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So kind of a bigger question but this talk about the expansion of Egypt during the latter Bronze Age reminds me of something I feel like I kind of understand but figure actual scholars have actual opinions on: why do big conquering empires seem so comparatively rare in the Bronze Age compared to the Iron Age? My assumptions have been that there's partially a cultural change - Bronze Age empires seem very comfortable with degrees of indirect control that are pretty extreme compared to Roman or Persian imperial styles, though possibly more importantly Bronze Age client-kingdoms seem very comfortable with just getting big distant overlords - but probably more importantly material changes to administration and financing that made consistent mustering of armies, direct rule, and frequent lengthy campaigns more viable. Some of my history friends* like the explanation that coinage was a critical development in imperial changes in the axial age, since being able to pay your soldiers in a quick, consistent manner simplified logistics dramatically, but that feels a bit incomplete to me. *These are more specialists in economic history than in a given period, and hence why I'm wondering if they've kind of isolated themselves from people who are more specialized in this specific period
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Feb 24, 2024 05:36
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Comstar posted:Follow up question- why didn’t Egypt just conquer….everyone? You had later empires much larger in size but no one else is around at the start. This question really depends on the period and different people are giving you different answers about different periods. Ancient Egypt was not monolithic, and its interaction with its neighbors varied a lot across the three thousand years of its pre-Roman history. If you are asking about Old Kingdom Egypt, they did have a powerful military and fought with their neighbors quite a bit. But Old Kingdom military policy seems to have been focused more on raiding than on conquest. Archaeological evidence from Nubia shows widespread devastation caused by Old Kingdom armies.
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Feb 24, 2024 05:37
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Mad Hamish posted:The Temple of Artemis was burned down for immortality (which worked). Not sure what happened to the Hanging Gardens. Correct. It’s not clear what happened to the Hanging Gardens; some historians argue that they never existed in the first place.
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Feb 24, 2024 05:48
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Silver2195 posted:Correct. It’s not clear what happened to the Hanging Gardens; some historians argue that they never existed in the first place. those historians can meet me in the back of the Eagle and Child or wherever.
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Feb 24, 2024 05:51
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Tulip posted:So kind of a bigger question but this talk about the expansion of Egypt during the latter Bronze Age reminds me of something I feel like I kind of understand but figure actual scholars have actual opinions on: why do big conquering empires seem so comparatively rare in the Bronze Age compared to the Iron Age? My assumptions have been that there's partially a cultural change - Bronze Age empires seem very comfortable with degrees of indirect control that are pretty extreme compared to Roman or Persian imperial styles, though possibly more importantly Bronze Age client-kingdoms seem very comfortable with just getting big distant overlords - but probably more importantly material changes to administration and financing that made consistent mustering of armies, direct rule, and frequent lengthy campaigns more viable. Some of my history friends* like the explanation that coinage was a critical development in imperial changes in the axial age, since being able to pay your soldiers in a quick, consistent manner simplified logistics dramatically, but that feels a bit incomplete to me. I feel like there's probably a dozen interlocking answers, but I suspect that part of it is that as the millenia marched on, the percentage of the world covered in peoples worth conquering increased
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Feb 24, 2024 06:09
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Tulip posted:So kind of a bigger question but this talk about the expansion of Egypt during the latter Bronze Age reminds me of something I feel like I kind of understand but figure actual scholars have actual opinions on: why do big conquering empires seem so comparatively rare in the Bronze Age compared to the Iron Age? My assumptions have been that there's partially a cultural change - Bronze Age empires seem very comfortable with degrees of indirect control that are pretty extreme compared to Roman or Persian imperial styles, though possibly more importantly Bronze Age client-kingdoms seem very comfortable with just getting big distant overlords - but probably more importantly material changes to administration and financing that made consistent mustering of armies, direct rule, and frequent lengthy campaigns more viable. Some of my history friends* like the explanation that coinage was a critical development in imperial changes in the axial age, since being able to pay your soldiers in a quick, consistent manner simplified logistics dramatically, but that feels a bit incomplete to me. The coinage explanation is bunk, that's an idea that comes up periodically, but it comes from Greek historians talking out of their rear end without engaging with scholarship on Ancient Near Eastern economic history. This theory fails on several grounds, but most obviously on chronological issues. Coinage was not invented until the 6th century BCE, and didn't enter widespread use until the 5th century BCE and later (depending on the region). The Neo-Assyrian empire is where you have to look for the origins of many Iron Age imperial concepts and techniques, and it had already fallen by the time coinage was invented. Coinage also is not necessary for a monetized economy. Weighed silver was widely used in the first millennium BCE throughout the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, sometimes in stamped bars that were certified to be a particular weight. Alternatively, certified weight stones can make weighing silver in transactions very quick and easy, and stamped and certified weight stones are something that Mesopotamians and Egyptians used from the 3rd millennium BCE onwards. The increased use of silver is as money is an important development in the Iron Age that ties into a bunch of other things, but this predates the invention of coinage by around 500 years. In particular, from 6th century BCE Babylonia, we have strong evidence for weighed silver being widely used as money among the population at large, even for small scale transactions, without any use of coinage. Coinage gets a lot of focus in economic history because it became very important later on, and because people who specifically study coins tend to overstate the importance of the invention of coinage, and perhaps most importantly because it is closely associated with the Greeks, who as we all know are the font of all wisdom in the universe and single handedly invented everything. However, any degree of engagement with scholarship on Economic History on first Millennium BCE Egypt or Mesopotamia from the past few decades will show how heavily monetized an economy can be without any coins. Classical scholars still to this day will make wildly ambitious claims about the importance of coinage to the broader development of the Iron Age, but that is because they often ignore scholarship on the use of non-coined money outside of the Greek world. For an actual answer, the changes probably were mostly cultural. This is a really hard question to answer and there is a truly enormous body of scholarly literature on this topic, much of which disagrees with each other. But what is generally agreed upon is that the key changes were not technological. The Bronze Age vs Iron Age model we have inherited from 19th century scholars assumes that technological change was the most important shift in dividing these two periods. But that's not really true. Iron was used in the "Bronze" Age already, although it did increase in use significantly in the "Iron" Age, but bronze continued to be of important importance in the "Iron" Age. Widespread iron use was certainly important, but it was not a total paradigm shift like our periodization scheme would suggest. Much more so than Iron, the widespread use of the horse was quite important in making longer distance communication easier -- but this again is something that started well before the end of the "Bronze Age." The key place to look for these changes is the Neo-Assyrian Empire. There are a number of important administrative and ideological developments that occur for the first time in Assyria, and then become the model for future empires in the region, and beyond. On the ideological side, the Assyrians developed the concept of a universal empire for the first time. Previous kings had made hyperbolic claims of universal sovereignty, but under the Assyrians, a more rigorously thought through ideology of universal empire emerged for the first time. This was tied closely with the Assyrian god Assur, who claimed universal rule over the world (but not to the exclusion of other gods, the Assyrians were still very much polytheistic). Assyrian kings frequently boast in inscriptions about claiming new land for Assur. The idea of the "Land of Assur" was an important one for Assyrians, and the key innovation here is that the Land of Assur was thought of as something that can and should expand. This is stands in stark contrast to Bronze Age Near Eastern kingdoms/empires that did not have any ideological structure like this. There were also a number of important administrative innovations, particularly in the later Assyrian empire (late 8th and 7th centuries BCE). Many of these sound pretty basic, but that's because they were widely adopted elsewhere after they were invented in Assyria. One of the major innovations of Assyrian kings in late 9th century BCE that set the stage for a lot of other administrative practices was the creation of a separate, imperial elite, that owed their position to the king, and who did not possess independent family ties to other sources of power. Many of these men were eunuchs. This was a class of courtiers and bureaucrats who staffed the senior ranks of the imperial administration, and the size of this group was unprecedented. The provincial system was a major administrative system developed in Assyria. There are some bronze age parallels to this, but they were not nearly as regularized as the system Assyria put into place. Assyrian provinces had a defined territory, overseen by a governor, who was a royal official sent from the capital to the province to govern it. Assyrian governors were often eunuchs, and even when they were not, a key part of the system is that governors were not hereditary and were not allowed to develop family ties to their province. This is a major contrast from earlier bronze age systems that had relied on hereditary vassals. Assyrian governors were responsible for levying troops from their province to serve in military campaigns, and governors also doubled as military officers who led units from their province. This allowed the king to regularly gather his governors while on campaign. Just as critically, governors were responsible for organizing supplies to be gathered at state run storehouses for the army as it moved through their provinces, which is of huge importance for the ability of an army to move at high speed, and to operate year-round. These storehouses were also used to move other goods through the empire as well. To maintain the administration of the province, while governors were on campaign with the king, each province also had a deputy, that stayed in the province full time. Deputies were also appointed by the king, and reported to the king independently of the governor of their province. This meant that deputies also served as an independent check for the king on the loyalty of his governors. The Assyrians did also employ vassal kings, like earlier states had, but the gradually phased out vassal kings in favor of provinces over time. When they did employ vassal kings, they appointed a royal official to monitor the court of the vassal king. This official wrote reports to the Assyrian king about the vassal king. The Assyrians also sought to integrate local elites into the bureaucratic structure of the empire overall. Local elites were recruited into the imperial administration. The evidence for this is fairly limited, but there are references in royal inscriptions to kings offering people the chance to "become counted among the Assyrians," which is presented as a great honor. As one might guess from the many references to sending letters, transportation and correspondence networks were a key part of the ability of the Assyrian empire to rule an empire of unprecedented size. Long distance correspondence was certainly a feature of the Bronze Age, the Amarna letters are a famous example of it. But the Assyrian Empire made unprecedented investments in transportation and communication infrastructure. This included massive amounts road construction, as well as the creation and maintenance of rest stations for messengers and their horses at regular intervals along the roads. (This is something that was copied by nearly all major empires in the Middle East and Mediterranean subsequently). In Bronze Age long distance letters, its clear that this kind of system of rest stations alongside roads maintained by the central government did not exist. There are a ton of other administrative ideas that were either invented by the Assyrians, or that were dramatically expanded upon by the Assyrians, that became standard practice in later empires. (Mass deportation is another big one that I didn't touch on, that was also practiced by the Babylonians, Persians, and others). Certainly we can't credit everything to the Assyrians, but if you want to understand how empires in this part of the world came to dramatically increase in size, you have to start by studying Assyria. CrypticFox fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Feb 24, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 06:32
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I do get the impression that Egyptians were way more focused on death and monuments than their contemporaries. Maybe the fact that they had extremely dry and stable desert pretty nearby to the actually fertile lands that they lived and worked in made them more aware of the potential of just plopping something down out there and it just staying there intact for years and years.Tulip posted:why do big conquering empires seem so comparatively rare in the Bronze Age compared to the Iron Age? My guess is that it's more logistically simple to domestically produce iron to keep your army going whereas bronze gets a little squirrellier if you're an aggressive state making enemies out of all your neighbors. And iron is just way better for a lot of things compared to bronze. Maybe the fact that the bronze age collapse left a lot of peoples floating around without a major state left a springboard for the first few next expanding empires to get rolling.
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Feb 24, 2024 06:32
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Mad Hamish posted:The Temple of Artemis was burned down for immortality (which worked). Not sure what happened to the Hanging Gardens. i had an undergrad teacher for my intro Mediterranean history class who - and I have to stress that this wasn't a joke - had never heard of Herostratus
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Feb 24, 2024 06:41
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Yea for sure, it's most definitely not a perfect 1:1 example, but if you look at a map of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, it's maybe around 1/2 of what modern Egypt is, plus much of modern day Israel, Syria, etc. It's a lot of land to rule. again most of this is desert. the banks of the nile and the levant are the only truly populated areas, and the levant fades in and out of their possession. ancient egypt was just not a very militarily capable state beyond the nile. they had no need to be. all of the rounds of conquering and re-conquering the levant were important for displaying the power of the pharaoh but there is little indication egypt actually cared very much about it beyond that - they let it slip out of their possession pretty frequently whenever some big mesopotamian or anatolian empire was on the march, rarely without a fight but you don't get the sense that anyone is willing to go onto a real war footing over it, either. the ancient egyptians had different priorities that rarely included fighting anything except the softest of targets
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Feb 24, 2024 07:07
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Jazerus posted:again most of this is desert. the banks of the nile and the levant are the only truly populated areas, and the levant fades in and out of their possession. That "mostly desert" empire contains roughly 10% of all humanity at the time. The levant is a loving big place to project your power out to, and likewise going that far down the Nile is nothing to sneeze at. It's a long way to go. Literally every big ancient empire contains a lot of uninhabited space within their dominion, but it doesn't make distances travelled unreal. There is no real meaning to any of these statements, they had fights but didn't get into real fights? They didn't care about the empire that they kept conquering to maintain? A decent amount of hegemony over 300 years would make the Mongolian empire's tenure seem like a joke.
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Feb 24, 2024 07:37
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SlothfulCobra posted:That "mostly desert" empire contains roughly 10% of all humanity at the time. The levant is a loving big place to project your power out to, and likewise going that far down the Nile is nothing to sneeze at. It's a long way to go. Literally every big ancient empire contains a lot of uninhabited space within their dominion, but it doesn't make distances travelled unreal. i was responding to the assertion that the egyptian empire was the size of central europe, and the question of why egypt didn't go beat everyone up like in a paradox game. i do not think anything i said was meaningless in that context. but if you would like to assume i'm trying to minimize the prominence of ancient egypt and post like you're trying to start a slapfight, well, have fun. you're fighting against positions i didn't actually take. obviously, they got into real fights once in a while but it was very rare for egypt to pick a fight against another powerful empire. egyptian governance of the levant was generally extremely light-handed. and, well, obviously the egyptian empire was a hugely important state for millennia which is not really something anybody else on the planet can claim, but i didn't say they weren't, so i don't know what you're getting at here. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Feb 24, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 08:15
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Well Tides of History covered Ancient/Classical China, from the Shang to Zhou to Warring States to Qin domination, and that really got to me that ideological and cultural shifts are as important to empire building and state formation as technology. Shang and Zhou China was oriented around noble lineages, with the Shang and Zhou being the first amongst many and thus having authority to rule. But the other powerful families was just as important, and the moment the Shang failed to hold together its alliance of other families and lineages their state fell apart and were supplanted by the Zhou. But as the Zhou contracted and its constituent territories turned into petty warring kingdoms, more robust state structures began forming, which de-emphasized the power of the noble families in favor of usefulness to the King and State and Emperor. And once that shift in the collective consciousness occurred, all descendant states and their inhabitants would tie state legitimacy to their ability to exert centralizing authority.
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Feb 24, 2024 08:58
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SlothfulCobra posted:That "mostly desert" empire contains roughly 10% of all humanity at the time. The levant is a loving big place to project your power out to, and likewise going that far down the Nile is nothing to sneeze at. It's a long way to go. Literally every big ancient empire contains a lot of uninhabited space within their dominion, but it doesn't make distances travelled unreal. wh..what are you saying
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Feb 24, 2024 14:59
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Silver2195 posted:Correct. It’s not clear what happened to the Hanging Gardens; some historians argue that they never existed in the first place. Some dude invents the wall-mounted planter and people just lose their poo poo.
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Feb 24, 2024 15:38
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I wonder if population density is a key factor in the bronze to iron age transition. You see this so many times in Chinese history where the availability of arable land near important centers is a key part of establishing state legitimacy. As population grows the state is less and less able to hand out land to its constituents and it loses legitimacy.
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Feb 24, 2024 15:48
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The Hanging Gardens if they did exist strike me as the kinda thing that would need constant maintenance and infrastructure to maintain, and probably would fall apart without that, and did at some point.
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Feb 24, 2024 16:44
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Jazerus posted:
I don't necessarily disagree with you overall, but every Bronze Age empire in the Near East had a light hand over their non-core territories. The Hittites also had a generally similar approach (vassal kings, etc) to governing territories in the Levant that they conquered back and forth from the Egyptians as well, and so did other contemporary Bronze Age empires like the Mitanni empire or the Middle Assyrians. This isn't unique to Egypt, and it's not a very useful metric for comparing Egypt to other contemporary empires.
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Feb 24, 2024 17:00
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CrypticFox posted:I don't necessarily disagree with you overall, but every Bronze Age empire in the Near East had a light hand over their non-core territories. The Hittites also had a generally similar approach (vassal kings, etc) to governing territories in the Levant that they conquered back and forth from the Egyptians as well, and so did other contemporary Bronze Age empires like the Mitanni empire or the Middle Assyrians. This isn't unique to Egypt, and it's not a very useful metric for comparing Egypt to other contemporary empires. well, there is one very big memory holed example of the contrary, but yeah this was generally true of those states
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Feb 24, 2024 17:31
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Yea for sure, it's most definitely not a perfect 1:1 example, but if you look at a map of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, it's maybe around 1/2 of what modern Egypt is, plus much of modern day Israel, Syria, etc. It's a lot of land to rule. That’s basically all of the 1500 bce civilizations except the Hittites and iraq. (Excluding Iran and west ) There was nothing else really going on in the Mediterranean then It’s 600 years to Carthage. 600 years untill the Etruscans. 1000 (more or less ) until rome is a thing. Greece hasn’t even gotten to its dark ages yet. Crete was just getting started And we (understandably) focus on the Mediterranean and near East but Nubia was and is enormous and wealthy and Egypt dominated it
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Feb 24, 2024 17:40
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Also there was an enormous and long drought around 1200 bce which pretty much crippled Egypt (and everyone else )
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Feb 24, 2024 17:41
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Another thing to remember is a unified Egypt isn't necessarily its "natural" state. Lower Egypt in particular is pretty difficult to control, with ever shifting tributaries that are difficult to navigate and marshes that make good hiding spots for rebels/bandits/unfriendly locals. The Delta not infrequently reverts to being controlled by a bunch of petty kings and has to be reconquered. I imagine part of the reason Egypt tends not to expand very far from the Nile is that just maintaining control over the Delta takes a lot of effort.
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Feb 24, 2024 18:09
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I would have sought to dominate all of Nile up to Lake Victoria.
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Feb 24, 2024 18:34
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Nenonen posted:I would have sought to dominate all of Nile up to Lake Victoria. That is an interesting question, actually; why was Egypt able to unify Upper and Lower and (sporadically) Nubia, but not reach farther upstream into the Blue and White Niles? Was the non-floodplain climate too different for them to know how to, or have the right crops to, cultivate further towards the Horn?
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Feb 24, 2024 18:43
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Fuschia tude posted:That is an interesting question, actually; why was Egypt able to unify Upper and Lower and (sporadically) Nubia, but not reach farther upstream into the Blue and White Niles? Was the non-floodplain climate too different for them to know how to, or have the right crops to, cultivate further towards the Horn? There was an impenetrable swamp on the White Nile. The Blue Nile flows through some narrow and literally kilometer-deep gorges on its way down from the highlands.
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Feb 24, 2024 20:43
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i would simply use my vast quantities of corvee labor draining swamps and carving tracks through ravines instead of building big pointy piles of rocks
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Feb 24, 2024 20:51
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Fundamentally the reason you conquer places is because those places have things you want to “extract”. In its most primitive form that’s taxes/tribute and resources. In more advanced forms that includes things like coaling stations for your steamships or to geographically box in a rival state (both of which are supplementary acts in pursuing the former). Ask yourself who exactly did old kingdom Egypt have around them that had a lot of stuff worth extracting (that was close enough that an early Bronze Age civ would have the logistics to occupy)? When you get to the middle and new kingdoms Egypt actually does start conquering new lands and extracting wealth. Notably by that time there are a lot more places that are a lot more developed and thus worth taking over. Conversely this meant there were now other well developed states like the Hittites in Turkey, the Mitanni and Assyrians and Kassites in Mesopotamia, Kush in Sudan/Nubia which meant Egypt now had rivals to check its expansion.
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Feb 24, 2024 21:07
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If I was king of Egypt and it was really hot all the time I would simply take a nap
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Feb 24, 2024 21:14
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Arglebargle III posted:If I was king of Egypt and it was really hot all the time I would simply take a nap maybe have a guy fan you with a big palm leaf?
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Feb 24, 2024 21:25
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I would have my guys build a big pile of rocks with a little chamber inside where the temperature stays constant and I could just chill there forever.
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Feb 24, 2024 21:34
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Jamwad Hilder posted:maybe have a guy fan you with a big palm leaf? i would also have a second, unrelated guy who would pluck each grape from a stem, and feed it to me as i lay
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Feb 25, 2024 02:14
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CrypticFox posted:The coinage explanation is bunk, that's an idea that comes up periodically, but it comes from Greek historians talking out of their rear end without engaging with scholarship on Ancient Near Eastern economic history. This theory fails on several grounds, but most obviously on chronological issues. Coinage was not invented until the 6th century BCE, and didn't enter widespread use until the 5th century BCE and later (depending on the region). The Neo-Assyrian empire is where you have to look for the origins of many Iron Age imperial concepts and techniques, and it had already fallen by the time coinage was invented. Coinage also is not necessary for a monetized economy. This was extremely helpful thank you! And also feels more intuitive to me than other explanations: once the tools (here being cultural and administrative tools) that enabled empires became available, further empires had access to those tools and were able to repeat those performances. Explanations rooted in military inequalities always felt weak to me, because empires are not made by wars but by peace. Do you have any particular further reading on this topic? I just finished up a pretty poo poo book and while I just started what looks like a good one, may as well ask for recommendations on a topic I find at least generally interesting. The coinage thing is an interesting one to me, intellectually. Partially because I've always found the specifics of "coinage" kind of...confusing? Like in practice I know what a coin is yes, but I'm so mired in anthropological thinking that the part of a point that matters is "does it fulfill the social functions of a coin?" And a pre-weighed, marked and vetted chunk of silver fulfills the functions of a coin, even if its not shaped quite like a coin. I guess I'm just not seeing what makes coins special in a way that is truly distinct from earlier money forms in general.
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Feb 25, 2024 10:17
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Radia posted:i would also have a second, unrelated guy who would pluck each grape from a stem, and feed it to me as i lay What, unpeeled? How uncivilised.
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Feb 25, 2024 10:31
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I came across this Youtube Short on Inflation which seems like the usual Gold Standard propaganda thing, but out of curiosity how incorrect is the claim being made here vis a vis the romans? The claim seems to be the only reason to debase the currency is greed or short sightedness; but in general my understanding is debasing the currency in this way is usually because of real pressing issues facing the state; and it just isn't an option to "mint more coins" at the same value? In short, why does debasing happen, what are the "pros" of doing so in its proper historical context?
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Feb 25, 2024 17:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:I came across this Youtube Short on Inflation which seems like the usual Gold Standard propaganda thing, but out of curiosity how incorrect is the claim being made here vis a vis the romans? Inflation isn't instant, it's a tomorrow problem. More money now helps a lot with today problems, like paying all those angry men with weapons in your army. Also I haven't watched the video but your question assumes the Romans had a strong grasp on inflation caused by an increasing money supply as an economic concept, which is debatable.
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Feb 25, 2024 18:20
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If only the Romans knew you could just print fiat money
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Feb 25, 2024 18:54
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Also I haven't watched the video but your question assumes the Romans had a strong grasp on inflation caused by an increasing money supply as an economic concept, which is debatable. 21st century economists do not have a strong grasp on how inflation is caused, expecting ancient Roman military leaders to understand inflation at any deep level feels comical. This is like being upset at ancient Roman senators/generals for their weak grasp of gravitational waves or hardware drivers for printers. That said I think its possible the only thing we understand about inflation is that the quantity theory of money is a poor explanation at absolute best (and completely wrong for hyperinflation, but that's another thing and I've never heard of ancient Roman hyperinflation anyway).
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Feb 25, 2024 18:54
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Tulip posted:This was extremely helpful thank you! And also feels more intuitive to me than other explanations: once the tools (here being cultural and administrative tools) that enabled empires became available, further empires had access to those tools and were able to repeat those performances. Explanations rooted in military inequalities always felt weak to me, because empires are not made by wars but by peace. There is a mountain of material out there on this topic, but the best place to start with the Assyrian Empire is Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, by Eckhart Frahm. That is the most up to date, accessible, and comprehensive history of the Assyrian Empire that is available. It doesn't focus specifically on the administrative structures of the empire but you cannot write a comprehensive history of Assyrian Empire without spending quality time on that subject (and you cannot really jump into more specialized works on Assyrian administration without a strong background in the overall history of the Empire).
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Feb 25, 2024 19:35
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CrypticFox posted:There is a mountain of material out there on this topic, but the best place to start with the Assyrian Empire is Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, by Eckhart Frahm. That is the most up to date, accessible, and comprehensive history of the Assyrian Empire that is available. It doesn't focus specifically on the administrative structures of the empire but you cannot write a comprehensive history of Assyrian Empire without spending quality time on that subject (and you cannot really jump into more specialized works on Assyrian administration without a strong background in the overall history of the Empire). Perfect thank you! Going to go start hitting the libraries. Assyrians have been a group that I've learned via wikipedia entries, museum guides, secondary mentions in non-Assyria focused books (e.g. and forgive them their debts), friends, and memes, so I can talk a little about them but I am feeling increasingly behind on the actual depth of my knowledge.
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Feb 25, 2024 19:55
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you don't need a strong grasp of inflation's relationship to money supply to know that debasement will lead to inflation, something which the Romans and most other pre-modern coiners were in fact well aware of. there is an inflationary mechanism built into debasement that has nothing to do with the money supply as an abstract concept: people discovering the debasement. unlike fiat money, only part of the perceived value of a pre-modern coin comes from the legitimate backing of a state, and that part of the value wasn't necessarily anything that they would have had much understanding of. the other part of the value, and the part that is obvious, is from its precious metal content. if too much of the money is perceived as heavily debased, prices will rise simply because merchants and shop owners don't think the coins are as valuable as they were previously. if it gets really bad, there can be a reversion to pre-coinage value methods entirely - continuing to use coins, but only for their precious metal content rather than their face value. the money supply effects are also occurring invisibly, but nobody needed to be aware of them to draw the connection between inflation and debasement in a society where value rested in the metal rather than the symbol
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Feb 25, 2024 20:19
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| # ? May 25, 2024 23:26 |
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My understanding is that yeah, the relationship between debasing and inflation was well-understood. Spanish inflation in the early modern period came as a surprise because it was driven by the quantity of silver in the economy, not the amount per coin
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Feb 25, 2024 20:27
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