Slavery and Manumission in Ancient cultures

In many ancient cultures, slavery was unfortunately a key factor in the development of their respective economies. On our trip we specifically learned about the use of slavery in early Greek and Roman history. The article 'Slavery, Incentives and Manumission: a theoretical model' by Robert Findlay outlines a comparison of a slave workforce vs the free market model we more commonly operate with today.

Findlay utilizes a carrot and stick example to explain the two ways slaves are 'motivated' to complete their tasks. In the Roman example, it was not uncommon for slaves to receive some amount of payment for completing work. This would be carrot style motivation - in the free market a carrot would be the opportunity for promotion or a wage increase. On the opposing side, the stick in the slave workforce would be the threat of violence or the use of violence to coerce the slaves. In the free market an example of stick motivation may be threat of dismissal or cutting hours. The use of stick motivation in the slave market is cheaper - however it also runs the risk of injuring the slaves, incentivizing the slave owners to utilize the carrot method. Many slaves were also skilled craftsmen or linguists, meaning that it would be more profitable in the long run to ensure they were sufficiently provided for.

Less common than in more contemporary examples of slavery, Roman slaves had the opportunity to purchase their freedom from their owners. Findlay utilizes an edited Cobb-Douglas function to give us an idea of how slave owners may have came up with the price for freedom. The owner would consider how long the slaves working life would be, how much product the slave would have produced, the cost to maintaining any incentives (i.e. 'carrot' payments), and interest on the cost of the slave originally. The benefit to the owner comes from the ability to repurchase younger slaves after 'freeing' an older individual. Often highly skilled slaves would be unable to free themselves due to their own perceived value - so their savings may go to freeing a wife, children or some family member. In a way, Roman slavery was a brutal form of indentured servitude.

We see this style of slavery that allowed the individual to buy their freedom more often in low capital economies. For example, Brazilian slavery often involved intense labor and physical work on the part of the slave. This means that the slaves working life was often shorter than that of an individual who worked as a translator. Because of this, owners were more incentivized to pay their slaves and then regain their earnings to purchase replacements.

Of course, there are more factors that go into this culture than just profits. In American history, slavery was racially motivated and created different social institutions that prevented slaves from ever reaching real freedom. There are many examples of American slavers allowing slaves to purchase freedom - however it was also common that these slaves would then be recaptured and enslaved again. Additionally, many owners would allow slaves to save up money to buy their freedom, but then just take the funds and cheat the individual.

The truth is, much of Ancient Rome's wonders are the result of slavery. The Colosseum being one example. 40% of Pompeii's population was made up of slaves by some estimates. Historically, slavery has always been profitable and a powerful industrial tool utilized by the wealthy, at the cost of innocent lives.

Metals, Salts, and Slaves

For our last day in Rome our class go to go check out the Vatican City. This was one of my favorite places we went because of all the historical artifacts and beautiful architecture. Here's a few of my favorite things I got to see.

However, one thing dawned on me while I was taking in all the beautiful pieces of art. None of what we see today would have been able to be built if not for the use of slaves. Slavery is a horrible time in history, but is important to study for better knowledge of how society was structured.

Someone could have become a slave one of two ways. The first was you could be sold into slavery by your family if they were impoverished. The second way is to get kidnapped and taken to a different territory to work. Often times crews of men from Italy's west coast area would sail to Egypt to plunder random farms. They would kill all the men and capture the women and children and sell them into slavery. Sometimes merchant ships would get over taken by pirates and the captured crew would be sold into slavery.

Pirates were a big problem for many traders throughout the Mediterranean. This caused quite an economic crisis for these costal regions because they were never able to receive their trade shipments. What these coastal villages had to do was to get all the pirates to stop raiding ships in their area so the trade ships could get through. These raiders were convinced to comply with these rules because whenever they go into a port they were treated with great hospitality and given many gifts. The raiders were even sometimes given slaves as assurance that they would leave the traders alone.

Some of the important items that were heavily traded in this area were metals, salts, and even slaves. The metals were mostly used for military purposes, crafting weapons and armor. The salt was used for food preservation and to create coloring for textiles. Textiles became a huge industry during this time and usually the women were the ones in charge of sewing all the fabric. However, the workload became too great and slaves were very sought after to keep production steady.






















 






 

Choice of Agrarian Contracts

Today as we drove through many miles of farmland on our way to Orvieto, I started to notice the amount of crop and potential farmland growth their was around this geographical region. The article, Choice of Agrarian Contracts that I recently read connects with this area of farming and crop production through talking about some practices of sharecropping used in early Italy. In the article, they highlighted three main types of sharecropping contracts. Some of these discussed were owner farmer contracts, share contracts, as well as fixed rent contracts.

The Tuscan land region has two main traditional types of crops, vines and other perennial crops, as well as annual crops, like wheat and other grain. The article dove into the practice of crop mix, as perennial crops were much more high risk so it was most profitable and the lowest risk to mix these types of crops in the land that you had available. 

Later the article discussed how these types of land contracts and sharecropping was very common at the time, and had some advantages and disadvantages for both parties. The main one I would like to highlight that I found most important is how tenants renting out this land did not have any way to borrow money to get this land, and were forced to take out loans from the landowners in order to use this land for crop production. This gave a lot of leverage to landowners at this time in the Tuscan region, and must have enabled them to control contracts and profit much more from the deal than the worker would have. 

Overall, traveling through the Tuscan region in the last few days has been a great experience to see how some of the region is able to produce agriculturally still today, and through reading this article it gives me a better understanding on how the early Tuscan region produced, as well as how it is the same and how it has evolved. 

Transhumance Paths and CPR's

Before we left Fontecchio and made our way over to Amalfi, we stopped at Caporciano and got to walk up to a really cool castle. From here we were able to see several small villages and the paths they shared to move cattle from one grazing area to another. It was also really cool to see the mountainsides which some farmers would have to move their flocks of sheep over when recourses were scarce or the change in seasons made grazing harder. This trip perfectly tied into the article Mitch and I had the honor of presenting tho the class.

Our article primarily consisted of analyzing the relationship of individuals who belong to a common property and the state. Why this is an important topic is because if the state has too much control  over the members of a CPR, the regulations can be overbearing to the point that the operation becomes very inefficient. An interesting point that the article makes is a theoretical idea called the tragedy of the commons. This is the idea where the people that share a common area of land all act in only self interest. This selfishness is very harmful to the land and destroys the future benefit of of any of the members of the commons. However, this idea is lacking one key variable which is the fact that commons members can monitor each other and implement punishments to anyone who chooses not to comply with the rules. 

After this last example you might ask the question, why was the state needed at all if everyone could keep each other in check. The reason is because the state was able to cut down on certain costs. For example, the state would handle costs that are necessary for all members of the common such as fencing or creating paths. Another interesting thing that would happen during this time was that there would actually be people sent out on some of the transhumance paths to collect taxes from the farmers. It was really cool getting to know about this piece of history and our visit to the castle gave me an awesome view of what these commons might have looked like.

The Etruscans

Today we visited some underground caves in Orvieto. First with our guide, who is a freelance archaeologist working with several universities, we visited a private cellar where we saw several Etruscan artifacts. 

Our guide showed us several different rooms in the cellar, one of which was a sort of garbage room where he said he found a lot of bits of pottery. When he took us into the room with many of the artifacts he had collected, he pointed out that many of the bowls that he found weren’t broken. He explained that there were several reasons for this. One of these reasons was that the inside of the bowl could get scraped up by utensils, he mentioned that sometimes they would scratch designs and letters into the bowls but this could make the bowls leak. Pictured below are some of the artifacts we saw.

After we visited the private cellar we went on the Orvieto underground tour where we visited two caves underneath the city. The first one was where olive oil was made. The huge press, pictured below, was used to grind the olives up into a sort of paste during the first step of the process. The second cave had tons of holes in the wall where the pigeons lived that the Etruscans raised for food.

The article that I read for the day was about the Etruscans. It went through the history of the Etruscans and how we don’t know very much about them since most of the structures they built were made of wood and mud, which has long since deteriorated. Most of what we have learned about this civilization comes from these caves since they have been able to withstand the test of time.

The Rental Market in Rome

Ciao! 

As we have reached Rome our final location of the trip, it is easy to tell that it is by far the biggest city and one of the most historical!

One of the first landmarks that we went to take a look at was The Great Roman Coliseum. The Coliseum is one of the most well known destinations in the world and it lived up to all the hype! Being my first time visiting the site I was immediately struck with how massive the structure is and how any depiction I had scene in movies or documentaries couldn’t possibly do it justice. On top of that it was by far one of the busiest places we had visited during the trip. Amongst the many people we crossed paths with, I heard 4-5 different languages being spoken and was approached by a different sunglasses, phone charger, selfie stick, water bottle, or Knick Knack salesman, what seemed like every few minutes, it’s a very unique place! 

To help guide us through our visit, we had a local historian walking around with us. She was very knowledgeable about the Coliseum and provided a ton of information that I myself had never knew. One of the facts that I found the most interesting was how during World War 2 the Coliseum was turned into a makeshift Refuge for people seeking safety from all around Italy. This was due to its historical significance that it was declared a no bomb zone. This led to many family’s living together temporarily in the coliseum to wait out the war. This fact was really interesting because the Article that Jake and I discussed this week covered the topic of living in Ancient Rome. 

Our article for the week, discussed how the rental and housing market in Rome was structured. One of the main points that the article discussed, was how many people couldn’t afford to own property and live alone, so in many situations people rented rooms in areas with many different families. The first set up consisted of apartments that would have two main families accompanied with 4-5 other families living in sub leased rooms. On top of that family’s also lived in places of work or even in buildings that served as hotels for wealthy travelers. It’s interesting to think about how people in Rome lived back then vs. today. I would assume that there has been a shift from the tendency to live in such close quarters. However, I would also assume that renting is still very prominent and that living in very close to the shop that you own and work at is still common. It also is interesting to think about a place like the Coliseum that I would normally associate with fighting and death, as a place of safety and comfort. 

Pricing Heritage

              Heritage and history are two subjects of immense importance to a nation’s identity which is extremely tough to place a value on them. Museums are a necessity in today’s society, yet from an economic perspective there are in a market failure due to the unpredictable measures of demand and supply for this good. Clearly, we can not just sell all priceless artifacts and testaments to humanity to the highest bidders. Can you imagine the uproar if the Liberty Bell, Mona Lisa, or the Statue of David vanish from the public sight into a private collection? This is why heritage in an economic sense is classified as a public good.

              My favorite aspect of Italy has been the opportunity to visit museums and learn about the rich cultural history the country has to offer the world. When we were in Florence a unique situation arose where half the class wanted to see the Statue of David in a museum with a entrance fee of 12 euro while the other half did not want to see it due to the cost. In one of our class discussions about the economics of heritage that example was brought up as it showcases how museums need to have a reasonable price to attract visitors in. Me being me definitely paid the price since I couldn’t bear the thought of being within 100 yards of world history. It is definitely a tricky situation for museums to be in when determine a price on heritage and history.

              The article my partner and I presented on “The Economics of Heritage” mentioned how nonprofit organizations are some of the best groups to preserve heritage and history. In Italy, most of the heritage sites are run by the state which costs a lot of money and taxes to keep functioning. The authors explained how in the UK and the US nonprofits have advantages to running museums such as tax breaks and they have volunteers instead of employees. The public deserves a reasonable price to enter museums to see priceless artifacts since heritage is important to people across the globe.

Caesar Coin

Statue of David