Trends and Trade in the Ancient World: Rome and the Economic Integration of the Mediterranean

The Roman Empire displayed a remarkable level of economic and financial integration. Literature aiming to explain this Roman success tends to focus on the last two centuries B.C.E., the time of overseas conquest, ignoring the larger chronological setting. The book project will address that omission by studying Roman economic integration and fragmentation as part of larger trends in Mediterranean history. The leading question informing the work is: what did the mercantile structure of the Roman Empire inherit from earlier times and what did it pass on to the period that followed? To answer that question the book will discuss the institutional development of trade, tracing both continuity and change.