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Subtitle: Institutions, markets, and growth in the City-states,
Princeton Univ. Press, 2016. 620 pgs., index, notes, sources, tables, figures,
bibliography, Appendix, weights, measures and currency units
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Reviewer comment:
On page 268 Dr. Bresson makes a critical destinction that is generally
misundersood or ignored in beliefs about ancient societies today. "The
Greek polis was not a reality separate from the body of citizens,
situated at a higher, inaccessible hierarchial level, but rather the common
possesion of the citizens who were members of it." Yet he constantly uses
the term 'citiy-state' because he understands what he means and it is not what
that term 'city-state' is believed to be by authors such as Allison. The point
is that 'state' is a modern (well Renaissance) West European abstract concept
that was conceived to take the place of the ancient ''Great Chain of
Being". Unfortunately today we are faced with constant beliefs that
'states' have ideas, policies, and take actions. The Greeks and ancients in
general had no such understanding. They believed as a simple matter of course
that Individuals (or indiviuals organized in groups such as families and clans)
were the actors.
On page 271 he makes another important observation: "The use of a single
and unchallengable curency in transactions in the agora or the emporion
forestalled the disputes to which money, as the common instrument of measring
values and of exchange, might itself have given rise." What does this
mean? It mean that 'money' was a metric required to establish the relative
value of Things and services. "Money' had to have a fixed, stable value
itself. The coin was NOT itself money - it was a token that served as an
unchangeable expression of value. By being transportable and collectable in any
quantity it freed merket exchange from the ancient Near Eastern ledger system
in which the relative value of items being exchanged was noted in governments.
All the society had to do was create (mint) the coins, declare their value, and
require that they be used as the measure of value as well as the medium of
exchange that enabled markets to become flexible and international.
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Structures and Production
Chapter I - The Economy of Ancient Greece: A Conceptual Framework
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Chapter II - People in Their Environment
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Chapter III - Energy: Economy, and Transport Cost
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Chapter IV - The Polis and the Economy
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Chapter V - Agricultural Production
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Chapter VI - The Economy of the Agricultural World
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Chapter VII - Nonagricultural Production, Capital and Innovation
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Chapter VIII - The Logic of Growth
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Market and Trade
Chapter IX - The Institutions of the Domestic Market
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Chapter X - Money and Credit
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Chapter XI - City-States, Taxes, and Trade
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Chapter XII - The Emporion and the Markets
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Chapter XIII - International Trade Networks
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Chapter XIV - Strategies of International Trade
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Chapter XV - The Greek Cities and the Market
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Appendix
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