Approaches to Ancient History

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?