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Approaches to Ancient History

Approaches to Ancient History. Week 5: Ancient and Modern. Which are the key theoretical terms?.

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Approaches to Ancient History

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  1. Approaches to Ancient History Week 5: Ancient and Modern

  2. Which are the key theoretical terms? The Roman economy was under-developed. This means essentially that the mass of the population lived at or near subsistence level. In a typical underdeveloped, pre-industrial economy, a large proportion of the labour force is employed in agriculture, which is the main avenue for investment and source of wealth. The level of investment in manufacturing industries is low. Resources that might in theory be devoted to growth-inducing investment are diverted into consumption or into unproductive speculation and usury.

  3. ‘Primitivists’ and ‘Modernisers’ • Different conceptions of nature of antiquity. • Volume of activity: optimism or pessimism? • Nature of activity: differences b/w ancient and modern quantitative or qualitative? • Role of economy in society: separate or embedded, dominant or subordinate? • Nature of evidence – material or textual – and ways in which it is interpreted

  4. Theoretical Issues • ‘Formalism’ and ‘Substantivism’: the status and usefulness of economics. • Concepts and vocabulary: ‘trade’; ‘investment’; ‘capitalism’; ‘bourgeois’ • Process: no change before industrial revolution? Natural development? • Determinism: economy or culture?

  5. Key points of debate • Development of ‘trade’ and the market • Introduction of money and coinage • Motives for slavery • Nature of cities and their economies • Economic activities of landed elite • Role of the state • Ancient ‘globalisation’?

  6. Wider issues • Value judgements: the ‘modern’ (or a particular version of it) as normative • Grand narrative: development on the western model as inevitable? • Politics: attitudes towards modern world and Third World; capitalism as specific to particular historical context?

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