Gregory on Laiou and Morrisson, _The Byzantine Economy_

[Book Reviews in Economic and Business History]

Published by EH.NET (October 2008)

Angeliki E. Laiou and Cécile Morrisson, _The Byzantine Economy_. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii + 270 pp. $33 
(paperback), ISBN: 978-0-521-61502-0.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Timothy E. Gregory, Department of History, Ohio 
State University.


As the authors point out, until recently the economy of the Byzantine 
Empire has not been the subject of many detailed studies.  The reasons 
for this are many, including the continued bias against Byzantium even 
in historical circles and the perception that the economy of the empire 
was dominated by the heavy hand of an autocratic state and that its 
study has little to teach us.  This small and quite readable book is 
likely to change all such scholarly assumptions.  It is based squarely 
on the massive and detailed three-volume _The Economic History of 
Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century_, edited by 
Laiou and published in 2002, and its articles, many of which present 
completely new analyses of crucial facets of the Byzantine economy and 
revise many conclusions found in standard textbooks.  The present book, 
of course, is much smaller in scale, but it makes up for that by a more 
concise focus and a treatment that is accessible to readers, from 
beginning students to scholars interested in the economy of the medieval 
West or the Islamic East.

_The Byzantine Economy_ differs from most extant studies of Byzantium by 
insisting that modern economic theories and studies are relevant for 
Byzantium and by frequently making seamless use of archaeological and 
archival sources, as well as the more commonly utilized literary and 
numismatic material.  The literary sources, they reasonably insist, are 
highly biased by the focus of their authors on the central government, a 
bias that had led most scholars to the conclusion that the state was the 
dominant element in the Byzantine economy, which emperors and 
administrators affected without any real economic interest or knowledge. 
  Laiou and Morrisson do not, of course, deny the importance of 
government action, especially the successive fiscal institutions and 
policies over the thousand-year history of the empire.  Rather, they 
argue throughout that, on the one hand, Byzantine statesmen frequently 
made decisions based on economic considerations, and, on the other, that 
political and non-economic factors (frequently from outside the empire 
itself) not uncommonly played crucial roles in the development of the 
Byzantine economy.

The book is arranged chronologically and it begins with a helpful 
consideration of the “natural and human” resources available to the 
empire.  Treatment of late antiquity (sixth-early eighth centuries) 
avoids what would otherwise be a necessarily long discussion of the 
situation in the third-fifth centuries, and analysis essentially begins 
in the period of Justinian.  There is little new here and it is clear 
that the authors regard the period as a continuation of the ancient 
economy that forms merely an introduction to the economy of the seventh 
century and beyond.  The Byzantine economy per se came into existence as 
a result of devastating depopulation in the aftermath of the plague of 
542 and significant climate change.  The labor shortage led to political 
and economic fragmentation, and a complete reorganization of the 
economic underpinning of the state.  The loss of areas that had provided 
much of the raw materials of the empire caused severe contraction of 
manufacturing and a diminution of the money supply.  Nonetheless, the 
meager sources suggest that, even in this period, trade continued and 
the economy was much more fully developed than has previously been 
thought.  The latter part of the eighth century witnessed significant 
changes in the military power of the state and the beginning of a slow 
growth of the Byzantine economy and its gradual monetarization as well 
as the revival of urban life.  Constantinople was the main economic 
center, and it was an industrial and trading power whose merchants 
engaged in long distance trade throughout the Mediterranean, Europe, and 
the Near East.  Key in this revival was the state, its fiscal policies, 
and a complex economic ideology based on ideas of justice in interchange 
and possession of property.

By the eleventh century Byzantium reached its economic height and by the 
twelfth century Byzantine cities had developed some of the 
characteristics that could be seen in the contemporary West.  At the 
same time, and for some of the same reasons, the Byzantine aristocracy 
had come to challenge the exclusive right to political and economic 
power that had been maintained by the state (i.e., by the emperor and 
the imperial bureaucracy).  The authors discuss this struggle, that has 
long interested historians, but in the end they conclude that the 
victory of the aristocracy did not inevitably cause economic problems 
for the state or for the peasants.  In addition, western (mainly 
Italian) merchants came to control greater and greater portions of 
long-distance trade, in part because of tax concessions given them by 
the Byzantine state and because of their increasing access to naval 
power.  Throughout the twelfth century the Byzantine economy flourished 
and medium- and large-scale production (both agricultural and 
industrial) served local, regional, and “international” markets.  The 
cities, as well as the countryside and marginal lands, played important 
roles in this economy, contradicting the old theory that middle 
Byzantine cities were “parasitic” in nature.   The authors conclude that 
Byzantine merchants played a decreasing role in this trade.  In the view 
of the authors, however, this was not an irreversible situation, but one 
that was affected negatively by the growth of western military power in 
the form of the Crusades and, ultimately, the conquest of Constantinople 
in 1204.

After that date and even after the recovery of Constantinople in 1261 
the economy remained fragmented and the loss of areas with important 
resources, such as mines in Asia Minor and the Balkans, had important 
negative results.  Nonetheless, the authors maintain that the Byzantine 
economy remained “articulated” and population growth continued until the 
middle of the fourteenth century, when the combination of the Black 
Plague and the loss of most remaining territory to the Ottomans 
essentially put an end to anything resembling a unified Byzantine economy.

In a concluding chapter the authors make general observations about the 
Byzantine economy and discuss the value of comparing it specifically 
with the economy of the medieval West.  They conclude that contemporary 
research shows the Byzantine economy, in virtually all periods, to have 
been sophisticated and flexible, able to respond to challenges and to 
change in the face of historical conditions.  In most periods the state, 
in the person of the emperor and a large and well-trained bureaucracy, 
was the most important factor in the economy, but it was by no means the 
only one, and political, ideological, and fiscal considerations, as well 
as forces outside the empire, played significant roles.  They note that 
recent research, in both East and West, has pointed to the importance of 
the linkage between production and distribution and has seen greater 
similarities than differences in the two economies.  Finally, they 
strongly suggest that it is not reasonable to “blame” Byzantium because 
it did not develop western-style capitalism, something that did not come 
about in the West until the eighteenth century.  They conclude that 
Byzantium had a “flexible and dynamic economy, which was successful in 
terms of growth but also provided some important needs of the people ... 
that is, all the factors which today are recognized as constituting true 
economic development” (p. 247)

This book is a convenient, reasonably well written and carefully 
documented handbook that should be on the shelves of anyone interested 
in Byzantium or the medieval economy.


Timothy Gregory is Professor of History and Anthropology and Director of 
the Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia; he is author of books 
such as _Isthmia_, Volume V, _The Hexamilion and the Fortress_ 
(Princeton 1993) and _A History of Byzantium_ (Oxford 2006).  He has 
pioneered in the teaching of online courses in Classical Archaeology and 
Byzantine History.  gregory.4 at osu.edu.

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