José María de Francisco Olmos - La moneda Medieval. fuentes documentales para su estudio

I. PODER EMISOR

Desde época romana la moneda era una regalía, es decir sólo la puede acuñar el emperador, en especial la moneda de oro, de hecho recordemos que los pueblos germánicos que ocuparon la parte occidental del Imperio no pusieron nunca el nombre de sus monarcas en las piezas de oro, sino que seguían manteniendo el nombre del emperador de Roma o de Constantinopla, aunque llevara años muerto 2, algo que no cambió hasta que Justiniano inició una política de reconquista militar de Occidente. Fue entonces cuando los francos consideraron esta política una “ruptura” de hecho del antiguo pacto y decidieron acabar con los últimos lazos de dependencia formal y teórica que les unían al Imperio, y la mejor manera de expresarlo públicamente era utilizar una de las prerrogativas exclusivas del emperador, en este caso la acuñación a nombre del rey franco de una moneda de oro de tipo imperial 3. Este hecho, que a primera vista puede parecer anecdótico, no lo fue en la época, y causó una gran conmoción política en la corte de Constantinopla, siendo recogido por el historiador contemporáneo Procopio de Cesárea en su obra sobre las llamadas Guerras Góticas, considerándolo como una “usurpación inaceptable de las prerrogativas imperiales” 4. Este hecho se repitió en el otro gran reino germano occidental, el visigodo, unos años después, con Leovigildo.

Procopio de Cesarea - Guerra Gótica III (32.51 - 33.14)

 Guerra gótica (535-554)

(32.51) El emperador Justiniano destituyó a Artabanes del cargo que ocupaba, pero no le causó ningún otro daño, ni tampoco a ninguno de los otros, aparte de mantenerlos a todos encerrados, aunque sin pérdida de sus derechos, y además en el palacio, no en la cárcel pública.

(33)  En aquellos momentos de la guerra, los bárbaros se hicieron dueños sin discusión de todo el oeste. Pues la guerra gótica para los romanos, a pesar de que,al principio sus victorias habían sido rotundas, como arriba he dejado dicho, tuvo este resultado 260, hasta el punto de que no sólo malgastaron dinero y muchas vidas para nada, sino que perdieron además Italia y llegaron a ver cómo casi toda Iliria y Tracia eran asoladas por los bárbaros, que se habían convertido en sus vecinos, y devastadas sin ningún miramiento. Esto sucedió del siguiente modo.

Toda la Galia que estaba sometida a los godos se la entregaron éstos al principio de la guerra a los germanos, creyendo que no iban a ser capaces de enfrentarse a ambos pueblos, como dejé dicho en anteriores libros 261. Esto no sólo no pudieron impedirlo los romanos, sino que incluso el emperador Justiniano los animó a llevarlo a efecto, para no encontrar a su paso ningún obstáculo por el hecho de estar esos bárbaros metidos en guerra. Pues los francos no vinieron a considerar nunca que su posesión de la Galia fuera segura mientras el emperador no ratificara esta operación en concreto, poniendo su sello en el documento. Por este motivo, los caudillos germanos ocuparon Masalia 262, la colonia de los foceos, y todas las ciudades de la costa y se hicieron dueños del mar en aquella zona. Hasta se sentaron a ver en Arelato 263 las competiciones hípicas y acuñaron una moneda de oro extraído de las minas de la Galia, sin estampar la efigie del emperador en ese estatero 264, como era costumbre, sino sus propias imágenes. En efecto, el rey persa acostumbra a acuñar la moneda de plata como quiere, pero no se considera lícito imprimir en un estatero de oro su propia efigie o la de cualquier otro rey bárbaro (y eso que hay oro en sus dominios), porque ni siquiera a aquéllos con los que comercian son capaces de pagarles con esa moneda, ni aunque coincida que también sean bárbaros. En fin, así iban las cosas en relación con los francos.

(33.7) Cuando la superioridad de los godos y Totilas en la guerra fue ya un hecho, los francos sin ninguna justificación se apropiaron de la mayor parte del territorio de Venecia, sin que los romanos tuvieran fuerza para mantenerlos a raya por más tiempo, ni los godos fueran capaces de proseguir la guerra  contra ambos pueblos. Mientras tanto, los gépidas 265 tomaron la ciudad de Sirmio 266 y prácticamente todas las de Dacia, tan pronto como el emperador Justiniano se las arrebató a los godos. Esclavizaron a los romanos que allí había e incluso en su imparable avance continuaron hacia adelante, saqueando con enorme violencia el imperio romano. Por esta razón, el emperador no siguió entregándoles los tributos que desde muy atrás estaban acostumbrados a recibir de los romanos. A los longobardos, por su parte, el emperador Justiniano los obsequió con la ciudad de Nórico 267, con las plazas fuertes de Panonia y muchos otros lugares de allí, junto con grandes cantidades de dinero. Fue por esto por lo que los longobardos salieron de sus tierras patrias y se asentaron en el lado de acá del río Istro 268, no muy lejos de los gépidas. Saquearon Dalmacia e Iliria hasta las fronteras de Epidamno e hicieron muchos esclavos.

Cuando algunos prisioneros se les escapaban y conseguían regresar a su casa, estos bárbaros recorrían el imperio, como aliados que se consideraban de los romanos, y en cualquier sitio donde vinieran a reconocer a algunos de los fugitivos, los capturaban, como si los huidos frieran sus propios esclavos, y hasta los sacaban a rastras del lado de sus padres y se los llevaban consigo a sus propiedades, sin que nadie se lo impidiera. Además, otros lugares de Dacia, por donación del emperador, los ocuparon los hérulos en las cercanías de la ciudad de Singiduno 269, territorios donde ahora están asentados y desde donde efectúan sus amplísimas correrías y saqueos sobre Iliria y la región de Tracia. Algunos de ellos incluso han llegado a convertirse en soldados del ejército romano,  formando en las filas de los que se llaman «federados» 270. Así pues, siempre que son enviados a Bizancio los embajadores de los hérulos, de esos hombres, sí, que saquean a los súbditos romanos, salen de allí sin ningún problema llevándose todos los tributos que reciben del emperador 271.

Notas

260 Cf. la expresión, por ejemplo, en II 30, 54.

261 Cf. V 13, 15 ss.

262 Hoy Marsella.

263 Hoy Arlés.

264 «Sólido» o nómisma en Procopio: cf., por ejemplo, VII, 1, 30; 17, 11 y 15; Historia secreta XXV 12.

265 Cf. III 2, 2.

266 En la antigua Panonia. Hoy Mitroviça: cf. Historia arcana X V III18.

267 Seguramente la capital de la provincia de Noricum, la ciudad de Noreia„ hoy Neumarkt.

268 Es decir, en la orilla sur del Danubio.

269 Hoy Belgrado.

270 Cf. supra η. 242.

271 Sobre el pago de tributos a los bárbaros (cf, 1 22, 3 ss.; II 10, 24; VII 33, 9, etc.) a cambio de la paz cf. Historia secreta VIII 5 s, (y el comentario de J. Signes Codoñer en su traducción de esta obra, B.C.G. 279, pág, 195, n. 103, donde califica este procedimiento de «principio de la diplomacia imperial» a lo largo de su historia).

Mark Blackburn - Money And Coinage

Paul Fouracre (Ed.) - The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume 1, c.500-c.700 (Cambridge University Press, 2005) 660-674

Coinage in the Roman world in the early fifth century consisted of a multidenominational system in gold, silver and bronze. 1 By the eighth century the coinage of western Europe was entirely of silver essentially in one denomination, the thin broad Carolingian penny. The change from a classical to a medieval coinage was radical, but the way in which it came about was neither sudden nor dramatic. It was a gradual process of transformation and evolution. This chapter will trace those developments from the earliest Germanic coinages of the fifth century to the introduction of the silver penny in the late seventh century, at which point the story is picked up in the second volume of the coinage of western Europe was entirely of silver essentially in one denomination, the thin broad Carolingian penny. The change from a classical to a medieval coinage was radical, but the way in which it came about was neither sudden nor dramatic. It was a gradual process of transformation and evolution. This chapter will trace those developments from the earliest Germanic coinages of the fifth century to the introduction of the silver penny in the late seventh century, at which point the story is picked up in the second volume of the New Cambridge Medieval History.

The late fourth and fifth centuries saw the movement and resettlement of the peoples of central and eastern Europe on a scale that is unprecedented in historical times. Most of the tribes that settled within the former Roman Empire and established new Germanic states had at some stage acted as mercenaries for or concluded treaties with the emperor, which instilled in them a degree of respect for imperial authority, albeit a precarious one. They would have obtained substantial amounts of coin, mainly gold, as mercenaries, in tribute and as plunder, which gave them experience in dealing with money, even if they had not struck coins of their own before moving into the Empire. This was, no doubt, a factor in encouraging the continuity of circulation and minting that we find in most of the newly established Germanic kingdoms. Only in England and the northern fringes of Gaul did the circulation of coinage cease for a while after the collapse of the Roman administration. There the use of money had to be relearnt a century or more later from their Germanic neighbours.

The coinages of most of the new states passed through two phases: a ‘pseudoimperial’ phase in which the coins purported to be issued with the authority of the current or some former emperor, and a ‘national’ phase in which the inscriptions and designs deliberately reflected the state’s independence. For each kingdom this change came at different times and was expressed in different ways. The first to suppress all reference to the empire on their silver and bronze coins in the late fifth century were Odovacar in Italy (briefly) and the Vandals in North Africa. The Visigoths and Franks both transformed their coinages in the later sixth century, the first adopting an overtly regal currency and the second choosing to permit a variety of semi-private issues. A century later the Lombards in Italy were the last to relinquish the imperial tradition by adopting a combination of regal and municipal coinages. Of course, official Byzantine issues continued in their remaining possessions in central Italy, Sicily and parts of the Balkans.

Although there are few written texts that shed light on the nature of money in the early Middle Ages, the coins themselves have survived in substantial quantity, and by studying their inscriptions, designs, dies, weights, metallic compositions and fi nd contexts we can achieve some understanding of the monetary systems in which they were used. In the late Roman Empire coin production had been concentrated in a small number of mints, amounting in the west to four in Italy (Rome, Ravenna, Milan and Aquileia) and three in Gaul (Arles, Lyons and Trier); the London mint, having closed in 325, was perhaps revived during the 380s and Barcelona had operated briefly under the usurper Maximus (410– 411). By the seventh century there were still only a handful of mints in Italy, but several hundreds in Gaul, perhaps fi fty in Spain and a few in England. Coin production thus remained essentially within the bounds of the old Roman Empire, but, as one might expect, with a much greater degree of local minting.

In the fourth century an elaborate range of denominations had been issued by the Romans in three metals – gold, silver and bronze – but in the early fifth century production in silver and bronze was severely reduced. In Gaul and Britain the silver coins in circulation were clipped down to reduce their weight and the few new ones struck in Gaul were produced to a much reduced weight standard. Bronze was limited to the smallest denomination, the nummus. Only the gold coinage was produced on a moderate scale, and came to dominate the currency. Of the three denominations in gold – the solidus, its half the semissis and its third the tremissis – the largest and smallest formed the basis of most coinages in western Europe in the succeeding two centuries. Thus the dominance of gold, which is so striking a feature of early medieval coinage of the sixth and seventh centuries, was already established under the later western emperors.

Gold had a special status that went beyond its high intrinsic value, for it was regarded as an imperial metal that should always carry an emperor’s name – if the current emperor was politically unacceptable, then an earlier one would suffice. Lesser rulers put their own names on their gold coinage at their peril, as with the Frankish king Theodebert (534– 548) who was severely criticised by Procopius for having the impertinence to do so: ‘it is not considered right … for any … sovereign in the whole barbarian world to imprint his own likeness on a gold stater’. 2 Silver and bronze were quite a different matter, and rulers were more confi dent in recording their names on these, with or without that of the emperor. It was this convention, the emperor’s prerogative in respect of gold, that perpetuated the pseudo-imperial phase.

The coinages of the Visigoths, Sueves, Franks, Burgundians, Anglo-Saxons and Lombards were essentially mono-metallic in gold, with some very limited and local issues of small silver and bronze coins. Even in the Byzantine Empire silver had fallen out of use save for ceremonial purposes, and there was nothing to bridge the very high value gold denominations and the small bronze minimi. However, in the late fifth century Odovacar and then the Ostrogoths succeeded in re-establishing in Italy an impressive range of denominations in all three metals, providing an adequate currency for all types of transactions. Likewise in North Africa the Vandals re-established a range of silver and bronze denominations, but unusually without any gold coins. In both regions after the reconquests of the succeeded in re-establishing in Italy an impressive range of denominations in all three metals, providing an adequate currency for all types of transactions. Likewise in North Africa the Vandals re-established a range of silver and bronze denominations, but unusually without any gold coins. In both regions after the reconquests of the 530s and 540s, Justinian maintained the production of silver and bronze.  By the third quarter of the sixth century, however, the minting of silver coins in Europe was confined essentially to Ravenna, and its economic impact was minimal.

Precious metals were more valuable in the early Middle Ages than they are today, and the standard gold coins were, therefore, very high denominations. A solidus, for example, bought 90 kg of butchered pork in Rome in 452, so it was hardly suitable for domestic transactions. 3 The nummus, by contrast, was a very low-value coin, fluctuating between 7200 and 12,000 nummi to the solidus in the fifth and sixth centuries. A building-labourer in the early sixth century could earn 200 nummi a day.

[...]

Conclusions

In the two or three centuries since the break-up of the Roman Empire in the West money had evolved significantly and would have hardly been recognised by someone who lived in the fifth century. By the year 700 each of the constituent states had its own distinctive monetary system, and its coins had become a useful national emblem signifying its independence and, one hopes, its sound financial condition. The process by which this had been achieved  sheds some light on the evolution of the states themselves. The pseudo-imperial phase of coinage is particularly difficult to interpret. The copying of imperial coinages may have been motivated in part by economic factors – when establishing a new currency, countries often emulate the successful coinages that are circulating in the region. But as the comments of Procopius and the pattern of coin inscriptions show, the imperial prerogative to strike gold coins was also a powerful force, and the emperors appear to have maintained sufficient influence over the new Germanic states to enforce it during the fifth and much of the sixth centuries. Most of the states appear to have sought legitimacy for their coinages by implying that it was authorised by the emperor, whether through an ancient agreement as perhaps with the Sueves and Vandals, or through the continuing consent of the current emperor in the East, as not only the Ostrogoths but also the Visigoths and the Franks appear to have done. Yet the apparent dullness of these anonymous imitative coinages can easily mask signs of fundamental developments taking place in the organisation of minting and regulation of the monetary system. With the transition to so-called ‘national’ coinages, when the names of mints and/or moneyers are displayed and there is freedom to adopt new coin designs, we get a much clearer insight into the organisation that lay behind it. 30 Then one can see just how far the states had already come in the development of their own monetary systems.

Notas

1 For surveys of late Roman coinage see Grierson and Mays (1992) and Kent (1994); for early medieval European coinages other than Byzantine see Grierson and Blackburn (1986); and for Byzantine coinage see Grierson (1982), Hendy (1985) and Hahn (2000)

2 Procopius, Bell. Goth. ii.33.5– 6

3 Spufford (1988), p. 8.

30 Hendy (1988).

Peer Vries - The California School and Beyond: How to Study the Great Divergence?

Abstract

In this article the autor presents a description, analysis and evaluation of the fundamentally new interpretation of the economic history of the early modern world that is defended by authors who collectively have become known as the California School, the most important among them being Kenneth Pomeranz, Roy Bin Wong, Andre Gunder Frank and Jack Goldstone. He in particular analyses their claim that in the period from roughly 1400 to 1800 the most advanced economies of Eurasia formed a world of ‘surprising resemblances’ and that the Great Divergence between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ only originated with industrialisation and must be interpretated as a fairly contingent and recent phenomenon, basically due to differences in the availability of resources.The author claims that the Californians have a tendency to exaggerate the resemblances between Western Europe and East Asia and should be more specific when it comes to time, place and the differing historical trajectories of various regions. Finally, he claims they should pay far more attention to political and military developments and to the role of culture and institutions.

Introduction

The biggest challenge for global economic historians is to explain the huge gap between rich and poor countries that began to emerge with the industrialisation of parts of the Western world. In trying to explain the emergence of this gap, the so-called ‘Great Divergence’, they actually have to tackle four questions. The first one concerns the introduction of steam-power and new technologies in production and transport that during the Industrial Revolution enabled Britain and parts of Western Europe to escape from Malthusian constraints. Then, there is the question how the momentum of this revolution could turn into sustained and even self-sustaining growth. Next, there is the question how economically less developed countries could catch up with or even overtake more advanced ones. Finally, there is the question why so many countries failed to do so which perpetuated and even widened the gap between them and developed countries.

Here, I will only deal with the first question: Why did the first breakthrough of the Malthusian ceiling – the tension between population and available resources -occur in Western countries, to begin with in Britain, and not in other parts of the world? That of course is a classic problem. With the emergence of the so-called California School of economic history, however, it has been posed in a new way and framed explicitly in a context of global comparisons and connections. And it has received some new answers. This text offers a critical, constructive evaluation of the views of the Californians that indicates what we can learn from them, where they may be wrong and what promising paths for future research they neglect.

The reference to global comparisons and connections does not mean that I will discuss the entire globe. I will focus on Britain and China. The decision to do so is, to some extent, pragmatic. It keeps the topic manageable. Yet, there are also scholarly reasons. According to Jared Diamond, people of Eurasian origin, especially those living in Europe and Asia and those who migrated to America, had far better chances of becoming rich and dominant than those living someplace else because of the natural resources that were available to them. (Diamond 1997). Although not everyone would so easily write off the Americas before Columbus, his main arguments are convincing to me. In Eurasia, at the eve of the Great Divergence, Britain and China (with the tiny Dutch Republic) are normally regarded as the most developed and richest countries. In publications of the California School they hold centre stage. It therefore makes very good sense for me to also focus on them. My comparison will be synchronic and deal with ‘the very long eighteenth century’, roughly the period from the 1680s to the 1850s, in which the great diverging of Britain and China actually took place. In the literature I review, this has become by far the most popular way to proceed. This does not mean that diachronic comparisons would not make sense.

Eurocentric Approaches

The debate on the causes of the Great Divergence is as old as the social sciences. Until quite recently, two or, if one regards dependency-theory and modern world-systems analysis as distinct approaches from ‘ordinary’ Marxist analysis, three ‘schools’ have dominated it. The most popular approach is still the one that builds on the legacy of Max Weber and his claim that the West underwent a uniquely intense process of rationalisation that resulted in the emergence of capitalist market economies, bureaucratic states and a disenchanted culture that was ideally suited to produce science, technology and a methodical way of living (Schluchter 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1998). Although not many scholars would actually describe themselves as Weberians, Weber is still setting many research agendas. David Landes’ bestseller on the wealth and poverty of nations, for example, has a strong Weberian flavour (Landes 1998). In this approach, that is also quite popular among mainstream economists and their institutionalist colleagues, and the economic ‘rise of the West’ is almost identified with ‘the rise of the market’. (For institutionalist economics see Thomas⁄North 1973; North 1981, 1990, 2005). Weberians focus on developments in Europe. They regard its history as structurally and fundamentally different from that of the rest of the world. To them, the Great Divergence is the culmination of a long process, not something fairly contingent that could have occurred anyplace. What happens in ‘the rest’ is of no fundamental relevance to the main direction of modern Western history.

The second approach is the classical Marxist one. Notwithstanding its idiosyncrasies, it shares a number of fundamental features with that of Weberians. The differences are well-known. More interesting in the context of this article are the similarities. Both approaches regard capitalism as the motor of modern economic development and as a Western invention. They both claim that its emergence in Europe explains the economic primacy of the West. They share the idea that Europe was different and more dynamic than the rest of the world over which it, not by accident, came to rule. Although that actually is hard to square with Marx’s overall philosophy of history, most classical Marxists, like Marx, came to the conclusion that the world outside the West lacked the internal dynamics to manage a transition to capitalism on its own (Avineri 1969; Krader 1975).

Dependency theory and world systems-analysis are often regarded as neo-Marxist. They do indeed build on elements of classical Marxism, such as its focus on exploitation and ‘unequal exchange’ and on the history of capitalism as central to any understanding of the modern world. There clearly also exist major differences. I will not deal with them here. For adherents of these ‘schools’ too, capitalism functions as the lever of global development. When they refer to capitalism, however, what they have in mind is not a Smithian market economy with fair and free competition. In their view, capitalism is actually characterised by monopoly, collusion and coercion, which implies that in it political power holders and capitalists co-operate intensively. Braudel, who had a major influence on Wallerstein’s historical analysis, even defined ‘real’ capitalism as an ‘antimarket’ that only triumphs when it becomes identified with the state, or rather when it is the state (Braudel 1979–1984; Braudel 1977: 64–65). Both ‘schools’ present capitalism as a dynamic force that from its very beginning was trans-national and, spreading from the West, created the modern world-system by incorporating a fairly passive and nondeveloping ‘Rest’. In that sense, they too are clearly Eurocentric.

Up until now, the word no reference whatsoever has been made to China. That is not by mistake. In Weberian and (neo) Marxist stories alike, Qing China hardly figured. If it was mentioned at all, it was described as the almost archetypical immobile ‘nondeveloper’ characterised by ‘oriental despotism’ and an ‘Asiatic mode of production’. Until late into the 20th century, with some rare exceptions, scholars considered the country as so backward or at least immobile that it did not even occur to them to study why the first industrial revolution did not take place there (Blue 1999; Hung 2003).

The California School

Things have changed tremendously. Recently, various scholars have almost completely re-written the economic history of China in the early modern era. They have found a willing audience. The best-known amongst these scholars are Kenneth Pomeranz, Roy Bin Wong, Jack Goldstone, James Lee, Feng Wang, Dennis Flynn and Arturo Gira´ldez, Robert Marks, and the late Andre Gunder Frank. They are called ‘the California School’ because most of them worked at universities in California. Scholars like Jack Goody and John Hobson, working in Britain share most of their ideas and are here also regarded as members of the School. The label has been introduced by Jack Goldstone who has just published a small book excellently synthesising the Californian view on ‘the rise of the West’. For a succinct description, I can do no better than quote him:

Instead of seeing the rise of the West as a long process of gradual advances in Europe while the rest of the world stood still, they have turned this story around. They argue that societies in Asia and the Middle East were the world leaders in economics; in science and technology; and in shipping, trade and exploration until about AD 1500. At the time Europe emerged from the Middle Ages and entered its Renaissance, these scholars contend, Europe was far behind many of the advanced societies elsewhere in the world and did not catch up with and surpass the leading Asian societies until about AD 1800. The rise of the West was thus relatively recent and sudden and rested to a large degree on the achievements of other civilisations and not merely on what happened in Europe. Indeed some of these scholars suggest that the rise of the West may have been a relatively short and perhaps temporary phenomenon. (Goldstone 2008b: VIII)

The rise of School, the members of which of course do not always agree amongst each other in every respect, is part and parcel of a widespread dissatisfaction with Eurocentrism. Some of them emphasise Europe’s backwardness. An exponent of this current is John Hobson, who in his The Eastern origins of Western civilisation systematically tries to ‘provincialise’ and ‘primitivise’ Europe. (Hobson 2004) Focusing on the economy, but definitely no less anti-Eurocentric, is Andre Gunder Frank. His ReOrient. Global economy in the Asian age, i.e. the period 1400–1800, hammers home one clear message: Economic historians studying the early modern era must focus on the East, in particular on China, the world’s most developed economy. To focus on ‘rising’ Europe is a Eurocentric mistake: ‘… Europe remained a marginal player in the world economy until the second half of the eighteenth century with a perpetual deficit [i.e. in its trade with Asia, Peer Vries] despite its relatively easy and cheap access to American money, without which Europe would have been almost entirely excluded from any participation in the world economy’ (Frank 1998a: 75). According to Frank ‘… the Europeans did not do anything – let alone ‘modernize’ – by themselves’. (Frank 1998a: 259) When they in the end rose, they did so by ‘climbing on Asian shoulders’ with money they had somehow found, stolen, extorted or earned. (Frank 1998a: 277). Although Frank continues to refer to Europe’s exploitation of the Americas, he now fiercely rejects dependency theory and the idea that it was the Europeans who created a global economy for which they themselves were the centre. His pleas have not fallen upon deaf ears, even though most of his claims are patent exaggerations. Robert Marks, for example, writes in a popular textbook that Europe was ‘… a peripheral, marginal player trying desperately to gain access to the sources of wealth generated in the East’. (Marks 2002: 43) Less vociferous Californians, like Pomeranz and Wong, confine themselves to emphasising that ‘the Rest’ was not backward, and ‘the West’ not that different, and they defend a ‘Eurasian similarity-thesis’. I will discuss that extensively later on in this article.

W. V. Harris - The monetary systems of the Greeks and Romans

Introduction

For decades the history of money in the classical world was a fairly quiet field. It was almost universally supposed to be synonymous with the study of numismatics, and the most debated questions concerned coinage—why it came into being in the first place, when it spread to the various regions, when and by how much it was debased, whether it was possible to calculate the quantity of it that was produced or in circulation in this period or that.

One might be tempted to say that what has shaken up the study of Greek and Roman money since the beginning of the 1990s has been the intrusion of non-numismatists, in particular of scholars with wider interests in economic or cultural history. But what has happened has been more complicated than that. In the first place, the labels are reductive, and some of those scholars who have ample experience as numismatists would undoubtedly define themselves as ancient historians. And some of those who have widened the debate during these years, Christopher Howgego for instance, have been numismatists de métier.

It is clearly true, however, that important new work on various historical problems—in particular on the possibility of sustained economic growth 1 in the ancient world 2 and on inflation in the later Roman Empire—have attracted the attention of a larger circle of historians. And in the same period, a certain revival of the interest of economists in economic history, which was at one time in definite retreat in a number of countries, has included a degree of inquisitiveness about relatively sophisticated pre-modern economies, including that of the Roman Empire (Marcello de Cecco led the way). This is all the more welcome, since there are still ancient historians who are loyal to the notion that because ancient economies were different from ours they can study antiquity in isolation.

Economists are also at risk. A recent and well-regarded work entitled The Nature of Money takes a historical view of the subject, stretching back to classical times. Good. It is also a work of exceptional lucidity. But the author’s first paragraph on the Romans contains four serious errors, 3 and so it goes on. It is not all his fault, perhaps—Roman history has its share of technicalities and obscure terminology. The author himself laments ‘the division of intellectual labour’ that has affected the study of money. 4 The answer is, I suppose, more dialogue.

The contributors to this volume—a cross-section, it may be said, of those who interest themselves in Greek and Roman money 5—were given a free hand to write about the topics of their choice. My sole suggestion was that they might tell us whether, once coinage had been introduced in the Greek and Roman worlds and had become a common means of exchange, there was also non-coinage money, and if so whether it mattered much.

Not that the editor can lay claim to neutrality. The reader will see that some of the contributors are firmly of the opinion that an understanding of the ancient economy absolutely requires classicists to emerge from their cocoons and pay attention to both economic theory and the economic history of other eras, and that is my opinion. Others disagree.

My colleagues made use of their freedom, and the various topics they covered, some of them familiar, others much less so, may be broken down as follows (I do not, be it noted, describe their conclusions except in a most telegraphic fashion—each chapter speaks for itself).

1. THE USE OF BULLION AS MONEY

Kroll (Ch.1) seeks to establish that the inhabitants of a number of Greek cities in Asia and in Magna Graecia, and the Athenians too, used bullion as money both before the introduction of coinage and even afterwards. There can be no doubt that precious metals served as stores of value, but Kroll goes further, referring to bullion as a ‘transactional medium’. On the Roman side, I argue (Ch. 9) that bullion was very seldom used for making payments during high classical times, except in emergencies and across the borders of the Roman Empire. 6 Andreau (Ch. 10) shows in meticulous detail that the first part of this statement was very probably true of the first-century cities next to Vesuvius.

2. REASONS FOR THE SPREAD OF COINAGE

The reason or reasons why the Lydians invented coinage and the archaic Greeks enthusiastically adopted the invention (to facilitate payments by or to the state? to facilitate exchange?) have been canvassed almost to the point of exhaustion. 7 Kroll (Ch. 1) favours what we may call the Holloway–Wallace solution, 8 based on the variable quantities of gold and silver to be found in natural deposits of electrum, and the consequent usefulness to the Lydians and Ionians of guaranteeing the value of payments made by means of pieces of electrum—which leaves the enthusiasm of the Greeks outside Ionia unaccounted for. The evidentiary basis for the discussion has changed somewhat in recent times, with the realization that the earliest Greek coinage included a large quantity of minute silver coins (down to a range around 0.21 g.), 9 but it may be more profitable now to consider other regions and periods.

Hellenistic Egypt, because of the relative abundance of the evidence, is an instructive case of state initiative: Manning (Ch. 5) argues that the Ptolemaic government’s intention, when it vastly increased the quantity of coinage in circulation, was to facilitate taxation and payments into the state banks.

3. CREDIT-MONEY

It has been one of the main arguments of Finley and his followers against the possibility of economic growth in antiquity that an economy in which the money supply was effectively limited by the state’s supply of coinable metals and in particular of gold and silver was thereby, in most periods, prevented from growing. 10 We might in fact put this question the other way round: would it not argue for a remarkable lack of both ingenuity and mutual trust if the well-to-do in, say, fourth-century Athens, in the larger Hellenistic cities, and in Late Republican Rome had not devised some form of credit-money? Schaps (Ch. 2), concentrating on the Greeks, reduces the phenomenon as much as he is able to. While he (interestingly) admits that Greek credit-money in fact existed, he contends that there was little of it, or at least it was ‘on a scale much more modest than that known to us’ [sc. now] (a formulation with which we might all agree).

The opposing case is mainly in the hands of Cohen (Ch. 4) for Athens, and in mine for Rome (Ch. 9). Fourth-century Athens was full of lending and borrowing, including a perhaps surprising amount of financing provided by sellers large and small. Bank lending too was ‘extensive and varied’, and Cohen explains succinctly— essential reading, in my view, for all who are interested in ancient money—how such lending added to Athens’ money supply. As for my chapter, its most original aspect is that I attempt to define the conditions in which Roman credit can properly be looked upon as money (for not all of it was money).

4. MONEY SUPPLY

Closely related to the previous problem is the question of the elasticity of the money supply. Cohen’s arguments are intended to show that the money supply of Athens in the fourth century BC ‘was in fact strikingly elastic’, since it was ‘substantially’ increased both through credit provided by merchants and through non-coinage money created by bankers. From the first century BC if not earlier, the same applied (so I claim) to the Roman Mediterranean. Some scholars have even hazarded estimates of the volume of credit-money that the Roman economy created; to my mind, however, the most important question here is not the sheer volume of credit-money but the availability of capital (see Ch. 9).

5. PRICES AND GROWTH

And closely related to the question of money supply is the matter of economic growth in the Roman Empire. Hollander (Ch. 6) tries a new approach, via people’s propensity to keep their assets in coin, which he thinks increased in the unstable conditions of the Late Republic. Using the work of A. C. Pigou, he shows how this factor was related to prices, to the money supply, and to the total output of the economy. We cannot, of course, give secure values to any of these factors, but Hollander’s model has at least the advantage of offering for the first time a reasonably plausible explanation of why the probably quite rapid increase in the money supply in the Late Republic was not accompanied by rapid inflation. The difficulty in the argument, in my opinion (see again Ch. 9), is that if we are going to apply the concept ‘money supply’ to the Roman world, we must take into account the ample supply of credit-money.

6. MONEY, ATHENIAN TRAGEDY, AND TYRANTS

The monetization of a community’s economy is always likely to have had effects far beyond the economy itself. No one has shown this more vividly than Richard Seaford, above all in his book Money and the Early Greek Mind. The contribution he offers here (Ch.3) will seem tangential to some, while to others it will well exemplify the way we ought to write the cultural history of money. Seaford suggested earlier that monetization was a ‘crucial factor in the genesis and in the preoccupations’ of Athenian tragedy. This paper connects the monetization of Athens both to the development of festivals under the tyrants and to the form and content of tragedy. The isolation of the tragic tyrant, according to this view, expresses the ‘autonomous power conferred by money on the individual who possesses it’.

7. THE EXTENT OF MONETIZATION

This is a venerable problem but still an essential one. 11 Andreau (Ch. 10) confirms how thoroughly early imperial Italy was monetized. But it is Egypt, with its rich documentation, that is self-evidently the place where the matter can be put to the most thorough tests. For the Hellenistic period, Manning (Ch. 5) concludes that while monetization spread to some of the Egyptian population, it was quite variable according to social class and according to location. For the Roman period, van Minnen (Ch. 11) argues for an increasing monetization of the agrarian economy between the first and the third centuries ad, followed by a ‘significant reduction’ in monetization after the inflation of 275, with a gradual re-monetization of the agrarian economy asserting itself from the fourth century onwards after the introduction of the solidus.

But it is Katsari (Ch. 12) who takes on the most difficult aspect of this problem, the monetization of the frontier provinces. Can we trust the numismatic evidence? What it seems to show, according to Katsari’s rather minute analysis of the finds in the Balkans and in Asia Minor and Syria, is that the monetization of these parts of the Roman Empire depended mainly on levels of urbanization and on the extent of trading activities, while the role of the army, though not negligible, was indirect (urbanization was itself partly a result of the presence of the military).

8. UNIFIED MONETARY INTEGRATION ACROSS THE ROMAN MEDITERRANEAN

The ‘integration’ of the ancient economy or economies is hard to define and harder still to measure. 12 The question, as Kessler and Temin rightly say (Ch. 7), is not a simple ‘either or’, whether the Roman Empire was a single monetary area and an efficient market or was entirely made up of separate local markets. The question is whether the Roman economy was closer to one end of the spectrum or the other. Well, let us find out. Kessler and Temin argue resolutely that there was market integration across the whole Mediterranean in the Late Republic and early Empire, basing their case on a reexamination of known wheat prices. These prices are terribly few, but they seem to reveal that wheat cost less the greater the distance from Rome, which may reasonably be seen as the great centre of demand. Regression analysis shows that it is highly unlikely that this pattern is due to chance. Such a pattern was much favoured by the fact that the Roman Mediterranean was in effect a single currency zone. 13

9. THE CHOICE OF METALS: GOLD, SILVER, OR BRONZE?

The decisions of ancient states to use this metal or that for their coinage, and the economic consequences of these decisions, are often problematic. Scheidel (Ch. 13), in a chapter of extraordinary range, sets out to explain the contrast between the ‘Aegean’ model of coinage (in which precious-metal coinage is dominant), a model which was to spread throughout the ancient world and ultimately over most of the globe, and the traditional Chinese model (in which base metals dominated the coinage system). This involves weighing against each other the sheer availability of metal resources, the diVerent kinds of military service that characterized the ancient Mediterranean and ancient China, political considerations, and finally path dependence 14 (aka mindless conservatism).

Early Rome used bronze money, then around 300 bc added silver coins—it is not altogether clear why, especially as Rome at that point controlled no silver mines. Some 250 years later, under Caesar, the Roman state began the systematic manufacture of gold coinage too— and again it is not entirely clear why it happened at this exact time (the state had long had access to suYcient gold). (In both cases, prestige is, of course, the obvious answer.) What we might expect to be clearer is what the inhabitants of the Roman Empire actually did with their gold coinage. Lo Cascio (Ch. 8) shows that the answer is quite complex. Making use of Duncan-Jones’s demonstration that gold coins show markedly less weight loss than silver coins, 15 he concludes that the former were often used as a slowly circulating store of value. But he also argues, primarily on the basis of the literary evidence, Apuleius especially, that gold coins were widely used to make actual payments. 16 He then reconstructs the story of how the third-century monetary system collapsed, to be succeeded by the new system founded on the regular use of the gold solidus and its fractions.

Andreau (Ch. 10) performs the invaluable service of bringing together and analysing the evidence as to how these two kinds of coins were used in the Vesuvian cities, having Wrst pointed out the various traps that await the incautious user of this evidence. His style is to avoid both hypothetical statistics and sweeping claims. Instead he proceeds as much as possible house-by-house, a technique that is now becoming more and more practicable; and he compares the evidence from the Vesuvian cities with the evidence from othersites. The result, as Andreau says, is somewhat negative. On the one hand, we may say that Pompeii and Herculaneum could scarcely have been more thoroughly monetized; on the other hand, some scholars will undoubtedly Wnd it puzzling that rich houses have not yielded greater quantities of coins.

10. MONEY HISTORICIZED IN A ROMAN PROVINCE

Finally, van Minnen (Ch. 11), oVers the most diachronic analysis in the whole book, Wtting together the development of monetization, price changes, investment, and taxation in Roman Egypt from the Wrst century to the sixth (thus, together with Lo Cascio, he provides this volume’s contribution to the study of the late-antique economy). He also manages to consider how various changes aVected diVerent kinds of people, in particular big landowners, farmer owners, tenants, and ordinary town-dwellers. This is the kind of analysis, conceptually sophisticated but diachronic and human, that we wish we could carry out for the Roman Empire in general, and indeed a great deal of it is instructive for the world outside Egypt. It is good to be reminded that monetary history includes real eVects: ‘after 275, they [the ordinary inhabitants of the cities in Roman Egypt] died in large numbers’.

What else might we proWtably have discussed? Every reader will have views. Further Hellenistic chapters would certainly have helped. But I will merely mention one issue, a matter—as it seems to me—of considerable importance and difficulty.

That issue is fiduciarity. The subject of fiduciary coinage appears from time to time in this volume (Schaps, Cohen, Harris), but is not dealt with systematically. No one, I think, would any longer agree with Finley’s claim that ancient states ‘never created fiduciary money in any form’. 17 The fullest discussion known to me is Seaford’s, 18 which shows that in a certain sense Greeks produced fiduciary coinage from the very beginning. But one of the problems is definition. Clearly there is a big difference between coinage that has been slightly debased but is assumed by most of its users to be made of a particular precious metal and coinage that has a conventional value, its users not caring at all what its bullion value might be. And how can a historian detect fiduciary coinage in any case? I suspect that most Roman silver coinage was fiduciary from the time of the Second Punic War crisis until ad 275, but it remains to be seen whether, with our scanty information about the prices of gold and silver, this can be proved. The only price of gold given in Scheidel’s Roman price catalogue 19—Caesar’s plundering in Gaul drove him to offer gold at a lower-than-usual price, 3,000 sesterces a pound, according to Suetonius, DJ 54, a scarcely trustworthy source on such a point 20—might suggest that the fiduciary value of the denarius at that time was negligible. 21

At the end of an interesting chapter entitled ‘Ancient and Modern: The Invention of the Ancient Economy’, Neville Morley expounds a dichotomy between those whom he labels ‘formalists’, who hold that ‘economic principles . . . provide a better understanding of how the economy actually worked than the limited concepts of the historical participants’ and other historians who ‘insist on the primacy of what are sometimes termed the actors’ categories’. To study ancient money, ‘in purely economic terms’, he goes on, ‘may be intellectually convenient, but it completely misses all the other dimensions, all the other meanings . . . most of which were far more important [sic] to the ancients than the purely economic’. 22 This dichotomy is to be rejected, for, as I hope that this book shows, we simply do not have to choose between economic analysis and understanding the mentalities of the Greeks and Romans. Read the chapters in this book that make most use of modern economics: their authors are at least as attentive to the concepts and behavioural patterns of the ancients as the others. There is no dilemma here. It would be profoundly silly to try to write history without modern concepts, and Morley’s own book is packed with them, quite properly. Of course we always have to be on guard against anachronistic judgements, just like other historians. The real enemies are received ideas and ignorance, in this case ignorance of the history and theory of money.

The purpose of this volume is in any case to stimulate debate about the nature of ancient money in general. Each author puts forward his or her point of view, more or less provocative as the case may be. Best of all, let us admit it, is to convince the informed scholarly public; next best is to elicit well-argued criticism.

Notas

1 For some discussion of the use of this concept in ancient contexts see P. Millett, ‘Productive to Some Purpose? The Problem of Ancient Economic Growth’, in D. Mattingly and J. Salmon (eds.), Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World (London, 2001), 17–48.

2 Once for all, I apologize for writing ‘ancient’ in place of ‘Greek and Roman’. There is no intention to minimize the interest of the monetary history of other ancient states in any part of the world.

3 G. Ingham, The Nature of Money (Cambridge, 2004), 101. ‘The Roman economy was driven by the state’s activity.’ ‘There is evidence to suggest that more coins were issued than were needed for immediate purposes, in order to stimulate production and exchange.’ ‘During the first phase of imperial expansion [he seems to mean the Julio-Claudian era, though this was not of course the first phase of imperial expansion], expenditure released far more coins into the provinces … than were collected back in taxation’ [my italics]. He takes from R. W. Goldsmith the claim that ‘all imperial trade ‘‘was conducted entirely on a cash basis’’’; this opinion has admittedly had many supporters. Classicists and others too will be surprised to read that ‘in all Indo-European languages, words for ‘‘debt’’ are synonymous with those for ‘‘sin’’ or ‘‘guilt’’’ (90).

4 Ibid. 9. 

5 This can only, of course, be true in an approximate sense.

6 Thereby contradicting Hollander (Ch. 6), among others.

7 For a brief but up-to-date and illuminating discussion see Seaford, MEG 131–6. In my view, we need further discussion of the kind of ‘government’ that made these minting decisions. S. von Reden seems to be looking in the right direction when she writes that coinage developed ‘in the public political economy of those who held power in the archaic poleis’ (‘Money in the Ancient Economy: A Survey of Recent Research’, Klio 84 (2002), 141–74 at 153).

8 R. R. Holloway, ‘La ricerca attuale sull’origine della moneta’, RIN 80 (1978), 7–14; R. W. Wallace, ‘The Origin of Electrum Coinage’, AJA 91 (1987), 385–97 (the latter develops but differs from the former). Kroll supplies further bibliography.

9 Seaford, MEG 135. For further evidence see J. H. Kagan, ‘Small Change and the Beginning of Coinage at Abdera’, in Agoranomia: Studies in Money and Exchange Presented to John H. Kroll (New York, 2006), 49–60.

10 Finley, AE 196: ‘there can be no doubt that the [money] supply was often inadequate for the ongoing needs of the society, let alone for the prospects of economic growth’.

11 The attentive reader will notice that the contributors use this term in somewhat different senses (see the index); I have not attempted to impose a single definition.

12 Harris, ‘Between Archaic and Modern: Problems in Roman Economic History’, in Harris (ed.), The Inscribed Economy: Production and Distribution in the Roman Empire in the Light of instrumentum domesticum (Ann Arbor, 1993), 11–29 at 18–20. See further C. J. Howgego, ‘Coin Circulation and the Integration of the Roman Economy’, JRA 7 (1994), 5–21 at 9–10.

13 This is at least congruent with the well-known centralization of minting in the high Roman Empire: ‘one or two mints (Rome, and for part of the 1st c. a.d., Lugdunum) provided virtually all the gold coinage . . . a silver coinage which came increasingly to dominate Wrst the west and then the east, and, from early in the Principate, a base metal coinage for the western half of the empire’ (Howgego, 6).

14 For this concept see R. Garud and P. Karnøe (eds.), Path Dependence and Creation (Mahwah, NJ, 2001).

15 MG 191. 

16 I will admit that I read the evidence of Apuleius diVerently.

17 AE 141.

18 MEG 136–46. For other recent comments see A. Bresson, ‘Coinage and Money Supply in the Hellenistic Age’, in Z. H. Archibald, J. K. Davies, and V. Gabrielsen, Making, Moving and Managing: The New World of Ancient Economies, 323–31 BC (Oxford, 2005), 44–72 at 65, and J. H. Kagan, ‘Small Change’ [n. 9], 53–4.

19 <http://www.stanford.edu/
scheidel/NumIntro.htm>, accessed 7 June 2007.

20 Cf. Crawford, RRC 626 n. 1. But the passage favours the notion that, in Hadrian’s time at least, the gold-market was quite well integrated empire-wide (‘per Italiam provinciasque divenderet’).

21 Suetonius’ figure means that Caesar was willing to part with about 322.8 g of gold (see Duncan-Jones, MG 213, for the Roman pound) for about 2,895 g of silver coins (see Crawford, RRC 594 for the weight of the denarius), a gold : silver ratio of 8.97. At a notionally normal ratio of 12 : 1 (ibid. 626) he would have been able to obtain 3,873.6 g of silver coins, about 1,000 denarii. So if such coins were valued at their bullion value, the glut had (supposedly) brought about a discount of almost exactly 25 per cent.

22 N. Morley, Theories, Models and Concepts in Ancient History (London, 2004), 48–9. He does not specify which dimensions and meanings.