Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-18T09:39:18.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Origins of the Market Economy: State Power, Territorial Control, and Modes of War Fighting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2008

Erica Schoenberger
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University

Extract

The origin and spread of money-based commodity markets is normally attributed to a natural evolution from barter and is usually seen as a solution to problems of exchange. I want to propose that markets to a considerable degree develop historically out of a different set of dynamics. These are concerned with the state-building tasks of territorial conquest and control, and are closely related to specific modes of war fighting. In this connection, markets develop not only to facilitate exchange per se but also to facilitate the mobilization of resources and their management across space and time. This need to manage resources geographically and temporally contributes not only to the spread of commodity markets but also to the development of markets in land and in labor.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Polanyi, K., “The Economy as Instituted Process.” In, Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., and Pearson, H., eds., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957), 243–70Google Scholar; Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, G. Dalton, ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1968).

2 Ingham argues persuasively that the earliest form of money is money of account that has no physical incarnation. In ancient Mesopotamia, for example, production and distribution were largely controlled by the temples and the palaces. They used the shekel as an accounting device to organize and manage the flow of goods and labor services, but there were no physical shekels. Distribution was not managed through market exchange, but on the basis of obligations owed and fulfilled. Rents and taxes were recorded in the money of account but paid in goods and labor services. See Inham, G., The Nature of Money (London: Polity Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

3 On the state and money, see Knapp, G. F., The State Theory of Money (London: Macmillan, 1924)Google Scholar; Keynes, J. M., The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964 [1935])Google Scholar; Hart, K., “Heads or Tails?: Two Sides of the Coin,” Man 21 (1986): 637–56CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Simmel, G., The Philosophy of Money, Bottomore, T. and Frisby, D., trans. (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; Ingham, G., The Nature of Money (London: Polity Press, 2004)Google Scholar. On state regulation of economic activities, see Lane, F. C., Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, North, D. C. and Thomas, R. P., The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, D. C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion and critique, see Epstein, S. R., Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London: Routledge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Weber describes “political capitalism” in Antiquity having to do with profit-making opportunities arising out of the operations of the state, especially military operations. He sees this as an alternative to market capitalism and an historical dead end. See Weber, M., The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations (London: New Left Books, 1976 [1924])Google Scholar; General Economic History (London: Transaction Books, 1981 [1927]); Love, J. R., Antiquity and Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar. Polanyi notes Greek armies were the “chief promoters of markets”; See Polanyi, K., “Aristotle Discovers the Economy,” In, Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., and Pearson, H., eds., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957), 6494Google Scholar, esp. 85. Elsewhere he writes that the agora “was a creation of the polis… . It was not born out of random transactions of unattached individuals… . Rather, markets were the result of deliberate policies… .” (Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, 319). Frederic Lane, in a series of brilliant essays dating from the 1940s, develops several ideas concerning the role of the state and of violence in economic development that I will touch on presently. See his Venice and History.

6 See Hicks, J., A Theory of Economic History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. In my reading of Epstein, markets develop autonomously to the degree that they are not inhibited by the failings of the state; they are in that sense the ‘natural’ outcome. McCormick also sees commerce as a natural and autonomous social dynamic whose development different state activities may promote or inhibit, but the role of the state remains, in effect, as an auxiliary rather than a leading player in marketization. See McCormick, M., Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 200–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

7 Epstein, Freedom and Growth, 52.

8 Ibid., esp. 48ff. McCormick, too, is very attentive to the role states may play in facilitating market integration, either through territorial consolidation or through infrastructure development. See his Origins of the European Economy.

9 See, for example, L. Kallett-Marx, , Money, Expense and Naval Power in Thucydides' History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Martin, T. R., “Why Did the Greek Polis Originally Need Coins?Historia 45 (1996): 257–82;Google ScholarShipton, K., “Money and the Elite in Classical Athens,” in, Meadows, A. and Shipton, K., eds., Money and Its Uses in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 129–44Google Scholar; J. Trevett, “Coinage and Democracy at Athens,” in ibid., 23–34. See also Finley, M. I., Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (London: Viking Press 1981)Google Scholar; and The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For an alternative view on the dating of monetization, see Kim, H. S., “Archaic Coinage as Evidence for the Use of Money,” in, Meadows, A. and Shipton, K., eds., Money and Its Uses in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 721Google Scholar; Kim, H. S., “Small Change and the Money Economy,” in, Cartledge, P., Cohen, E., and Foxhall, L., eds., Money, Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 2002), 4451Google Scholar.

10 James, T.G.H., Pharaoh's People: Scenes from Life in Imperial Egypt (London: The Bodley Head, 1984)Google Scholar; Kurke, L., Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Ramage, A. and Craddock, P., King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining (Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums, 2000)Google Scholar.

11 See for example, Morris, I., “Hard Surfaces,” in, Cartledge, P., Cohen, E., and Foxhall, L., eds., Money, Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 2002), 843Google Scholar.

12 Von Reden, S., Exchange in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth, 2003), 177–78Google Scholar.

13 Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold; and “Money and Mythic History: The Contestation of Transactional Orders in the Fifth Century b.c.,” in, W. Scheidel and S. Von Reden, eds., The Ancient Economy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 88–113.

14 Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold; and “Money and Mythic History”; Von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece.

15 Osborne, R., “Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Subsistence: Exchange and Society in the Greek City,” in, Scheidel, W. and Von Reden, S., eds., The Ancient Economy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 115–32Google Scholar.

16 Morris, “Hard Surfaces.”

17 Osborne, “Pride and Prejudice,” 129.

18 Ibid., 116.

19 Cartledge, P., “The Economy (Economies) of Ancient Greece,” in, Scheidel, W. and Von Reden, S., eds., The Ancient Economy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 19Google Scholar.

20 Ibid.; Kyrtatas, D., “Domination and Exploitation,” in, Cartledge, P., Cohen, E., and Foxhall, L., eds., Money, Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 2002), 140–55Google Scholar; Meikle, S., “Modernism, Economics and the Ancient Economy,” in, Scheidel, W. and Von Reden, S., eds., The Ancient Economy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 233–50Google Scholar.

21 Von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece, 108.

22 Trevett, “Coinage and Democracy,” 23–24.

23 Kallett-Marx, Money, Expense and Naval Power.

24 Ibid.; Hanson, V., “Genesis of the Infantry, 600–350 b.c.,” in, Parker, G., ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995)Google Scholar, n.p.

25 Kallett-Marx, Money, Expense and Naval Power, 18.

26 Ibid., 7–8.

27 Hopkins, K., “Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 b.c.a.d. 400),” Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 101–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade,” in, W. Scheidel and S. Von Reden, eds., The Ancient Economy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 190–230.

28 Hanson, V., “The Roman Way of War, 250 b.c.a.d. 300,” in, Parker, G., ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995), 5061Google Scholar.

29 Duncan-Jones, R., Money and Government in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Jones notes that the food and clothing required by the army were procured through local compulsory purchases while the corn dole at Rome was supplied through in-kind taxes or in-kind rents on imperial estates. Jones, A.H.M., The Roman Economy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 38Google Scholar.

31 Duncan-Jones, Money and Government, 45. See also A.H.M. Jones, who writes, “The great mass of money was spent on wars and on the increasingly regular garrisons of the provinces … This means that nearly all the income of the treasury was spent in the provinces in the form of military pay and supplies, and very little remained in Italy” (Roman Economy, 116).

32 Hopkins, “Taxes and Trade.”

33 Crawford, M. H., Roman Republican Coinage (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

34 In a normal year, four new legions would need to be equipped at a cost of 1.5 million denarii or the equivalent of somewhere between 1,100 and 1,800 pounds of gold for clothing alone. See Badian, E., Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 16, 22Google Scholar. The wages of one legion for a year in circa the second century B.C. ran to some 2.4 million sesterces, or roughly 500,000–600,000 denarii. In this period, there were generally seven legions in service. See Harris, W. V., War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 b.c. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 7071, 93Google Scholar.

35 Transport by sea from, for example, Egypt to Italy, would have been significantly faster and cheaper than overland transport to almost anywhere, at least during the sailing season. The cost of shipping a modius of wheat from Alexandria to Rome at the time of Diocletian was, according to Jones' estimate, somewhat less than what it would take to cart it fifty miles over land (Roman Economy, 37). On the other hand, shipping coinage around poses considerable risks, which should not be underestimated. For some of its interregional financial obligations, the state seems to have relied on a primitive system of bills of exchange with tax farmers in the provinces. See Badian, Publicans and Sinners, 77. This would allow a considerable reduction in the total amount of cash in transit and would possibly result in a disproportionate flow of money between Rome and the frontiers compared to the links between Rome and the settled provinces.

36 Davies, O., Roman Mines in Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935)Google Scholar; Duncan-Jones, Money and Government.

37 Jones believes that Rome itself was less commercialized than one might expect, due principally to the poverty of most of its inhabitants. He also observes that the interregional redistribution of wealth from the rich provinces of North Africa and Asia to the legions in the backward regions of northern and eastern Europe tended to stimulate development and town building in the frontier areas. See Jones, Roman Economy, 36–38, 127.

38 Badian, Publicans and Sinners, 30, 53; Jones, Roman Economy, 114–16; Harris, War and Imperialism, 93.

39 Loane, J., Industry and Commerce of the City of Rome, 50 b.c.–200 a.d. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938)Google Scholar; Badian, Publicans and Sinners; Harris, War and Imperialism.

40 Duncan-Jones, Money and Government, 10, 98.

41 McCormick takes a more optimistic view of this revitalization of commerce, seeing it as both stronger and more durable than some other researchers; see Origins of the European Economy. Other sources include Lopez, R. S., The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages: 950–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masschaele, J., Peasants, Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150–1350 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Spufford, P., Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Verhulst, A., The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. For other chronologies, see Postan, M. M., Medieval Trade and Finance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duby, G., The Early Growth of the European Economy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Lopez, The Commercial Revolution; Contamine, P., War in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)Google Scholar.

43 McCormick also singles out the slave trade as providing a tremendous boost to the development of a commercial economy in the early Middle Ages, a point I will take up presently.

44 Even I am somewhat nonplussed by the extreme rapidity of this project. Richard is said to have remarked about the fortress, “How fair a daughter but twelve months old,” only he said it in Latin. See Baldwin, J., The Government of Philip Augustus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 90Google Scholar; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, 113.

45 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 296–99. See also Gillingham, J., “An Age of Expansion: C. 1020–1204,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5988Google Scholar.

46 Verbruggen, J. F., The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from the Eighth Century to 1340 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1997 [1954])Google Scholar; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages; Bachrach, B. S., “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” in, Lynn, J. A., ed., Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 5778Google Scholar; and Bachrach, B. S., “On Roman Ramparts,” in, Parker, G., ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995), 6491Google Scholar; Nicholson, H. J., Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” 71.

48 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 74.

49 To clarify the geography of this a bit, I am supposing that the areas experiencing the strongest impetus to marketization would be behind the front lines, so to speak, but well forward of the home base in the heartland of the empire. As in the case of Rome, the resulting market geography might be rather counterintuitive.

50 Lopez, The Commercial Revolution; Spufford, Money and Its Use, 60–69.

51 Verbruggen, Art of Warfare; Duby, Early Growth, 166–68; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages; Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe”; Ayton, A., “Arms, Armour and Horses,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 186208Google Scholar; Nicholson, Medieval Warfare.

52 Prestwich, M., Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 6781Google Scholar. See also Verbruggen, Art of Warfare; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages; Lynn, J. A., “Medieval Introduction,” in, Lynn, J. A., ed., Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 3138Google Scholar.

53 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare; Jones, R.L.C., “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c. 800–1450,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 163–85Google Scholar.

54 Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 258.

55 Housely, N., “European Warfare, c. 1200–1320,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 113–35Google Scholar.

56 Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” 72.

57 Gillingham, “An Age of Expansion,” 66.

58 Verbruggen, Art of Warfare; Spufford, Money and Its Use; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 147; Mallet, M., “Mercenaries,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 209–29Google Scholar; Nicholson, Medieval Warfare.

59 Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, 130. See also Baldwin, J., Masters, Princes and Merchants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 215–16Google Scholar; Mallet “Mercenaries.”

60 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 55, 169–70; and Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 220–21.

61 Verbruggen, Art of Warfare; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages.

62 Baldwin reckons that a mercenary knight earned roughly three times the stipend of the highest-paid civilian artisan in France. He also calculates that the daily wage scale for a knight, at 72 deniers parisis, ran five to six times that of a crossbowman on foot and twice the rate of a mounted sergeant, thus overlapping the civilian wage scale. See Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 133, 169–70. See also Prestwich, Armies and Warfare; Housely, “European Warfare,” 123–24.

63 Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 84.

64 Ibid.; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 272–74.

65 Ibid., 219; Hopkins, “Taxes and Trade.”

66 Lane, Venice and History, 57.

67 Ibid., 36.

69 Spufford, Money and Its Use, 98; Edbury, P., “Warfare in the Latin East,” in, Keen, M., ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 89112Google Scholar.

70 Constable, G., “Medieval Charters as a Source for the History of the Crusades,” in, Madden, T., ed., The Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 130–53Google Scholar; J. Riley-Smith, “Early Crusaders to the East and the Costs of Crusading, 1095–1130,” in ibid., 156–71.

71 Ibid.; see also Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 275–76.

72 Constable, “Medieval Charters,” 145; Riley-Smith, “Early Crusaders,” 168.

73 France, J., “Patronage and the Appeal of the First Crusade,” in, Madden, T., ed., The Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 195207Google Scholar.

74 Spufford, Money and Its Use, 98.

75 Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance, 112–13, 341; Spufford, Money and Its Use, 98; Cipolla, for example, comments that “From a purely economic point of view, war was a much greater evil than the plague… .” Cipolla, C., Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700 (New York: Routledge, 1993), 109Google Scholar.

76 Duby, Early Growth; Spufford, Money and Its Use; Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets; McCormick, Origins of the European Economy; Verhulst, Carolingian Economy.

77 Duby, Early Growth, 47, 96, 215–17; Spufford, Money and Its Use.

78 Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets. Russo seems to me closer to the mark in his analysis of English urbanization in an earlier period. The trading towns he is concerned with are generally royal or aristocratic foundations, but he sees these as closely connected to state-building and interstate aggression, as well as facilitators of luxury consumption. See Russo, D. G., Town Origins and Development in Early England, c. 400–950 a.d. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

79 Baldwin, S., The Organization of Medieval Christianity (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962)Google Scholar; Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance; Le Goff, J., The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Nelson, J. L., “Making Ends Meet: Wealth and Poverty in the Carolingian Church,” in, Sheils, W. J. and Wood, D., eds., The Church and Wealth (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1987), 2535Google Scholar. Cipolla considers the effects of these changes to be more pronounced from the thirteenth century, as does Tellenbach. See Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, 192–93; Tellenbach, G., The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 34, 68, 185, 329CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance, 206; Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, 192–93.

81 Brechin, G., Imperial San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

82 Spufford, Money and Its Use, 77.

83 Rickard, T. A., Man and Metals. Volume 1 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1932)Google Scholar; Blanchard, I., Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Volume 2 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2001)Google Scholar.

84 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 768.