Ancient Economic History

The Classical Age of world history lasted from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. It was after the Iron Age. The Classical Age related to the further development of world empires, the expansion of trade, and the further complex growth of human interactions. Back then, India and China had the biggest economies in the world at that time. Each had more than half of the size of the world’s economy. They had high GDP, but they didn’t have significantly higher GDP per capita. Each had major population centers too. Commercial changes grew as result of the actions of Alexander the Great too. He facilitated multi-national trade. Julius Caesar of ancient Rome also conquered France and Britain. By the time of the Roman Empire, Egypt was the wealthiest of all places within the Roman Empire. The merchants of Rome acquired produce from Persia via Egypt by the port of Berenince and subsequently the Nile. Ancient Nubia during the classical period had its ideas and technologies travel in the rest of Africa, Europe, Asia, etc. Nubia traded with Chad, Libya, Egypt, China, India, and the Arabian Peninsula too. The Bantu migration during this period continued. In ancient China, there was the Warring States era from the 5th century to 3rd century B.C. As the feudal system collapsed, most legislative power transferred from the nobility to local kings. Increased trade during the Warring States period produced a stronger merchant class. The new kings in ancient China established an elaborate bureaucracy, using it to wage wars, build large temples, and enact public-works projects. This meritocratic system rewarded talent over birthright. Greater use of iron tools revolutionized agriculture and led to a large population increase during this period. In 221 B.C., the king of the Qin declared himself the First Emperor, uniting China into a single empire. The Qin Dyansty saw its various state walls into the Great Wall, and its various peoples and traditions into a single system of government. The Qin emperor unified standards of writing, weight measurement, and wheel length. It ended old currencies that varied among states. Trade was easier to execute. It had heavy taxation of salt and iron manufactures. Many Chinese people were forcibly migrated to new territories in the south and west. Although their initial implementation led to its overthrow in 206 B.C., the Qin's institutions survived. During the Han Dynasty (from 3rd century B.C. to 3rd century A.D.), China became a strong, unified, and centralized empire of self-sufficient farmers and artisans, with limited local autonomy. The Han dynasty in China was a Golden Age. There was rapid growth. Its population reached 58 million people. There was the wheelbarrow, paper, and a seismograph which was invented during this period.

According to Herodotus, and most modern scholars, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coin. It is thought that these first stamped coins were minted around 650–600 BC. A stater coin was made in the stater (trite) denomination. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth in lower denominations. The first economist (at least from within opinion generated by the evidence of extant writings) is considered to be Hesiod, by the fact of his having written on the fundamental subject of the scarcity of resources, in Works and Days. Indian thinker Chanakya wrote Arthshastra, science of economics in contemporary India in 4th century BC. Greek and Roman thinkers made various economic observations, especially Aristotle and Xenophon. Many other Greek writings show understanding of sophisticated economic concepts. For instance, a form of Gresham’s Law is presented in Aristophanes’ Frogs. Bryson of Heraclea was a neo-platonic who is cited as having heavily influenced early Muslim economic scholarship.


During the Middle Age, the world economy slowly expanded with the increase of population and trade. There was the Silk Road that was used for trading from Europe, Central Asia, and to China. The Axumite Kingdom of Ethiopia and Eritrea had a powerful navy. They established trade with the Byzantine Empire and India. Islamic areas by the Middle East expanded trade, literacy, and centralized states. By 1324, Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, made a historically famous Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. There was an enormous group organized to undertake the Hajj with the king. It included "60,000 men, including 1200 servants" and records show that Mansa Musa gave out so much gold in Egypt, that its economy became depressed. Between 1000 and 1500, the forests of West Africa also became part of trade networks, particularly under the reigns of the Yoruba kings. Ifé was a vital trade town, along the route from the tropical forests to Djenné, a major trade center in Sudan, near other large trade cities such as Timbuktu and Gao. Ifé's location also placed it near Benin and the Atlantic Ocean. Yoruba civilization was supported by cities surrounded by farmed land, but extensive trade development made it wealthy. The stone city of Great Zimbabwe, founded around 1100, was the center of the Shona kingdom until around 1400. In the Tang dynasty (in ancient China), there was another Golden Age in China. By 630, the Tang had conquered the powerful Gokturk Khagnate, preventing threats to China's borders for more than a century. A series of strong and efficient rulers, beginning with the founder and including a woman, expanded the Tang Empire to the point that it rivalled the later Yuan, Ming and Qing. The Tang was a period of rapid economic growth and prosperity, seeing the beginnings of woodblock printing. Tang rulers issued large amounts of currency to facilitate trade and distributed land under the equal-field system. The population recovered to and then reached an estimated 80 million human beings. The Chinese Song period (10th–13th century) brought additional economic reforms. Paper money, the compass, and other technological advances facilitated communication on a large scale and the widespread circulation of books during the Song period. The state's control of the economy diminished, allowing private merchants to prosper and a large increase in investment and profit. Despite disruptions during the Mongol conquest of 1279, the 2nd plague epidemic in the 14th century, and the large-scale rebellions that followed it, China's population was buoyed by the Columbian Exchange and increased greatly under the Ming (14th–17th centuries). The Ming dynasty of China saw cash crops grown and it was founded by Zhu Yuanzhang. Many state industries were privatized. The Ming Dynasty was a very important era of Chinese history.

During the early part of the Middle East, Europe was in chaos because of wars, the end of the Western Roman Empire, and other problems. By the later medieval period, rich trading cities in Italy developed. They created the first modern accounting and finance systems in Europe. The first banknotes were used in the Tang dynasty China in the ninth century A.D. It expanded use during the Song dynasty. By the first millennium A.D., there were improvements in technique and technology in the world. Monasteries developed. There were centers of the collection of knowledge involving agriculture and forestry. Irrigation improved. There were trade among Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Those in the Americas traded with each other too. Economies in Oceania, Australia, and the rest of the world existed. Land use increased and population increased. Large landowners had significant control over both their land and its laborers, who were peasants or serfs. More iron smelting caused more tools to be developed for developing society. Watermills and windmills spread in the world. There was the Great Famine from 1315 to 1317. It weakened populations in Europe and parts of Asia too. From the 8th century to the 12th century, there were the Vikings using long distance navigation to travel into Europe, America, parts of Africa, and the Middle East. There was the longship and the astrolabe used by the Vikings and others for navigation. Guilds and merchant capitalism was formed. This was about merchant houses, backed by financiers acting as intermediaries between simple commodity producers. This system continued until it was supplanted by industrial capitalism in the 18th Century. City states like in Italy developed. Genoa and Venice created large wealth. In the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the Hanseatic League trade monopoly grew trade along the 2 seas. Lubeck was the city leader of the Hanseatic League. In the late 1400’s, the economies of Europe (especially in France) did grow and recuperated from the economic catastrophes and bad harvest plus famines including wars.


By 1500, the world has changed. This era was the start of the massive international slave trade. It was during the late 1400’s when Portugal began the modern International slave trade involving the oppression of black African people. There were early European colonists in North Africa like the ancient Greeks. The modern economy as we know it today revolved around the brutal oppression of black people and the genocide of the Americas literally. Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator made it very clear that he wanted to travel into Africa as a means to get resources and try to convert as many African people to his version of Christianity (in the midst of the Ottoman Empire, which was mostly Muslim). Not all Christians are responsible for the Maafa. It is that evil people purposely perverted the essence of real Christianity as an excuse for them to commit evil. It’s like not all Muslims are responsible for the Arabic slave trade (which was evil and unjust), but some people claiming to be Muslims are responsible for it. The Portuguese refused to sell African guns, but they sold Africans Indian cloth and European manufactured goods. Europe itself used imperialism and massive economic exploitation as a means for that continent to grow their various brutal empires in the world.


By Timothy