The Roman Empire has been the largest political unit that has existed on the European landmass. The level of economic integration that this empire achieved is however under fierce debate. It was a point of contention already in the (in)famous Bücher-Meyer controversy at the start of the twentieth century. More recent voices in this debate include Peter Temin (on the basis of modern economic theory), Peter Bang (using a comparative perspective) and Tom Brughmans (based on ceramics and Agent-Based Modelling).
In this project, I assess the level of economic integration in the Roman Empire on a regional level. Combining the growing body of data on the size (inhabited area) of Roman settlements with a new methodology that is based on recent insights in the field of Urban Geography, I estimate the level of economic integration within different regions of the empire.
The differences in regional economic integration has various important implications for a society. It for example relates to the level of economic development of a region, which in turn serves as a driver of inter-regional migration. Economic integration is also linked to the opportunities of regional elites to enrich themselves and in the Roman case also their chances to penetrate the imperial elite at the capital. In sum, the regional perspective on economic integration offers many new view points for our understanding of the social, political and economic structures of societies, on the examples of the Roman Empire.
One of the aims of this project is to collect and integrate the available data on the size (inhabited area) of Roman settlements. A ‘living’ repository is being developed which allows scholars not only view and download the material that has been collected in the project but also to make suggestions for additions to the collection (for example based on their own research). Here is a prototype of this repository.
