trade like never before.
From gleaming hardstone statues to bright frescoes, the unexpected and often spectacular Egyptian objects discovered in Roman Italy have long presented an interpretive challenge. How they shaped and were shaped by religion, politics, and identity formation has now been well researched. But one crucial function of these objects remains to be explored: their role as precious goods in a collector’s economy. The Romans imported and recreated Egyptian goods in the most opulent materials available – gold, gems, expensive wood, ivory, luxurious textiles – and displayed them like true treasures. This is due in part to the way Romans encountered these items, as argued in this book: first as dazzling spolia from the war against Cleopatra, then as costly wares exchanged over the expanding Roman trade routes. In this respect, Romans treated Egyptian art surprisingly similarly to Greek art. By examining the concrete mechanisms through which Egyptian objects were acquired and displayed in Rome, this book offers a new understanding of this impressive material at the crossroads of Hellenistic, Roman, and Egyptian culture.
Collected Studies CS1066 The articles in this collection cover the region extending from Italy to the Black Sea and to Egypt, over a period of seven centuries, with an emphasis on the considerable economic and social interaction between the West and the regions of the Eastern Mediterranean. They represent key works in the oeuvre of David Jacoby, the doyen of scholars in the field over many decades.
The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves stretches from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day. At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea. Yet the trade in Black Sea slaves provided merchants with profit and prestige; states with military recruits, tax revenue, and diplomatic influence; and households with the service of women, men, and children. Even though Genoa, Venice, and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Greater Syria were the three most important strands in the web of the Black Sea slave trade, they have rarely been studied together. Examining Latin and Arabic sources in tandem, Hannah Barker shows that Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared a set of assumptions and practices that amounted to a common culture of slavery. Indeed, the Genoese, Venetian, and Mamluk slave trades were thoroughly entangled, with wide-ranging effects. Genoese and Venetian disruption of the Mamluk trade led to reprisals against Italian merchants living in Mamluk cities, while their participation in the trade led to scathing criticism by supporters of the crusade movement who demanded commercial powers use their leverage to weaken the force of Islam. Reading notarial registers, tax records, law, merchants' accounts, travelers' tales and letters, sermons, slave-buying manuals, and literary works as well as treaties governing the slave trade and crusade propaganda, Barker gives a rich picture of the context in which merchants traded and enslaved people met their fate.
Across the Ocean contains nine essays, each dedicated to a key question in the history of the trade relations between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean from Antiquity to the Early Modern period: the role of the state in the Red Sea trade, Roman policy in the Red Sea, the function of Trajan’s Canal, the pepper trade, the pearl trade, the Nabataean middlemen, the use of gold in ancient India, the constant renewal of the Indian Ocean ports of trade, and the rise and demise of the VOC.
