The comparative economics of slavery in the Greco-Roman world
Walter Scheidel (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
A comparative perspective improves our understanding of the critical determinants of the large-scale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies, including classical Greece and the Italian heartland of the Roman empire. This paper argues that the success of chattel slavery was a function of the specific configuration of several critical variables: the character of certain kinds of economic activity, the incentive system, the normative value system of a society, and the nature of commitments required of the free population. High real wages and low slave prices precipitated the expansion of slavery in classical Greece and Republican Rome, while later periods of Roman history may have witnessed either a high-equilibrium level of slavery or its gradual erosion in the context of lower wages and higher prices.
Genuine ‘slave economies’ – in which slave labor permeated all sectors of the economy and played a central role in economic output outside the sphere of family labor – were rare in history. Classical Greece and the core of the Roman Empire are among the most notable cases. This raises important questions: how did the Greeks and Romans come to join this exclusive club, and how did the circumstances that determined the development and structure of their regimes of slave labor compare to those that shaped other slave-rich systems? This paper has two goals. The first one is to improve our understanding of the critical determinants of the large-scale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies. This calls for a comparative approach that extends beyond classical antiquity.
Walter Scheidel (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
A comparative perspective improves our understanding of the critical determinants of the large-scale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies, including classical Greece and the Italian heartland of the Roman empire. This paper argues that the success of chattel slavery was a function of the specific configuration of several critical variables: the character of certain kinds of economic activity, the incentive system, the normative value system of a society, and the nature of commitments required of the free population. High real wages and low slave prices precipitated the expansion of slavery in classical Greece and Republican Rome, while later periods of Roman history may have witnessed either a high-equilibrium level of slavery or its gradual erosion in the context of lower wages and higher prices.
Genuine ‘slave economies’ – in which slave labor permeated all sectors of the economy and played a central role in economic output outside the sphere of family labor – were rare in history. Classical Greece and the core of the Roman Empire are among the most notable cases. This raises important questions: how did the Greeks and Romans come to join this exclusive club, and how did the circumstances that determined the development and structure of their regimes of slave labor compare to those that shaped other slave-rich systems? This paper has two goals. The first one is to improve our understanding of the critical determinants of the large-scale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies. This calls for a comparative approach that extends beyond classical antiquity.
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