The Open Sea by J. G. Manning

Author:J. G. Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

MEASURING GROWTH

There are two basic types of economic growth: intensive and extensive growth. Extensive, or aggregate, growth is measured by the increased output caused by a growing population, a more typical kind of growth in world history than the second kind.22 Intensive growth is measured by the increase in per capita output and rising per capita incomes. It is this latter kind of growth that, in many economists’ views, characterizes modern growth in the Western world.23 E. L. Jones highlighted the conditions for an “optimality band” for “ancient” or premodern economic growth that combined freed-up factor markets and a “goldilocks” state, not too grasping or predatory, but not too weak so as to be able to protect property rights.

It remains the case, especially with crude guestimates of population, that “direct observations of economic growth have been more difficult to generate.”24 There have been two types of evidence used to quantify growth. The first, archaeological, has generated several proxy data sets, including shipwrecks, house sizes, meat consumption, human stature measured by osteological remains, coin production, levels of urbanization, and energy consumption.25 The second kind of evidence has come from data derived from polar ice cores and lake sediments, that uses lead isotope analysis as a proxy for the industrial output of silver use.26 Indirect observations are more common, as in the case for 6th century BCE Babylonia where an agglomeration of information exists around empire building, population and urban growth, labor specialization, and the intensification in agriculture especially in cash crops like dates from increased urban demand and an expansion in factor markets.27

A. J. Parker’s pioneering work on shipwrecks (n = 1,189) in the Mediterranean as a proxy measure of growth and decline in long-distance Mediterranean trade is one of the most widely reproduced datasets for Western antiquity (figure 41). It has been, and continues to be, updated and discussed.28 The key problem with the data is that the wrecks can rarely be dated specifically, and there is bias in archaeological selection. Among these are that found shipwrecks tend to be biased toward amphorae (as opposed to barrel containers common in medieval shipments) and marble cargo because of the nature of identifying these mounds on the ocean floor. Grain ships and “ships carrying perishable cargoes,” because such cargoes do not protect the hull after sinking, have been vastly underestimated.29 What’s more, the known shipwrecks are biased to regions, the southern French coast for example, where it is simply easier to find wrecks. The North African coast (leaving aside the virtual blank that is the Indian Ocean), for example, has provided few wrecks, and the decline in the number of wrecks after the 2d century CE does not agree with the evidence of sea trade from “terrestrial sites.”30 Andrew Wilson’s cautious remarks about shipwreck data, and other archaeological proxies used to chart growth, are important.

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