PETER FIBJGER BANG

IMPERIAL BAZAAR: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF MARKETS

TNTHEROMAN EMPIRE

Accor> saw his call for laissez jCire, not as a method for boosting the merchant classes, but as a means to restoring agriculture, in the British society of his own day. to its natural and historical position of primacy. It is certainly not what his latterday disciples in the business schools ha,e in mind when they advocate giving the market a free rein.

1 A. Smith. An Inquiry into 1h Nantr and Causes ofthr U'ctllrlr ofNarions. R. H. Campbcll. A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd (eds.}, Glasgow &liu'on of tJrt HrJ:s tmd Correspo11drnrt! t{ At/am Smith, l-IT. Oxford 1976. I. 380.

52 PETER FrBTCl!R UANG

The doctrine of the Scottisb economist and professor of moral phi losophy, however, was offered in refutation of metcanti lism . Mercamilism is the converuent modem shon-hand for the numerous active strategies pursued by Lhe early modern European nation-states in

IMPERIAL BAZAAR 53

to modern commercial society:. Intense discussions have followed. Primilivisrs versus modemisrs in classics, Dolbb versus Sweezy and rhe Brenner-debare wirbin rhc broad current of Marxist historical scholarship, these controversies are but some prominent examples that now occupy a central posirion within 20"' century hisroriograph.y ' 111ese debates revolved nround the problem of the origins and dcvelopmem of capitalism in Europe. As third world hisroriographics have e,olved. the analytical scope has widened and moved closer to Weber's original comparative concerns. Extensive markets can be found in several. complex. prc-induslrial societies. Graeco-Roman Anriquiry. the world of Islam. India and the Indian Ocean wol'ld as well as imperial China. frequently thought of as epitomes of agrarian stagnation, all have considerable commercial developments 10 show.

The basic question has 1 herefore received a slight change of emphasis. It is now less a maner of rhe growth. i n one part of rhe world. of commercial society per se. The burning issue is rather bow 10 account for commercial processes in differem complex agmrian societies. Are they necessarily ro be tal.en as signs of incipient capiralism" Is unrivalled agricullural dominance in society really compariblc with the g.rowth and development of an ever deepening commercially inregrated marker sysrem of the kind we find in 17" and 18'' century Europe on the brink of the indusrrial revolution? Even on

' M. Weber. e.g .. Agmnrrhli/tn;,\'Se im Alterrum. G.smnmeltt AII[Silt:e zur So:.ial- und \VirtschaftsRschichre. Tilbingen 1924. 1188; Wimchtift und Ge.,dl.

54 PETER FlBJGER BANG

Smith's own tem1s the answer was never straightforward. The prob lem was thm the emergence and spectacular growth of the capitalist world-system, as Smith observed, bad been closely linked with the unnaturally, today we would say unusually, favoured pos ition of commercial interests in European states. There was more to economic history than tbe doctrine of laissez-faire. The development of European markets had occurred i.n a context which was frequently averse to its basic tenets. The Wealth of Nations, therefore, contained a Sti'Ong unresolved tension. Historical interpretation ran counrer to market theory.

As a result the market has remained a very hot potato in the study of premodcrn societies. Ooe group of scholars has ibeen most impressed by Smith's historical observations. They have emphasised the preponderance of landed interest before the early modem period in Eur opean history and consequently tended to relegate t.he market to the margins of the analysis. Here we find substantivism and Polanyi in anthropology, primitivism and Finley io classics 5. Others, someti mes referred to as formalists or modernists. have on the contrary paid less attention to the historical primacy of agriculture and been most struck by Smith's belief in the market as rhe central organising principle of the economy. They have focused on identifying market trade and from there proceeded to stress its abilit y to produce economic conditions very c losely resembling the capitalist integration of the early modem European world. Harry Pleket 's 1990-synt!Je.sis of the CCOnomy of the Roman Empire is th e best argued attempt, so far, by a classicist 'tO take this position.

More recent examples of this trend include the economist Peter Temin's discussion of the market in the Roman empire 1 Against Fioley, he asse11s that the Roman economy should, indeed, primarily be regarded as a market economy. Temin's case, however, rests on little more than the widespr ead existence of prices and markets within the empire. This. in his eyes, constitutes sufficient evidence that the imperial economy was organised as an interconnected market system resembling Europe and the Americas in the 18" century. But this is to jump to conclusions$. Fioley happened to be among the

s K. Polanyi K. Arensberg, T 1. Pearoo (cd.). 1iodt and Morkts i11 rh &1rly Empire,s, New Yorl: 1957: M. I. Finlcy. The Ancient &onomy. 2"' ed .. l.ondon 1985.

H. l'leket, \Vimchaft cit .. 25-tGO. 7 P. Temin, A Marker Economy in th Early Roman E.mpire.JRS, 91 (2001), 169-81. 'Temjo's style of argurnern may be surmised from two examples. \VhlJe admining that

probably more than hair of production was C()llmned within peasant households. he still iJ:..sists that the marKet was the main mcch;mism for all ocatjng ccunornic resoutce..o.;. For pcasan1-household production and own consumption merely mea.n that moSt of each farm's o.\Ctivitics: were devoted to maintaining its work force (p. l80). Tbc corollary of tbis observation. however. OJU$1 be thou pcasarH farms cannot be seen priJnariJy as firms. Such peasant

JMPERIAL BAZAAR 55

first to criticise Polanyi's more orthodox brand of primitivism for grossly underestimating the extent of market formation in classical antiquity . His point, however, was that this process did not come with any strong modernising drive to re-organise the economy into a conglomeration of interdependent markets. Antiquity, dominated a s it was by aristocratic values and politics rather than bourgeois commercialism, remained a r.raditional, agrarian society which was eventually transformed into the medieval world 10

Traditional, in this context however, should oot be confused with simple or primitive. The argument is about complex peasant societies characterised by urbanisation. clites aod state-formation. The division of labour undeq:>ins me structure of such societies; specialisation of functions and ma.rket5 are an integral pa.rt of their institutional set-up 11 But this form of society is as old as civilisation, whicb began to emerge in rbe late fourth, early third millermium BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Capitalism and economic modernisation, on the other tland. arc much more recent historical phenomena, gaining momemum as traosformative forces only in tbc: 17"' or perhaps 16th century. Tbey are not identical with the developmem of social complexity as such, let alone marketsu. The challenge.rherefore. is to develop an analysis of markets

households did not depend on the market for their Ji,rcJ i hoods . Ac mos t they derived a ..,Opplementary income from m:,rket acttvitie.s. r1le market. in other words. was subject to a number of other. probab ly more important allocation mechanisms. ApaJ1 from the pca:.mt household. the pol i tical exploitation of empire must bve !\if:.rliticarltly circumscribed the influence of the market {on this. P. F. Bang. Ronwns and /1-fughals. &:onomk Jnu:gralion in a TribuUJry Empire. io 1,.. de Blois aod 1. Ri ch (eds.), The Tra11s.(ormation of Economk Uft under the Roman Empire, Amsterdam 2002. 1-27). But ag:.io,. Temin plays down this aspect of cconollliC allocation in the Roman world. Extortionate r.-llCS or interest rer)()rled by Cicero in c.:OOI)ecion wilh Rornan tnxmion in the pr ovi nces arc cit:cd as evidt."nCt- that "''he variation shows th:H these loans were rlOt reciprocal exchange at :J fixed rate; they were market exchmgcs. (p. 174). Quite 1hc reverse, these interest tates were the result of monopolistic abuse of political power. not market prices. In or).; of Temirfs cases. Brurus: famously had /\tticus apply pressure on Ciccro. then serving as governor. to supply ;;oldietS to force Salami s tO p3y UJ> in one of BrurlLo; il1 ici1 deals. against Cice.co's publkly stltcd poUcics (Cic. Att. 5. 21, 10-13: 6. I. 3-8: 6, 2. 7-9).

0 t-.1. L Finlcy.Arisrotle ami Economic An(l/ysis, P&P. 47 (1970).3-25. rm Economy cit . chapters 1 and 6. 11 R. Din Wong. China Transformed cit .. 17-22 has coined the 1cm1 S.milhian dynamics to

describe the coo1mon economic processes of civilised peas.ant socictit'S. This is an iEne-re.sting idc:t. btt it seems to me to produce too narrow a conception of the character of spccialisatiOEl in these sociotl form;tt ions. as is dear from K. Pomeranz,. Grat DNrgeml! cit .. ::tttcmpt to develop the idea. PreindustriaJ specialisa6on did not only re)\t on ma(ket forces. Political. religious and military fonns of powu weE'(;. even more imponanl . h was the lauer kinds of soci:..t for ces which t>rovjdcd the basis of aristocracies and religious institutions - the two dominant kinds of specialisation in the

56 PETER FlBfGER BANG

which will rid them of the modernising expectations comained in Smitb's paradigmatic analysis. In effect, the rld, London 2003, 1483 fOt a balanced discussion of the differences between agrarian complexity and C

to.iPERJAL BAZAAR 57

Otherwise. its reproduction would have been jeopardised, as indeed it was in some instanc.es. But while social elites could not, in the long run. afford to be completely indifferent to the well-being of agricul tural producers. they had no interest in the lllOSt desirable ecological equilibrimm from the peasant poim of view. Such an equilibrium ran counter to their need for siphoning off a substantial portion of production over and above the bare minimulll peasam subsistence. Peasant production was shaped by political as well as ecologi cal pressures, the former influencing in panicular the range. kind and amount of products which left the househo.ld. This makes it very difficult to share in the vision of Horden and Purcell of a traditional Mediterranean unity as arisi ng out of an ecological equilibrium . One cannot a priori expect surpl us resources of individual communities to find their way and complement each other in response to ecological need. Demand was, to a considerable extent, sbaped or distorted by po litical power. Economic inter dependence was not simply a reflection of organic, Durkheimiao co-operation. Exploitation and conflicting interests were also a prominent part of the process 15.

11 is noticeable that economists in recent years have become increasingly ' aware of this problem. The fom1erly unshakeable Smitbian belief in the ability of the economy to reach its equilibrium state, incidentall y common to economics and ecology alike, has been considerably modified . lnstiMions, some economists now argue, significantly shape economic conditions and determine bow m;trkets behave i.n practice 17 In 200 I, three economists were awarded the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that in many circumstances markets will behave contrary to the expectations of traditional economic tbeory according to which the free and undisturbed play of market forces i s supposed t o be able to match supply and demand across individual locations in a single unified market with iodiyjduaJ prices tending to converge around the same general price. This expectation, bowever, is based on the assump tion '11

IS P. F. Bang. Tile Medit

58 PETER r1UIGER BANG

t that movement of goods and commercial activities between individual markets is relatively frictionless. In practice. however, such movement oflcn encounters considerable difficulties and obstacles and may only take place at a high cost. if at all.

T h e three economists have p a nicu.larly focused o n the effec1s of ' information deficiencies. The classical market model requires economic actors

to have near perfect infonna1ion about conditions in other market places in order to dclermine where best to bring their goods for sale. Often. however,

t market wiJJ be far less transparent to the individual agents. Some will have much bener infonna1ion than others. Such infonnmion asymmerries can. for example. be used to explain why interest rates in Indian towns differ significantly from the usurious rates charged to peasants by the village money-lender. Contrary to the banks. the money-lender is familiar with the individual borrowers and can. therefore. much better assess the risk of advancing a loan. 1he argument goes. lf a middleman should try 10 bring the two credit markets together, due to his lack of local knowledge. be risks auracting all the bad payers and would quickly g o out of busi ness. Consequently. the money-lender rests secure in his local monopoly and the markeiS stay separate 1.

In many circumstances. 1he free play o f marke1 forces does not lead the economy towards an equilibrium-state where resources are alloca1ed effectively according to supply and demand. Imperfections. irregularities and usymmerries in trading conditions enhance fr iction and hence 1ransac1ion costs, I he costs of conducting business. When these arc high. it will often be either very difficult. even outright impossible. or at least prohibitively expensive to synchronise developments in markets more closely. In I he example. the focus was on asynnmetries in information. Other equally imponant aspect to examine would include lhe effects of logistical problems and ecological uncenainty. No less central. as we saw in the discussion of I he

, Corrupti11g sa. are inequalities in social and political power. They .e_revent economic actors from meeting on equal renns and may, for instance, be used to force competi10rs to stay out of the market.

All three areas are of obvious inlcrest to the history of markets in preindustrial societies like the Roman Empire. The empire certainly knew plenty of asymmetrics. imperfections and irregularities across the spectrum from logistics to social power. These would have made the empire anything bul the

1 G. Akerlof. Tlr m(Oket for 'lemon,.,'. QJE. 8-1 (l970), 488-500. Conlr"d.sl Ternin's confidence th:u in pitc of impcrfecrions the m:ut.c:c conditions under which prices tended lO t c.'Ommon "alue were fulfilled in tbc c:ui) R001an Empire:. (Martn Economy cit .. 179).

fMPERIAI. "8A7.A.AR 59

level and even playing field imagined, each in their own way, by scholars such as Temin, Horden and PurceJJ. By suspending the automatic belief in the achie.vemcm of economic or ecological equilibrium, institutional economics provides the conceptual tools which enable the historian to transcend the contradiction in Adarn Smith's original understanding of markets. Transaction cost analysis makes it possible to explore how a set of institutions, constrained by pre-industrial technology and dominated by agrarian aristocratic interests, affected the workings of markets in the Roman world and shapc.d the ch>. as Philo informs us, return from their trading ports everywhere to their own harbours and roadsteads, particularly those who take care not to winter in a foreign couorry " Seasonality of business exacerbated what Braudel described as rhe obstacle of distance. Slow, irregular and periodica.lly discontinuous 1ranspor1 and communication made it very difficult to match demand and supply across the

1" G. Parker, A11rien1 Sftipwrt:

60 l'ET'ER FIOICr.R BANC

individual market places around the empire in an even, ste;ody and predictable way. h was simply hard for merchants to respond with sufficient speed and Oexibility to developments in other more distant markets. The trading season might. for instance. have been over before an extra shipment of goods could arrive in response to favourable prices. As a result. goods would normally have met demand in uneven. not easily predictable. clusters. The problem is aptly illustralcd from Apulcius' Golden Ass by the story !old by one of its characters, a small trdcr. Having had news of the availability of some good quality cheese at a very auractivc price in a neighbouring area. he rushes to the place only to find that everything had sold out. His efforts had all come to noughtll.

The evidence of Apuleius \hould not be dismissed as anecdotal. lt reOccts the expectations of anciem peoples to market performance based on their own experience. Acting on wrong or out-of-date information which did not correspond to the actual situation in the market place on tbe rime of arrival was an ever looming risk, not only for Roman. but for all pre-industrial merchant. It was not just that the goods might have cleared on their arrival. A large number of variations of the basic problem arc possible. Too many competitors might on picldng up the same news Dock to the market and cause the low price to increase violently so as to endanger the profitability of maldng the trip in the firs! place. The opposite situations. with high prices attracting too many sellers ruining it for each other or too few buyers turning up causing a shortage of demand and tbe market to plummet well below normal levels. were equally possible. These problems of unpredictability have been documented in great detail by historians of other pre-modem societies with access to a more abundantly nowing documentary record'"' Scattered across the centuries from the republic to I ale antiquity, however. enough material exists from the Roman world to place it within this basic scenario''

Egyptian business lenco-s confirm the problems of market uncertainty experienced by merchants. One 4th ceorury letter contains the report of

" Apol. Mn I. 5. l' n ;ddition lO the work of 8r::aude1 a.lrcoldy ci1cd, one could .ncnrion S. D. Goitdn. A

Medizcrrc11ean So

61

Besodoro the commercial agent of a monastery:

62 Plrl'P.R FfBTGER BAN(i

which could bring orders to an agent in another harbour at the required time. Equally it could be a problem to find cargo-space for hire on a boat heading rowards the right market when you needed it. Surplus of shipping in an area with nolhing to export and shortage in a neighbouring region with stocks ready for export was not unheard of. In other words. the premodero merchant had to act in a highly uncertain market situation where it "as diffiClllt to predict or estimate the amounts of goods brought to the individual market place and the number and buying capacity of his competitors.

Such marketS would normally be quite prone to violent fluctuations in the short tenn. The price of bullion is now 326 dr .. for as you know, the prices at Coptos change from day to day, it was reported from one of the centres of the import-trade in eastern luxuries in the early second century 29 Price changes, as we can see from a few Egypri:an papyri. of say 10, 20 or 30% within a few months. weeks or sometimes even between days were the order of the day. making it a very risky business environment"' The relative fragility of links between locations made the individual markets highly vulnerable to sudden changes and su.ceptible to be brought off balance. Under the prevailing regime of communication and transport, neighbouring or more distant markets would normally be unable. in the short tenn. to step in and stabilise the situation by reacting to the fluctuating prices. One could not trust the hidden lumd to ensure that such fllLCtuations would find a strong and

"" ready response in other markets which could absorb the individual shocks by ironing out the differences in supply and demand between market locations except in a very imperfect. one might almost say bapha7.ard. manner. In the short run, there would normally only be a very weak link between price developments in particular demand markets on the one hand and the quantities

:t C.assiodorus. \briaY smgulns civira.t ngionesqur ... Zu den Prcl.wttriari.onen im rlimisdren i\gyfJU:n. MBA H. 7.2 ( 1988). lll.

IMPERJA.L BAZAAR 63

of a given commodity sent from the various individual supply markets on the Other hand".

Against such a background. it is very difficult to sec how the empire could have constituted a unified market-sphere in any meaningful sense. Nor should this call for surprise: it is whm we should expect. Even at the beginning of the 18'" century, in spite of considerable commercial developments. merchants

had still not managed to embrace all of Europe within a single system. International markets were emerging against a background of considerable and persistent regional and local fragmentation across the continent .1!. Instead of a unified market-sphere. we must imagine the Roman empire to have constituted a much looser system of parallel networks based on concrete and fragile links of very varying intensity. As a consequence, markets in the Roman world were chantctcised by significant local and regional differences in the price of goods. A remark by the Rom;m jurist Gaius offers confirmation: We know how varied the prices of things are between individual cities and regions .u. In totaL this amounted to a Erading world characterised by chronic bottlenecks. imbalances and asynunetries. :\one of thi;, was helped by the fact that many trades ultimately depended on harvest results which fluctuated considcr.lbly from year tO year and region to region according to weather conditions. A humorous lcller of Pliny sums up the situation: A storm of hail. I am infom1ed, has destroyed all tl1c produce of my estate in Tuscany; while that which I have on the other side of the Po, though it has proved extremely fruitful this season, yet from the excessive cheapness of everything, turns to 'mall account. Only my Laurcntinc seat yields me any return. I have nothing there ... still, however. my sole profit comes thence. For there l cultivate not my land {since I have none). but my mind .. _,.,.._ deanh in one region and glut with collapsing prices not too far away.

'' N. S1eensg aard. Carrods. CllfOl'm's and Companies. T/u stntcturai crisis ;n the f:umprtmAsian trade in 1ht early 17"' century. Odense 1973.58 . Jn general pages 22 .. ..59 for an inci:-ivc nnalysis of markets cllar.ltlcricd by weak il'llegr.:.u ion liJld :.hon-tenn tlucruations.

11 Sec now also P. f.nllc:lnp. Gtain Mnrkrt

64 PL'TER Fl8KlR BA..N"G

3. Nilotic explorations

So far the view presented here of the trading world in the Roman empire has been based mainly on impressionistic evidence. Economic hiStorians of later periods are used to bener. They normally prefer to base their analyses on systematic scrutiny of long cominuous price-series. This option is almost closed to the historian of mtde in antiquity who suflcrs from a deanh of price data and especilly of continuous time series. But there are a few notable exceptions to this general rule. For the Hellenistic age, survi\ing temple accounts from Rhodes and astrological tables from Babylon record a sufficient quamity of prices to allow historians at least a gl..i.Olpse of the development of prices in a few markets in some periods. These markets s..-em to correspond well 10ith the image presented above 1$. During the Roman era, the major exception to the general paucity of recorded prices is, not surprisingly, the province of Egypt. By painstakingly sifting through surviving scraps of papyri from estate accounts. letters and other records, list of prices have been established for a consider.tble number of goods during the fi rs! 3 centuries AD. particularly by H. J. Drexhage and then Dominic Rathbone "'

On the basis of this work. Rathbone concluded that Egypt seemed to constitule an integrated market in agricultural goods such as wheat or wine. From the perspective of pro-industrial trade, the Nile Valley does, indeed, seem to have been particularly w ell-endowed by nature to facilitate integration. The river provided cheap transport and easy communication within the narrow strip of inhabited land which made up the country. AI the same time, it imposed on all movement a very clearly directed panem (up or down the river). If anywhere. it should have been Egypl that broke the panem of Jimiled market integration in antiquity. Yet, this hypothesis is contradicted by the business letters cited above which rather seemed to rcnect the familiar pre-industrial experience. n1c price cvidco1ce, however. cannot really be used to show what Rathbone claims. A score or so of individual wheat prices scattered across the I" and 2nd centuries AD, for instance, may. perhaps, suffice to give us a very broad impression of the prevailing level of prices.

caused by fluctuujng harvest rcsuh and 1ow carry-over of Slacks from year to year. His discu!)sion of Pliny's letter. pages 167-70, however, unncccssnrily complicates the issue.

G. Reger. A.rpccrs of tire Role of Mtrchallls in the J.>oiitictll Life Qjthe HellelliJ'tir World. in C. l.acC'dlmini {ed.). Mercami e politka net mmulc aniico. Roma 2003. 172-79 (on nuc1unting m.3rkeu i n the Hellenistic world).

_,.. H. J. Drex.h"JZ:C. Prci4e. M;t'rniPMhtt!n Kosrm u.nd UJhn im riimischt'n Agypr,. S1. Katlminen 1991: D. Rathbone. l'ri

Arkadia

Arsinoe *

\)

Theotlosi9

Oxyrhynchus

l, - Map Qf Lhe proviJJCc of Arka dia.

L\tPOUAL BAZAAR 65

* Aphroditopolis

0

East Mediterranean:

Arkadia >

66 PCrER FIBIGE:R BANG

But they simply do not allow us to monitor market developments at sufficiently close quarters to pronounce on market integration; and even if. in theory, they did, the fact that most prices stem from only a couple of locations, makes them impossible to use as evidence of integration across markets in Egypt".

Incidentally, however, Egypt has also produced what is easily the best available, though far from unproblemalic, evidence on market integration io the ancient world. ft dates fTom the 4" and 5"' centuries AD. At this date, Egypt remained an agriculturally prosperous province with a well oiled commercial life. Conditions were not fundamen tally different from previous centuries. The evidence consists of lists of prices collected by the late Roman administrdtion for taxat ion purposes. Market prices were reported by urban guilds to enable the imperial administration to calculate rates for the commutation of taxes in kind into monetary payment or vice-versa or for determinjng remuneration rates in connection with forced purchases. One dossier of documents is particularly i'1teresting. lt was drawn up by the adnistration in the early 5"' century and collects the prices of 11 goods, given in 4-monthly intervals, during an entire year for 6 out of the 9 nome capitals in Middle EJ,rypt, which at that moment constituted the province of Arcadia (see map on p. 65). to theory, lhen. it should be possible to follow market developments during a year across a 100 mile stretch of tbe Nile Valley. But, alas, the state of pre servation has left considerable holes in the dossier. So we have far fewer ptices than might ideally have been the case. Nonetheless. it is still possible to compare the situation in a considerable number of markets 19

Obviously, one can always question the quality of the dara collected or produced by the administration. What does it mean when they stare a price for a particular month or interval of months? Does it represent an average or the price on a panicular day? We cannot know. But this is in no way damning. The internal consistency of the data leave little doubt that. taken as a whole,

n 1'"he prices ()f whear ate completely dominated by the noolCs of Arsinoc (15 + perhaps 3 ut1cerlain) aod Hcrmopolis (7) in the firs1 and second centuries. rhe wlncscrics is ovcrv.helmingly dcpc.ndcnt on records from the A('Sinoite n

fMPERIAL BAZAAR 67

the prices did bear a fairly close relationship to the situation in tbe markets. close enough at least to juslify lhe heading: .Schedule of purchasable goods on sale in rile market for each dry"'. Thus, the prices generally do move; they are not simply permanent, administratively set rates. The documents even register m.inor variations in the price of gold expressed .in myriads of denarii per solidus. The wine prices declared follow the harvest cycle very closely, starting at a low after harvest and rising steadily tllrough the year up until the next harvest. Salt, on the other hand. governed by a state-imposed monopoly. is registered with the same price in all the nomes tllroughout the year. This is all as we would expect it and invites trust in the reliability of the price-series. They may serve as tl1c basis for testing, at least in a rudimentary fash.ion, the impression of weak market integration appearing from olher sources in the Roman world or its alternative suggested by Rathbone.

When markets are weakly integrated, short-term price developments are mostly determined by conditions prevailing locally at the time. Individual markets are only moderately affected by conditions in neighbouring markets. This makes for considerable price volatility. However, the s century records, only registering prices, probably as averages, within 4-month.ly intervals. do not enable us to follow short-term fluctuations_ But the e.xpected result of such fluctuations should be conside rable v

68 PC'I' .

lMPERlAL BAZAAR 69

period only to fall back ro its previous level i n the third period 'l. This behaviour is exactly what we would expect of a set of markets where integration was limited .

In a fully unified marker. prices shou Id ideally he the same everywhere. But ideal conditions only obtain in a frictionless universe. Merchants incur costs to move goods from ooe market to another. This wiiJ only begin to happen when the pri ce differential becomes ltuge enough to enable the merchant to add tr:msponation and otl:ter transaction costs to his original price and still be able to earn a profit by bringing his goods to the l:tigher priced market. In a closely integrated market, the price differential between markets will converge around the transportation costs. lt is not possible to make an exact calculation of the costs of bringing grain from one end of the province of Arcadia to the other. But freight charges preserved in other papyri suggest that these would have been less than 5% J. Technological barriers, io other words, are insufficient to explain the observed differences between the individual markets.

Another factor to consider is man- made barriers. customs dues in particular. Historically. these have created serious obstacles 10 the integration of markers. Our evidence for customs collection in Roman Egypt mainly dates from the high empire "' . But the situation is unlikely to have been fundamentally different in late antiquity. In the period from which we do have information, there seems to have been a charge of approximately 3% on leaving a nome and another 3% on entry. Whether goods moving through a nome in transit would also have had to defray customs duties is unclear. Suffice it here to note that customs are likely to have hampered market

Ill ][ i llOiiCe-able. that the harvesl cycle t1t ils tO manifest itself clearly in the grain pricc..>S. ll iS, however. i.m.J)Onant 10 remember that :l p::ntem of gradually rising price!\ between harvests is only what we would expect on avcr1ge. Devi:;tions could easily OCCl.lr-

70 PETER ABIGER DANC

integration as much or probably even more than transport costs. At a minimum they would have raised tbe barrier t the integration of markets with an extra 6% of the value of the grain :md possibly even more depending on how far the grain load had to travel. The combined effect of transport and customs would have created a far from negligible span between markets, say in the order of 10-15% of the grain val ue. Tnis would in itself have created a

I fair range within wl:llch markets could tluctu.ate independently of each other. But individual markets behaved with even greater independence. This is further confirmation of the impression that m.arket integration was limited and fragmented. 4. State-formation and markets

The Egyptian price material substantiates the impression conveyed by other sources that the Roman tmding world was characterised by huge variations between individual markets. The empire did not constitute a generalised market-sphere. Transaction costs were too high to enable an empire-wide imegrarion of markets,

IMPERIAL BAZAAR 71

market together under agrarian conditions. These differences were caused by great variations in the social costs of transacting and the socio-political overheads of trading such as the defraying of customs. One of Finley's favourite examples of the fragile nature of e.conomic integration in the Roman world may serve to illuminate this point: the famous famine in 4" century Antioch during the stay of the emperor Julian. Only with his intervention was the crisis surmounted and grain brought into the city from nearby imperial estates and EgypL. Market networks had been unable to solve the problem by responding to the growing demand and bringing in supplies from surplus areas46.

Finley explained this as a consequence of the h.igb costs of land transport. The various accounts of the food crisis add an extra dimension to our understanding of the problem. The food-shortage was not only a matter of lo1,>istics7 A seriOu$ conflict developed betwee Julian and the aristocracy of Antioch when the emperor first decided to intervene by imposing a maximum limit on prices against the protests of the city council. Far from solving the food shortage, Julians measure aggravated the crisis. Administrative price fixing was met by the passive resistance of stockholders, the landowning aristocracy in other words, who responded by withdrawing their supplies from the market s. Julian, of course, was furious and eventually published the Misopogon, an ironic invective. satire directed against the elite of Antiocb. There he accused his aristocratic opponents of speculation and hoarding in order to profit on the misery of the common population '9. Things looked very different from the perspective of the landboldcrs. They denied the allegations of the emperor5&. They saw Julian's initiative to regulate the market as an

4() M. I. Finlcy. Ancient l!.conomy Cil., l27. lCK' ful'ther dis.cussion or the emperor Julian's relic.f of Antioch during the f(lmioc in 362-3. S(:e P. G

72 PETER ABlGER 8,.\NG-

(unnecessary) attempt to curry favour with the broad masses while le aving them, the elite, to foot the bill. The emperor should have more important things to do than restricting the property rights of bis aristocracy. That grain supplies had been withdrawn in response to the rash and vainglorious actions of lhe emperor, could have been anticipated s_ The Antiochene elite, in short, did not react kindly to lhe prospect of having their

73

if the need occurred-". They were also in control of local political institutions. A visiting merchant could not ignore the possibility that the council might declare a maximum pl"ice on food grains. demoostrming public spirit while leaving him to shoulder some of the cost 56. As a group. local power wielders could be suspected of possessing sufficient stocks to undermine the business of imponing merchant. There was a very real risk that imponers might have to face sudden releases of locally stored grain with subsequently falling prices. That. in turn. would threaten the profitability of having brought in supplies from afar at great expense and difficulty. During a shonage in Oxyrhynchus in AD 246. when pressed by a Roman official. one noble lady, Calpumia Heraclia. came out declaring grain stocks of more tban 5000 m1nbas. This amount of grain was sufficient to feed several thousand people for two or three months and could have exercised an enormous influence in a small market like Oxyrhynchus " A much bigger market like Antioch is a different story. of course. But it also had maoy ruore of Calpumia's kind and on average richer.

In this analytical context. aristocratic euergetism may be treated as a panicular fonn of flooding the marke1. Merchants also had to calculate the risk that one or more leading people might decide to conven some of their stored surplus to symbolic capital by donating free or cheap grain to the city. I doubt, though, if local landowners generally had to go to the length of depressing the mmket. one way or another, ro reassert their local monopoly ;,. and predominance. Eucrgetism was an CJ

74

The prolilS of middlemen were resented by the aristocracy and disliked by a suspicious urban population,._ An importing merchant was confronted by many risks and considerable uncertainty 60 The range of obstructions to the close integration of markets in the empire was wide.

There is a significant lesson to be drawn from this. which is rarely commented upon: in the pre-industrial world closer integration of economic resources and tighter co-ordination of markelS. in panicular. depended on a hand anything but hidden. It took very tangible and overt forms of organisational power to tic supply and demand across locations into a more stable relationship where markets would be more closely integrated and behave more uniformly 61 It is in this context that the many mercantilist privileges and anempt to promote commercial interests. often backed by armed force. in early modem Europe take on a crucial importance. They enabled merchants to a much higher degree than hitherto to overcome local resistance and connect separate markets in more stable and permanent ways. These policies were pan of the centralising state's strategy of breaking down local particularisms and mobilising an ever expanding share of social resources to meet ilS own quickly growing requirements"'.

The principle of /aisu: fa ire. as advocated by Smith and many others. does not represent a sharp break from this process. Quite the reverse: it was. if anything, an intensification of the old pattern. Laissez .fa ire did not merely mean non-interference. Tt was adopted and promoted by the growing states and bureaucracies across Europe to assert and promote the interests of the

lfl The price-edict of Dioclcli:m frowns on 1hc merchants who bn.luoht in supplies to profit from CICV(ItCd prjCCS C'.:lUSed by lhc J)reSe-JlCC nrlhC :,mny. cr. lhc. prt:fncc in general md Chi\J). 17 in p:micuhu (cd. S. Lauffcr, Diokletiau$ Prdst:dikt. Berlin 1971). $(..-e also the tJ)iLic of Hadrian. pu1 up in the Piracu!.. :mempting 10 curb the activities of middlemen in the. fishtnde al Eis (J. H. Oliver. Grt't'k CfNfStinaions of n1rly Roman ('mptrors from insrripiibM and pupJri. Phi13Cktphia t989. no. 77). E. P.TI!ompson. Cuszoms in Common.l.oodon 1991. 208-9 norcs how landowners till in 1 g.

I\1PR.IAL BAZAAR 75

despised middlemen in the face of local opposition 63. That required active intervention, as Adam Smith recognised. No trade deserves more the full protection or the law. and no trade requires it so much: becmtse no trade is so exposed to popular odium, he remarked in a treatment of the grain trade. Such odium. however, was uodeerved. on a par with the popular terrors and suspicion of witchcraft, in the opinion of the Scottish rationalist: After the business of the farmer. that of the corn merchant is in reality the trade which. if properly proteCied and encouraged. would contribute most to the raising of corn ... The protection and encouragement Smit h had in mind found a ready champion in the state. New government policies included regulations to dismantle control of the agricultural surplus by local political institutions, cancellation of internal tolls. and ensuring the free movement of grain outside its area of origin by providing armed escorts of police and militias to merchants in the face of local opposition. The aim was to open up the inlwui trade and thus create a unified national market. the Volkswirrschaft of Kart Biicher. the German economist familiar 10 ancient historians as the founder of primitil'ism.

The new political economy of the modern state was gradually dissolving the barriers of the old moral economy of local, aristocratic-led. societies 65 The result was a steadily growing integration of markets during the 17'' to the 19 ccntury 00. This is where the early modern European and the Roman

"-' K.G. Pcrs.son. Grain Markets m E;'uropr Cif., ch:tpcer 4 and 6 for excellent analyses of this process. In most of Europe the policy or lai.sse:.faiu was J)tOitlOlc:d by authoritarian mon.archies. The tcr integration of 411frtt inland mark w\b bli'\hcd, lirerall). with recouN: to the fom:s of order ... ( 146)

.. ("'iation> from A. Smith. An lnqrury buo Jhr Natur,. and Caust>s of lht" U?alth of Nations. R. 11. C.mpbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd (tds.). Glasgow F.dirion of rh lll>rkr and Corr.S/}()n.tffl("' of Adam Smith. 11. Oxford 1976. vol. 1,527. 534 ;nd 531.

The contrast is that of E. P. Tllompson. set up in Tlu: Moral conOmJ of Jh(' English Crou'tl in th Eigluumh Cemury. reprinted in Custt>m...o; in Commo11 cit. Thompson is mW.nly

76 PETER H.D lG e;R 8A:NG

trader really pan company. MoOtesquieu. for instance. observed in the t8 century that the attitude of his contemporaries in relation to colonies and imperialism differed markedly from anything he found in antiquity 6'. Subsequent research has by and large confirmed the impression of the great French sociologist. Roman imperiali>m was not fuelled by the strong and aggressive commercial drive of later Europeans aiming to expand and capn1re markets''" The Roman process of stare- or empire-formation was not closely wedded to commercial mobilismion and intcgrtuion. This does not imply that trade was unimponant in Roman society. Nor. for that maner. was it insignificant to the imperial state. But it was seen in a different perspective. Imperial discourse, for in;tance, did recognise the advantages of commercial exchanges across the empire. Philo described the art of good goverr.ment as that Which causes the good deep soil in lowlands and highlands to be tilled. and all the seas to be safely navigated by merchant ships laden with cargoes to effect the exchange of goods which the countries in desire for fellowship render to each oLher. receiving those which they Jack and sending in return those of which they carry a surplus >. But these notions were not accompanied by any articulate ideological creed prescribing the integration of free,. markeLS. nor by any great sympathy for the middleman. His profits remained under suspicion, as we have seen. They were justifiable primari ly in term& of the ability of merchants to complement the needs of local societies by making available goods which were otherwise lacking 10.

Roman imperial society saw rrade in tenns of provisioning policies. The main concern was nor the uninhibited operation of markets, but whether

fundorncnl:ll studi

lt.tl"t:RIALBAZAAR n

Sllpplic were made available to consumers, mostly urban. while the right of local aristocracies to control the agricultural surplus still bad to be maintained. The Lex lmirana, the municipal statutes of a small Spanish community. is a good example of the balancing act this required. h f(lrbids hoarding and forestalling of goods. in order to ensure affordable provisions for the broad population. minimise social discontent and prevent popular riots. all with the purpose of preserving social peace". The effect. of collfse. was to curb the free movement of grain outside its area of origin. On the ot.hcr hand. the municipal chaner left political control and implementation of policies in the hands of the local land-owning elite. As farmers. the members of this group depended for tl1cir income on receiving as high a price for their agricultural products as possible. The political elite. in other words. had constantly to weigh its own pecuniary interests against its continued ability to act as leaders of the community. High prices of free markets and public welfare were locked in competition against each other. lt was the balance of power within local societies which determined how the balance was struck between these opposing interests. The numemu< small communities of the Roman world genemlly remined authority over their market. The imperial order did not in any way systematically seek to wrest markets from their command by pmmoting the middleman and his unobstructed movement of grain bctwee.o locations r..

5. Tbe Imperial Bazaar

The Roman Empire lacked the constellation of social forces that drove markets towards greater integration in Europe during the early modem period. As a result, the pressure and the ability to integrate markets were less significam; the Roman trading world remained more locally and regionally fragmented. The absence of the deliberate policies to force

" I.e.: lmirmw. chap. 75. Chap. 86 n:.slrict.s jury members to tho:o,c in the community who hold poscssiQns of at least 5.000 :stcrccs. a far from negllgiblc urn thm will have ensured a urt hold on r:he law court to the propcnied ses.rnent of the city of lrni.

1:' R. Bin Wong. China TransfomtLd eh .. cbapeer 9 for a similar compari500 of late: imperial Chtna and early modem-Europe. The imperial slate's focus on pro' i>ioning policies rather than the promotion of cfr anar\eu prevented Chinese authoritic: from choosing belween favouring Ill< regional movement of n and preserving !o

78 Pl ABIGER BANG

market-integration pursued by European states was not unique to tbe Roman Empire: this was equally true of other tribu tary empires such as the MughaJ, Ottoman and Ming!Cn'ing empires" Jt should be emphasised that markers in these tributary empires were not imperfect versions of the emerging capitalist order in Europe. Rather, the local obstacles to integration made the greater fragmentation of markets economically viable. The predom.inam pattern, as the economists would say, represented a stable state of the economy. not failure. Close irnegration would frequently have been too costly. Instead, a different form of market-regime with its own characteristics prevailed.

Historians of trade in the Middle East and India have most fully ex.plorcd and debated the d yoamics aod characrcrisics of this sort of agrarian market regime. Pioneers in the field focused on the small scale of most operations and introduced the concept of peddlers and peddling trade to describe the predominant form of business " But this term is unfortunate; it conveys too simple and primitive an impression of the agrarian trading world. Myriads of small traders and peddlers were certainly an important part of ancient commercial life. But there were also bigger merchants and bankers, longdistance as well as local movement of goods. wholesm.v eiocL

MW. Sombart. Luxus und KapiralismuJ, MOnchen ::md Leipzig 1913 is the classic analysis of the effect of lu.:.;ury demand on trade.

lMff.R.I.'\1. BAZAAR 79

trading world of civilised agrarian societies had to supply a considerable range of products whose aggregate was far from trifling. The commercial universe had 10 be sructurally differentiated: it was a complete social system.

Middle Eastern and Indian history has a better term available than peddler to describe the markets of complex agrarian societies. baaar n. It combines the presence of peddlers and small retailers with larger wholesale merchants and long-distance tr'ddC while at the same time recognising that these categories were more fluent and their functions not as clearly distinct as we would expect them to be today. A number of sllJidies have allemptcd to understand the greater and smaller bazaars of pre-indutrial North Indian and Middle Eastern ociety as a particular socio-economic system rather than simply as markets in the abstract. In a modern perspective, the world of the bazaar was notorious as a place of high risk

80

agrarian empires. the law of lbe elites had to be accommodated to a number of local and diverse cultural practices. fn the Mughal empire. imperial regulations. Mu$lim law and local Hindu custom co-existed in the bazaars and were often brought together'"'. In the Roman world. the administration of imperial law co-existed. mixed and clashed with a considerable number of local practices and customs across the empire. In a ruling from AD 204, the emperors (Septimius) Scvcrus and Antoninus (Caracalla) ordered a group of Jewish traders to hand over to the original owner a load of stolen goods they had bought. apparently in good faith. The emperors were acting

in accordance with solid Roman precedents. But the traders had asked tO be allowed tO retain the goods until the rightful owner had compen sated them for their economic loss. This was in acc

IMPf:RlAL BAZAAR 81

enhanced llexibility in responding to the prevailing local variations and spread their risks by not puning all their eggs in one basket". This pattern corresponds well with how we think of the Roman trading world. Even smallish ships of. say. 50 tonnes capacity would regularly have carried shipments for several merchants at a time. as is clear from inscriptions , found on objects recovered from Roman wrecks. The ostraka from a first , cenrury customs house in Berenike on the Egyptian Red Sea coast tell a similar story. They reveal a world of small agents and cargoes being a'embled from a slow trickle of goods arriving in many individual instalments" This impression is reiofored by rhc image of business organisation provided by Roman law. The actions on middlemen in the Digest. exerciwria, insriroria. quod jussu and de peculio. as well as that on societas. convey an impression of many small primary agents. depending on the delegation of parcels of working capital from a more select group of financiers, including some aristocrats, and merchant patricians'. The latter occasionally surface in the epigraphic record. Palmyra, a city which played a central role in the trade in eastern luxuries and precious objecrs. has delivered several examples such as: This statue of Marcus Ulpius Yarhai. son of Hairn. son of Abgaros. was erected in his honour by the caravan which was led from Spasinou Charax by his son Abgaros because he assisted it in every possible way ""

&.I S. D. Goitcin. Mrtliu"antan SodN)' cit .. l48 .. 208 and J. C. van Leur. ln.dons,.art Trc1 to practices known from the Henenisli

82

Second, the standardisation of products was often relatively low and quality was difficult to control. Most products originated in agricultural processes. This caused their characteristics and qualities to vary considerably from region to region and from year to year according to weather conditions. Not even something as seemingly homogeneous to modem perceptions as grain constirutes an -exception here. As Pliny explains in his Nawral History, the properties of, say. Egyptian wheat differed significantly from Sicilian, Gaulish or Thracian in terms of weight, baking capacity, colour and fineness. Adulteration of goods WOttld often have been rife. Wheat might get mixed with small quantities of stale or cheaper sorts of grain such as barley or even eatth. Expensive spices would commonly be mixed up with cheaper imitations. Detailed local knowledge of products and production processes was crucial to avoid being cheated and ensure commercial success t>. If merchants generally achieved little in the way of standardisation they atlempted to profit on variability instead. Modern global trade is based on the consumption of generalised goods and brands; a pair of Nike trainers or a Big Mac is supposed to be the same everywhere. The long-distance trade of the bazaar wa fuelled by the demand for exotic ra6t.ies. marvels and goods with special aod unique properties. Such expensive and singular producs were often believed to possess medicinal, magic or religious qualities and exercised a charismatic influence. Elite consumption of rare luxuries was intended to inspire awe io l.be common folk and impress on them the sublime qualities of the rich and powerful who so demonstratively had the world at their fingertips ss.

IMPERIAL 131\.ZAAR 83

imba lances to his advantage. The result was an approach to the market which would often have b e e n opportunistic, as merchants attempted to put themselves into a local monopoly position. Monopoly is here to be taken in the broad sense used by economists of economic agents who enjoy a r.emporary advantage due to a market imbalance. The North lndiao Bazaar offer many examples of this 90_ In the Roman wo:rld, that stock character of classical moralising, the grain speculating merchant, always on the look out to make a profit from irregular and excessively high local prices, i s the embodiment of this approach to trade. lt is significant that he is commonly portrayed as acting in collusion with local people".

This brings us, finally, to the fourth aspect, the formation of social networks. Rather than a generalised market environment. tbc bazaar trader nom1ally depended on various concrete, social connections. As a comment of Cic-ero implies, the merchant visiting a foreign harbour generally needed (local) contacts to vouch for his credibility"' Personal tlientage, therefore. would have been impo11ant to him. So would membership of communal networks that provided him with tbe shelter of a broader social environment. Such merchant commun.ities and would often have been organised around religious and cultic activities. In antiquity as in India. we thus find merchants in various contexts financing, wholly or in part, the erection of temples, the performance of cult and the celebration of festivals and feasts. The point about personal and communal relations. however, is that they benefit people on the inside of the networks. Outsiders, on the other hand, suffer from higher barriers to entry into the markct3

Together the set of strategies outlined here provided a complex and resistant foundation for trade. But the result was to consolidate tendencies towards market segmentation where economic flows seem to run in separate.

"> R. Dana. Sociesy. Economy aud 1he Market. CommercilJ/isarion ;, Rural Bent;al, 1760 /8(}(). New Delhi 2000. 208-16. is suong on this aspect of traditional Indian markets.

91 Philoswuus. Vit. Apol .. 4. 32. J. Rouge. Commc:ne maritime cit.. 417-19 and 454. mistakenly took such examples as indic;uive of a form of markec whidl depended on a more elaborat e and regular form of organisation. Quite he reverse. he oppornmistic merchant is precisely the cmbodimc1lt of the speculative behaviour produced by baz31I stntcgi'(.$. F. Kudliell, Die Rolle dt-r Konlwrn'n:::. im untiken Ct'sclliiftsieJ)I!Il, MBAH, 13.1 (1994). 1-39, makes some interesriog observariors on lhe :1goniSlic approach of ancient merchants.

42Cic. 1/ Verr, 5. 161. n A. Grcif. Comracs EnjOrc{labiJity and Economic lnstinaions in larly Trtuic: The MagJIJ';b;

Traders' Coolirion. AER. 83.3 (1993). 525-548. C. A. Bayly. Rulers. Townsmen a,uJ Bauuus, Oxford l983. chaps. 10-11, exattU.nes 1he !'el.igious and cui rural practjces of Indian merchants. FQr j,n(iquity these phenomena hwe been Lre:lfed most f\tlly by N. Rauh. 111e Sacred /Jonds of Commerfe. R{ligion. &:onomy, cmd Trade Society ar HelhwistU: Ronum Ddos, 166-87 B.C .. Ant$tcrdam 1993 and 0. van Nijf. 771e Civic'- Ubrld of Professional Assudations in the Roman as:. Leiden 1997.

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K. N. Chaudhuri. Markets & Traders in India during the Sevemeemh and Eighteenth Centuries. in K. N. Cbaudhuri and C. Dewey (eds.), Eco110my and Sociery. Delhi 1979, 143-62.

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Register and Dutch Shipping Records. Copenhagen 1941. P. Crone, Pre-/ndustrial Societies. Anatomy of the Pre-fllfodem World, Oxford 2003. A. Das Gup!a. lndian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, c. 1700-1750, Wie.baden

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