Download Morris Silver. Economic Structures of Antiquity.(Contributions in

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Reviews of Books
development economics on peasant economies, rural
women, and the environment. Whether subject to the
postwar development canon or, after about 1980, to
unquestioning faith in ruthless competition and the
invisible hand of the global market, underdeveloped
economies remain torn between the demands of peasant subsistence and capitalist acquisitiveness. Escobar
ends with reflections on how policies might be reoriented to benefit grass-roots community needs, seeking
an alternative to the development paradigm that has
produced "fragmentation, polarization, violence and
uprootedness" in the Third World. Perhaps, he hopes,
there can develop an exchange between the traditional
and the modern to form "hybrid cultures" (pp. 215,
219). In light of current mesmerism by the neo-liberal
canon, however, this seems highly improbable.
STANLEY J. STEIN
Princeton University
BRONISLAW GEREMEK. Poverty: A History. Translated by
AGNIESZKA KOLAKOWSKA. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. 1994. Pp. xi, 273. $39.95.
The ambitious purpose of Bronislaw Geremek's book
is to provide an overview of the evolution of attitudes
toward poverty and patterns of social policy over a
thousand years of European history. This long perspective is one of the values of the book, for it makes
apparent the similarity of the arguments employed in
very different contexts and periods in debates about
the effectiveness of various forms of action against
poverty. In other respects, however, the book is less
successful. Written in Polish in 1978 and first published
with little updating in 1986, it shows the marks of time.
Largely based on secondary literature rather than on
original research, Geremek's study mainly reflects the
concerns and approaches that characterized the renewed interest in the history of charity in the 1970s.
Although this was a remarkable phase of development
for the field (witnessing the publication of pathbreaking works by Michel Mollat, Natalie Davis, and Brian
Pullan), the absence of any reference to more recent
approaches is problematic. For example, the causes of
poverty are conceptualized in purely economic terms,
and the role that such factors as gender ideology and
ideas about generations played in the creation of
inequalities is not investigated. Moreover, the book is
mainly concerned with the policies implemented by
public authorities; the range of initiatives toward the
poor undertaken by other agencies and the more
informal and less visible sources of assistance that are
increasingly attracting the attention of historians are
·given little consideration. Finally, institutions and programs of relief are viewed simply as structures for the
poor; their function as centers of power-and therefore the role that their rise and decline played in the
history of elites and of representations of power-is
largely ignored.
What is most questionable is the Marxist framework
of interpretation that Geremek superimposes on his
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
material. He posits a close connection between the
emergence of ideas of poverty and patterns of poor
relief and stages of development of capitalism. Notions
that have lost currency in modern economic history
(first and second crises of feudalism, agrarian revolution, and refeudalization) playa crucial role in Geremek's periodization of poor relief. The focus of his
reconstruction is therefore on the early decades of the
sixteenth century, when, he maintains, following a
growth of poverty on a mass scale, the principles that
characterized the treatment of the poor for the rest of
the "modern era" were laid down. Four of the book's
seven chapters are devoted to a detailed survey of the
repressive measures against vagrants and healthy beggars introduced in this period in numerous European
towns, whereas subsequent developments are dealt
with in a much more superficial way. For example,
important events such as the emergence of a policy of
confinement and of state intervention in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are given insufficient
attention and construed merely as more advanced
expressions of the work ethic and disciplinary attitudes
toward the poor already formulated at the beginning
of the modern era.
Interestingly, despite its emphasis on continuity, the
book often presents material that contradicts the
proposed periodization. In particular, the long discussion of medieval views of charity in chapter one
provides compelling evidence of the profound distance
that separated the elitist notion of voluntarily chosen
"spiritual" poverty from undesired material poverty.
Clearly, the indifference that the medieval ethos of
charity displayed toward the needs of the working poor
casts doubt over the alleged novelty of sixteenthcentury approaches.
Although its contribution to scholars researching in
the field will be limited, Geremek's book is a valuable
introduction, for students, to the themes that characterized an important season of studies in the history of
poverty and social policy.
SANDRA CAVALLO
Royal Holloway College,
University of London
ANCIENT
MORRIS SILVER. Economic Structures of Antiquity.
(Contributions in Economics and Economic History,
number 159.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 1995. Pp.
xxiv, 262. $59.95.
The economist Morris Silver has raised his sights and
broadened his horizon from his 1986 book, Economic
Structures of the Ancient Near East. In this new work he
includes much material from ancient Greece and
Rome, too.
The three parts of the present volume are "Structural Characteristics of the Ancient Economy" (pp.
1-94), "Markets in Antiquity" (pp. 95-177), and "The
Response to Changes in Economic Incentives and
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Ancient
Public Policy" (pp. 179-204). As before, the economic
insights Silver brings emphasize transaction costs, what
it costs to get something done, and how that impedes
many kinds of deals in pre-modern conditions. This
idea he elaborates from Nobel laureate Douglass
North's exemplary explanation in Structure and Change
in Economic History ([1981], pp. 5-6 and 18-19).
Silver again argues against assertions about the
non-existence of markets by Karl Polanyi, the economic historian who claimed that the market and its
mechanisms, need and greed, were invented in Aristotle's time (pp. 97-177, reflecting Silver's 1986 book, pp.
73-144). I admit that I agree with Silver about Polanyi,
and perhaps that dead horse needs to be beaten again
in front of a larger public, but what one would like
from Silver and his fellow economists is clearer guidance about what aspects of their craft might intersect
with that of the ancient historian, particularly with
regard to data like prices that actually are quantifiable.
It is well that Silver now addresses a broader audience, but his book is not accessible to persons who lack
a wide exposure to ancient Near Eastern and classical
periods and problems; he moves too fast for the
novice. Specialists will see things in new ways by
considering, for example, Silver's suggestion that the
shift from wheat to barley in early Mesopotamia
derived not from increasing salinity of soils but from
increased demand for wool and textiles (since sheep do
better eating barley).
The Greek and Roman material has not been mined
to the extent that the ancient Near Eastern material
has. For example, Kevin Green's The Archaeology of
the Roman Economy (1986) is not mentioned. Silver
adduces parallels from medieval European practices,
but he does not interpret antiquity to include ancient
East Asia or India.
A helpful index will guide the specialist to some of
the treasures Silver has found, and he is again to be
thanked for bringing his discipline to bear on areas
where few non-philologists dare to venture.
DANIEL C. SNELL
University of Oklahoma
SUSAN SHERWIN-WHITE and AMELIE KUHRT. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid
Empire. (Hellenistic Culture and Society, number 13.)
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press. 1993. Pp. ix, 261. $40.00.
Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt, who coedited Hellenism in the East (1987), have again collaborated to create a thoughtful study of the Seleucid
Empire. Sifting through the large amount of diverse
material on the subject, they convincingly argue that a
study of this polity needs the collaborative effort of
scholars from many fields, including Assyriology, Semitics, Egyptology, biblical studies, and other disciplines
often ignored in classical treatments of the subject.
The authors take advantage of a wealth of new documents, including Babylonian astronomical diaries (A.
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Sachs and H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, 2 vols. [1988-1989]) and
Greek inscriptions from Sardis (P. Gauthier, Nouvelles
inscriptions de Sardes II [1989]). They also take advantage of information from new excavations and surveys
exposing Hellenistic remains. Kuhrt's expertise in the
Near East has afforded her access to an abundance of
previously known Hellenistic cuneiform sources not
usually accessible to classicists.
The traditional view of the Seleucid state was that it
was a Greek intrusion into Asia, bringing with it a
harsh form of Macedonian kingship. It was considered
a "mere" patchwork of separate nations, with Greeks
segregating themselves from the somewhat inferior
native populations, on whose support the new rulers
could not have relied, and thus the state weakly
crumbled at the encroachment of Parthia and Rome.
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt depart from this traditional view in a number of ways. They espouse the view
that the Seleucid Empire was not only a Greek state
but a conscious continuation of the ancient Near
Eastern empire traditions of the Chaldean and Achaemenid states that assimilated aspects of Chaldean
and Achaemenid royal administration (see E. Borza,
In the Shadow of Olympus [1990], pp. 231-248), architecture (Ai Khanoum, M. Colledge, in Kuhrt and
Sherwin-White, Hellenism, pp. 143 ff., Fig. 8), ideology, and even inscriptions. In fact, the Babylonian
Chronicle confirms the statement of Diodorus (XIX
91) that the Babylonian popUlation actively supported
the reign of Seleucus I. Moreover, the Babylonian
astronomical diaries imply that the Seleucid kings were
a sanctioned dynasty, actively participating in local
cults, using local elites (and thus pursuing a policy of
non-intervention), and even employing native troops
in warfare.
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt further argue that there is
no evidence of Greek cultural isolationism but rather
of syncretism. Not only were Greek and Aramaic
inscriptions used, some Greeks settled in Babylonian
towns and even used the Greek script to transcribe
Akkadian texts (see J. Oelsner, Materialen zur babylonischen Gesellschaft und Kultur in hellenistischer Zeit
[1986], pp. 239-244), while the locals occasionally used
the Greek alphabet for writing Akkadian and Sumerian.
In conclusion, the authors have resisted the attempt
to characterize the Seleucid Empire as decadent, but
instead as a vigorous state that had successfully woven
a multiplicity of ethnicons. They paint, however, what
is arguably an overly positive picture, and they can be
criticized for not emphasizing internal reasons for the
Seleucid Empire's downfall. Except for occasional
duplications of ideas (cf. pp. 168 and 176-178), this is
a well-argued volume that will, no doubt, set the
standard for studies on the Seleucid state.
MARK W. CHA VALAS
University of Wisconsin,
LaCrosse
DECEMBER 1996