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THE MAKING OF THE ANCIENT GREEK ECONOMY

ALAIN BRESSON

 

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

 
 

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.

 

 

Structures and Production
Chapter I - The Economy of Ancient Greece: A Conceptual Framework

 

 

Chapter II - People in Their Environment

 
 

Chapter III - Energy: Economy, and Transport Cost

 
 

Chapter IV - The Polis and the Economy

 
 

Chapter V - Agricultural Production

 
 

Chapter VI - The Economy of the Agricultural World

 
 

Chapter VII - Nonagricultural Production, Capital and Innovation

 
 

Chapter VIII - The Logic of Growth

 
 

Market and Trade
Chapter IX - The Institutions of the Domestic Market

 
 

Chapter X - Money and Credit

 
 

Chapter XI - City-States, Taxes, and Trade

 
 

Chapter XII - The Emporion and the Markets

 
 

Chapter XIII - International Trade Networks

 
 

Chapter XIV - Strategies of International Trade

 
 

Chapter XV - The Greek Cities and the Market

 
 

Appendix

 

Return to Xenophon.