Guaporense

If you look at the graph you also can see that from 350 BC to 250 BC there is apparently an expansion of 90-100%.

While the shipwreck data shows it's greater expansion in the 6th century BC, increasing by a factor of 5 times from the 7th century BC.

Well, a decline in the quality of institutions caused by the end of the republic probably had something to do with it.

Guaporense

As always, LoG is as wrong as possible. Military power is hugely correlated with economic development. Of course there are exceptions (Mongols), but the overall trend is rather obvious. More money means more soldiers and better armed soldiers.

Compare the hugely advanced economies of 19th century Europe with the insignificant levels of economic activity over the rest of the planet and the respective military potentials are similar. The hugely greater military capacity of the Romans compared to the Gauls at the time of Caesar.

sylla1

Of course; if you begin from zero (0), any successive positive number would inevitably be an exponential increase.

That's exactly why relative increase is not all the story, not even your "ultimate graph"; ultimately, absolute numbers are even more relevant.

And boys & girls, the higher absolute numbers here were by a long shot those of a half-millennium of Roman rule (Republic / Principate)

That said, my point is not that there was no economic expansion previous to the Roman ruler; my point is that such expansion continued for centuries under such Roman rule. Of course there was objectively a decline in quality of the institutions; a half millennium of quite democratic rule ended.
It simply didn't impact the economic performance according to the evidence shown here.

As shown in essentially all the graphics all along this thread, especially in those with more definition and not just five points for a half millennium, e.g.:


...The economic decline was actually delayed to far later, even to the early IV century in the graph above, when the absolute economic performance (maritime trade as expressed by number of shipwrecks) was still above pre-Roman times.
In fact, the economic performance by virtually all indicators peaked by the late Julio-Claudian dynasty, long after the disappearance of the Republic.

sylla1

First, the specifications of the numbers of this graphic are entirely lacking (especially for the ordinate axis; time???)
Anyhow, I guess we shouldn't speculate; it seems better to wait for such specifications to be posted here...

Then, each curve seems to respresent exclusively relative change in comparison with the previous measurement; absolute values seem to be entirely ignored.

Being that the case, it would be just a part of the evolution described; hardly "ultimate".

Bart Dale

But the shipping tonnage in the 20th century is moe like a 1000 times greater than the 16th century, so there is a significant reduction in the percentage of sinking, thanks to modern navigation aids such as radar, GPS, compass, etc. If the shipping volumes had been the same between the 20th century and the 16th century, there were have been a lot less wrecks in the 20th. Which is my point - you can necessarily assume that fewer wrecks implies less shipping if there has been major changes in technology.


Ships sizes have steadily increased since the early middle ages on through our own times. The Roman grain ships were exceptionally large, even by their standards. By the late middle ages, there were ships comparable in size to Roman ships. For example, Henry V of England's ship the "Jesus" was 1000 tons, comparable to the larger Roman ships.


During the late middle ages, ships were sailing in winter on the Mediterranean, a time that Roman ships stayed in port because they couldn't handle the weather. That shows an improvement in technology, because the Medieval sailors were not any more reckless than their Roman counterparts. Late middles ships had magnetic compasses, astrolabes, and portlan charts, and they also had bilge pumps as well. Plus they had a combination of square and lateen sails for improved handling in all weather, while Roman's had only square sails. And they had stern post rudders. While stern post rudders didn't steer any better than the dual Roman rudders, contrary to popular opion, they did allow the sides of the ships to be higher, which improved safety. Roman merchant ships had to relatively low sided for their side mounted rudders to work.

Also, there is another factor that you have to take into account: Roman wrecks are 2,000 years old, 15th century wrecks, 500-600 years old, as result they tend to be better preserved and hence will tend to be easier to discover than otherwise.


People think it, because as I pointed out, the late middle ages were sailing in weather the Romans had to stay in port. Even if you had the same number of ships, the middle ages would be carrying more volume, since they had a longer sailing season than the Romans. Note, I am not saying these people are right, just pointing out why they might think it. I agree, that Roman shipping probably still exceeded late medieval shipping volumes, but that is not 100 certain. As I pointed out, late middle ages incluced a lot of shipping traffic in areas (Scandinavia, Baltic) that didn't have any in Roman times.

Guaporense

In the little North African island of Jerba a field survey was conducted. According to the results of the survey the population of the island was estimated at 31,000 in the 1st and 2nd centuries ad. However, the capacity of the island to produce wheat given pre-modern agricultural methods was estimated at 1,550 tons, enough wheat to feed about 8,000 people, or little more than a quarter of the population of the island. The survey revealed that in fact the island had over 40% of it's population living in urban sites and that they imported all the wheat they consumed, as agricultural production was focused on wine and olives. The island's economy was actually based on exports of manufactured goods to pay for the food imports and that was not some special place, just another mediterranean island in the early roman period.

Sea trade during the classical period is unique in pre-modern history in that it involved long distance trade of not just luxury goods such as spices and silk, but actually massive quantities of bulk commodities, such as wheat, marble, wine, olive oil and other staple goods. For comparison, during the late middle ages and early modern period the great voyages of the merchants involved buying exotic goods in small quantities at one corner of the world and selling these goods for 100 times the price in Europe. Trade did not involve bulk commodities and one would be hard pressed to find, for instance, a region of 15th century France that imported all it's wheat from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, like the Island of Jerba in the Roman period did.

Another interesting example of the scale of Roman trade: Rathbone had estimated based on the data on the total ammount of land cultivated (yes, we know that for Egypt, thanks to preserved papyrological evidence) that Roman Egypt produced 2.5 million tons of wheat per year. However Egypt's population was estimated at 5 to 7 million, so the egyptians only consumed up to 1.5 million tons of wheat per year, the other 1 million ton was exported to the mediterranean (of which Rome collected 140,000 tons as tax). That was enough wheat to feed over 5 million people. Another evidence is that during bad harvests it was decreed that Egypt had to focus their agricultural surplus in feeding Alexandria before exporting grain. That indicates that even in bad years Egyptian agriculture could produce a surplus, and since agricultural yields varied greatly from bad to good harvrests it meant that Egypt indeed exported grain in normal years in quantities sufficient to feed millions. While the merchant fleets of the 15th century couldn't carry the grain out of Egypt and distribute it to the rest of the mediterranean since their tonnage was only 220,000 tons, about a fifth of the total mass of grain exported from Egypt after every harvest.

The Romans not only transported millions of tons of food across the mediterranean. They transported construction materials:

Each one of these columns was a single 60 stone monolith, quarried in Egypt and transported over 2,000 kilometers to the city of Rome. The Romans even carried over obelisks of hundreds of tons from Egypt to Rome, transporting them over thousands of kilometers.

Long distance trade reached all corners of the empire and affected not just the elite but the commoners as well: in remains dug in Hadrian's wall the soldiers had goods imported from Gaul and Italy. Pottery from a single factory in Southern Gaul has been found in North Africa, Italy and Iberia.

Lord_of_Gauda

The overall trend does not line up for most societies for a hundred/two hundred year period.
This is simply because of 'momentum of money': the largest amount of money at your disposal does not correlate with economic productivity of your nation, it merely correlates with economic hoarding of a nation. Rome's economic might and military peak are out of sync. by atleast a 100 years, so is the case of many empires.

Its simply a matter of accruing enough financial power in your treasury to be influential- does not mean when your treasury is at its peak, your nation's economic performance is also at its peak.

Romans didn't have a 'hugely greater' military capacity than Gaul: they had far superior strategy and logistics, but as far as armaments and warriors fielded in battle, the Gauls were comparable, if not superior to Rome. Its the latter two categories (arms and numbers) that have anything to do with economics.

sylla1

And logistics? Which military aspect could be any more related to economical issues?

The richer any military power may be, the better its logistics, weaponry, training (from work division) and manpower reserves (from demographic expansion) will predictably be.
Economy certainly doesn't win wars alone, in the same sense that guns don't kill people by themselves.
But of course, those are the means used by any fighter to win any war.
Impoverished nations are like disarmed warriors; they fight in immense disadvantage.

Which Gauls?
(There were plenty of heterogeneous groups)
And at what time?
The raiding Brennus' Senones who crushed the tiny city state of Rome at the early IV century BC?
Or the migrant Helvetii crushed by the selected legions & auxilia of the colossal imperial Roman republic of the I century BC?

In any case, regarding the OP, the obvious military advantage implied by the immense economic potential of the late imperial Roman Republic (entirely lacked by the former city state) against the Gauls and virtually any other enemies couldn't have been any more evident.

That said, please be aware that what the economic indicators show all along this thread is hardly just hoarding or the accretion of money (which as you rightly pointed out are not productivity per se).
They objectively show the evolution of the basic global productivity in several dissimilar & complementary fields (e.g. metallurgy, maritime trade, husbandry) and their impact in the Roman welfare (e.g. nutritional status).
Frankly, I can't imagine any more illustrative way to demonstrate the economic productivity of any nation or society.

fascinating

Rome did not completely dominate the Mediterranean until the 1st century BC. Pompey's conquests were said to almost double the revenue from the Eastern provinces (which were the richest provinces). The capture of Egypt in 30BC increased revenue by over 250 million sesterces. The imperial revenue in the early empire is estimated at about 800 million sesterces; working back that suggests 550 million sesterces before 30BC and maybe 400 million sesterces before Pompey's conquests in 60s BC.

My point being, it took Rome some time before it built up a level of taxation that would prove ruinous to the provinces. It's clear from the evidence provided here that economic growth started to slow in the 1st century, and went into reverse in the 2nd century. (From the 20-year shipwreck graph, the peak was years 60-80AD, followed by gradually fall, followed by dramatic drop in years about 140-160, if I am reading that graph correctly).

sylla1

Again, specifically regarding this indicator, the Roman rule would have taken up to the early IV century AD (when the shipwrecks still surpassed any pre-Roman period) to "prove ruinous" to the provinces.

For your own aforementioned case of the Roman Sicily, that would be more than six centuries...
Not to mention Italy itself, which was another Roman conquest.
In fact. some of the Eastern provinces (especially Egypt and Syria) were still the richest regions of the western world by the time of the Arab conquest (VII cetury AD).

The conquests of Cn. Pompeius Magnus were already mostly administratively declining Hellenistic puppet states in Asia & Syria; in spite of such evident political decline, such states became progressively richer already under Roman rule (fundamentally due to the Pax Romana forced over them); naturally they were already under (indirect) Roman taxation, as any other Roman puppet state.
It was the circulation of all that accreted wealth which so deeply impacted the productive Roman economy.

The Egypt conquered by Octavius had actually been directly ruled by his former colleague Marcus Antonius for a whole decade.
Previous to Antonius' rule, the Ptolemaic Egypt was actually totally broken; their rulers have even attempted more than once to evolve into a formal Roman province, under direct Roman administration (requested as early as 88 BC by Ptolemaios Alexandros I).
In fact, for the extraordinary tribute required by CJ Caesar in 48 BC, reportedly the Egyptian temples ought to be sacked (by the Ptolemaic administration itself), an action which was actually the direct trigger for the Alexandrine War.