Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the twenty-first century

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Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations: …

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Journal of History Culture and Art Research

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Verboven, Koenraad, ed. Complexity Economics: Building a New Approach to Ancient Economic History. Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

In terms of the amount and variety of production and energy capture the Roman economic system—encompassing roughly a quarter of the world’s population—was one of the most successful in pre-industrial history. It was matched (probably) by Song China (960–1279) but structurally surpassed only when the combination of science and technology raised the reach of human achievements forever. Through its connections with the outside world—Arabia, Eastern Africa, India, and indirectly China—Rome shaped the first economic world system. Not everyone in the system benefited. Inequality was rampant—with a small “one-percenter” elite, maybe 10 per cent middling groups and a great mass of people hovering slightly above subsistence, like the undergrowth in a forest or occasionally like a dangerous undertow. Scholars usually interpret this success as the outcome of three factors: favourable institutional arrangements (including the Pax Romana) that lowered transaction costs; favourable climatic conditions; and technological innovations such as building concrete or water-powered mills and wheels. Clearly, there were links and cross-overs between these three, but for practical reasons I will address only the first factor: institutions. Rather than look at the effect of institutions on transaction costs, however, as many have done the past twenty-five years or so, I will focus on the relation between institutions and social networks. My aim is to present a framework derived from theories in social sciences to analyse deep institutional change in the Roman empire—not changes in the visible formal institutions, but in the invisible rules that produce the patterns of social life. The first and longest part of this chapter will tie together models in a useful framework. The second part applies these insights to the Roman empire.

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