Gen Ed 1198 | Newly approved | Course Listing | Canvas Site
Is today’s global economy truly more advanced and complex than the systems that shaped the world in the ancient past?
Requiring no prior knowledge of economics or ancient history, the aim of this course is to introduce students to the nature of global economic systems by looking at the complex and sophisticated nature of different types of economic enterprises in antiquity. In our modern global economies, different markets are internationally intertwined, as technological advances have allowed for swift communication and economic dependence between practically all areas of the world. The shipping industry might be a salient example of this, where one cargo ship got stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021 and blocked the channel for six days, stranding ca. 400 vessels and delaying between $6 and $10 billion in trade per day, attesting to the importance of this trade route for the global economy. Yet, the use of this route for large scale long-distance sea voyages can be traced back at least to the Roman period, where there is evidence of cargo ships traveling from Muziris, India to the Red Sea Coast of Egypt, carrying with them 635 tonnes of cargo meant to travel all the way to Alexandria and Rome, and worth around 7 million Roman sesterces, the equivalent of the salary of seven senators at the time. In this case the ancient and the modern don’t seem so different.
By analyzing the global connections of well-known ancient civilizations such as the Assyrian, Egyptian, Macedonian, Roman, and Palmyrene Empires, students will learn to see similarities to our own current global economic enterprises and learn not only of the challenges but also the social injustices and exploitation that take place in these global enterprises. Another particularly poignant example is the week where we study ancient global pandemics, seeing the ways in which they affected the labor force, the lower classes, agricultural production, and even politics, much like during our recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Furthermore, students will learn how to dissect historical and analytical narratives that utilize quantitative and qualitative data sets through selected case studies spanning millennia between them. For example, the class covers the economic logistics of the military conquests of Alexander, the constructions of the pyramids of Old Kingdom Egypt, the economic and human price of urban development of the city of Rome, and the capital investment and merchant networks required for the long-distance trade along the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade routes.