The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe) by Chris Wickham

Author:Chris Wickham [Wickham, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2009-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

15

The State and the Economy: Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Networks, 600–1000

Being a tradesman in Constantinople around 900 was by no means a straightforward process. According to the Book of the Eparch (or the Prefect), a set of official regulations from this period, merchants, shopkeepers and many artisans had to be members of a guild (systēma) to operate, and had to sell their wares in specific places, the gold- and silver-dealers in the Mese, the merchants of Arab silk in the Embole, the perfumers in the Milion beside Hagia Sophia, the pork butchers in the Tauros. Ambulant sellers were banned; they would be flogged, stripped of guild membership, and expelled from the city. Sellers of silk could not make up clothes as well; leather sellers could not be tanners. Some guilds, such as the merchants of Arab silk or the linen merchants, had to do their buying collectively, with the goods then distributed among guild members according to how much money they had put in, to keep down competitive buying. Sheep butchers had to go a long way into Anatolia to buy their sheep, to keep prices down; pork butchers, by contrast, had to buy pigs in the city, and were prohibited from going out to meet the vendors; so also were fishmongers, who had to buy on shore, not on the sea. The eparch, the city governor, had to be informed if silk merchants (divided into five separate guilds) sold to foreigners, who were prohibited from buying certain grades of silk. He determined all bread prices, by which bakers had to sell, and the price of wine the innkeepers sold; and he also determined the profits that many vendors made – grocers were allowed a 16 per cent profit, but bakers only 4 per cent (with another 16 per cent for the pay of their workmen), over and above the price they paid in the state grain warehouse.

Later medieval western towns often had quite elaborate guild regulations like these, aimed at maintaining monopolies and internal hierarchies in trades. The Book of the Eparch stands out, however (apart from in its early date), in the degree of state control it assumes. The regulation of profit was particularly important here, and also the regulation of the ways sellers were allowed to buy their goods. Silk was controlled because its production and distribution reflected directly on imperial prestige (the regulations for linen merchants were looser). Above all, however, it was vital that the food market was controlled, for Constantinople had to be fed reliably, at prices the inhabitants could afford. Bread was no longer free, as in the late Roman empire; that had stopped abruptly by imperial decree when the Persians took Egypt in 618 (above, Chapter 11). Constantinople was much smaller now; it did not need Egyptian grain any more, and could provision itself from its Aegean and southern Black Sea hinterland. All the same, as we have seen, it was still very substantial in size; it was the largest city in Europe

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