Byzantine Economic Growth: Did Climate Change Play a Role?

Lambert, Thomas (2021): Byzantine Economic Growth: Did Climate Change Play a Role?

Abstract

Different chroniclers of the history of the Byzantine Empire have noted various economic data gleamed from historical documents and accounts of the empire at different periods of time. Research for this paper has not uncovered any estimates of long term, annual macroeconomic data (gross domestic product (GDP), national income (NI), etc.) for the empire during its existence. Such data has been estimated to one extent or another for other nations and societies that have existed during the middle ages. This paper attempts to provide conjectures on approximate real GDP per capita trends for the empire over its existence from AD 300 to 1453. Finally, some hypotheses on factors that would have affected Byzantine economic performance are tested using climate/environmental factors. The results of this paper appear to confirm some findings on how the Byzantine economy might have been affected by periods of regional climate change.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Byzantine Empire, climate change, real GDP per capita, empire size
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations > N13 - Europe: Pre-1913

References

Alfani, Guido. 2021. "Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Times: Europe and Beyond." Journal of Economic Literature, 59 (1): 3-44. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20191449

Ammann, C. M., and Naveau, P. 2010. “A statistical volcanic forcing scenario generator for climate simulations”. J. Geophys. Res., 115, D05107, doi:10.1029/2009JD012550.

Berenson, Mark L., David M. Levine, and Kathryn A. Szabat. 2015. Basic business statistics: concepts and applications, Thirteenth Edition. New York, NY: Pearson.

Bertrand, C., Loutre, M.‐F., Crucifix, M. and Berger, A. 2002, Climate of the last millennium: a sensitivity study. Tellus A, 54: 221-244. https://doi.org/10.1034/j.1600-0870.2002.00287.x

Blaug, Mark. 1991. Pioneers in Economics: St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Aldersthot, Hants GU11 3HR, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

Brenner, Robert, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe”, Past & Present, Volume 70, Issue 1, February 1976, Pages 30–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/70.1.30

Broadberry, S., Campbell, B., Klein, A., Overton, M., & Van Leeuwen, B. 2015. British Economic Growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107707603 . Data set located at https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/economic-history/british-economic-growth-12701870?format=PB . Accessed on June 18, 2020.

Brown, Eryn. 2017. “Taxes through the Ages.” Knowable Magazine. October 25, 2017. https://knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2017/taxes-through-ages . Accessed on March 6, 2021.

Büntgen, U., Myglan, V., Ljungqvist, F. et al. 2016. Cooling and societal change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD. Nature Geosci 9, 231–236 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2652

Ch. Stathakopoulos, Dionysios. 2004. Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics. Burlington, VT; Ashgate Publishing Company.

Clark, Gregory. 2009. “The Macroeconomic Aggregates for England, 1209-2008”, UC Davis, Economics WP 09-19. http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/data.html . Colander, David C. 2017. Macroeconomics, 10th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Publishers.

Conrad, A., & Meyer, J. 1958. The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South. Journal of Political Economy, 66(2), 95-130. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1827270 .

Crowley, Thomas J. 2000. “Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years,” Science 14 Jul 2000, 289(5477): 270-277. DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5477.270.

Diaz, Henry F.; Hughes, M. 1994. The Medieval warm period. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-7923-2842-1.

Fagan, Brian M. 2001. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02272-4.

H. Goosse, O. Arzel, J. Luterbacher, M. E. Mann, H. Renssen, N. Riedwyl, A. Timmermann, E. Xoplaki, and H. Wanner. 2006. Climate of the Past, 2, 99–113, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2-99-2006 . Accessed on March 15, 2021.

Haldon, J., Roberts, N., Izdebski, A., Fleitmann, D., McCormick, M., Cassis, M., and Xoplaki, E. 2014. The Climate and Environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating Science, History, and Archaeology. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 45(2), 113-161. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/552650. Accessed on March 5, 2021.

Harvey, Alan. Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire, 900 to 1200. Oxford University: Cambridge University Press.

Haupert, M., and Diebolt, C. 2020. Cliometrics. In: Paul Atkinson, ed., SAGE Research Methods Foundations. London: SAGE Publications, Ltd. https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781526421036818809 [Accessed 25 Feb 2021].

Hendy, Michael F. 1985. Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c.300–1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511896750.

Herrin, Judith. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Homer, Sidney and Richard Sylla. 2005. A History of Interest Rates, Fourth Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Finance.

Jones, A.H.M. 1974. The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

Jones, P. D., and Mann, M. E. 2004. Climate over past millennia, Review Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi:10.1029/2003RG000143. Accessed on March 6, 2021.

Kelly, M., & Gráda, C. (2014). Debating the Little Ice Age. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 45(1), 57-68. Retrieved March 17, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43829565 . Accessed on March 17, 2021.

Laiou-Thomadakis, Angeliki E. 1977. Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Laiou, Angeliki. 2002. “Writing the Economic History of Byzantium,” in Angeliki Laiou (ed.) The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh Through the Fifteenth Century, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.

Laiou, A., & Morrisson, C. 2007. The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511816727 .

Lamb, H.H. 1965. "The early medieval warm epoch and its sequel". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 1: 13–37. Bibcode:1965PPP.....1...13L. doi:10.1016/0031-0182(65)90004-0 . Accessed on March 24, 2021.

Lamb, Hubert H. 1995. Climate, history and the modern world (Second ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12735-1.

Lambert, Thomas E. 2020a. “Paul Baran’s Economic Surplus Concept, the Baran Ratio, and the Decline of Feudalism.” Monthly Review, 72(7). December 2020. https://monthlyreview.org/2020/12/01/paul-barans-economic-surplus-concept-the-baran-ratio-and-the-decline-of-feudalism/

Lambert, Thomas E. 2020b. “Investment, Deficits, and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: An Exploratory Heterodox Analysis and Conjecture.” Unpublished manuscript.

Le Goff, Jacques. 2012. Money and the Middle Ages: An Essay in Historical Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Lüning, S., Gałka, M., & Vahrenholt, F. (2017). Warming and cooling: The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Africa and Arabia. Paleoceanography, 32, 1219– 1235. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017PA003237

Luterbacher J., J. P. Werner, J. E. Smerdon, L. Fernandez-Donado, F. J. Gonzalez-Rouco, et al. 2016. “European summer temperatures since Roman times.” Environmental Research Letters, IOP Publishing, 2016, 11 (2), DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/024001 .

Maddison, Angus. 2003. The World Economy: Historical Statistics. Paris, France: Development Center Studies, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Mann, M., Zhang, Z., Rutherford, S., Bradley, R.S., Hughes, M., Shindell, D., Ammann, C., Faluvegi, G., & Ni, F. 2009. Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly. Science, 326, 1256 - 1260.

Melitz, Jacques. 1971. “Some Further Reassessment of the Scholastic Doctrine of Usury,” Kyklos, 24: 473-492

Milanovic, Branko. 2006. “An Estimate of Average Income and Inequality in Byzantium around Year 1000.” Review of Income and Wealth, 52(3): 449-470.

Milanovic. Brako. 2010. “Income Level and Income Inequality in the Euro-Mediterranean Region: from the Principate to the Islamic Conquest.” MPRA Paper No. 46660, posted 2 May 2013. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46640/ .

Morrisson, Cecile and Jean-Claude Cheynet. 2002. “Prices and Wages in the Byzantine World” in The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century.

Angeliki E. Laiou, Editor-in-Chief. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Ostrogorski, Georgije. 1969. History of the Byzantine state. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Treadgold, Warren. 1982. The Byzantine State Finances in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (New York: East European Monographs, 1982).

Treadgold, Warren. 1997. A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

Treadgold, Warren. 2020. A Concise History of Byzantium, Second Edition. London, UK: Red Globe Press.

Xoplaki, Elena, Dominik Fleitmann, Juerg Luterbacher, Sebastian Wagner, John F. Haldon, Eduardo Zorita, Ioannis Telelis, Andrea Toreti, Adam Izdebski. 2016. “The Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium: A review of the evidence on climatic fluctuations, economic performance and societal change,” Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 136, Pages 229-252, ISSN 0277-3791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.10.004 . Accessed on March 24, 2021.