Chapter 7
Shifting cores and peripheries in the
Imperial West
The Romans created an empire comprising a complex economic and com-
mercial system or series of overlapping systems that evolved over the cen-
turies. The high point came in the Early Imperial period between the reigns
of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius (31BCE– 180 CE), a relatively peaceful time
characterized by increased production, trade expansion, capital accumulation,
and monetary stability. Long-distance trade existed within the empire and
beyond its borders with Roman goods going much farther than Roman
merchants. Goods came into the empire sometimes from places so remote
that the producers had no idea who the Romans were. In the east, Anatolia
and Armenia were gateways into the Parthian Empire of Persia as were Syria
and the Levantine coast via Mesopotamia. Beyond lay Afghanistan, Central
Asia, and China. Egypt led up the Nile to Nubia, Kush, and Central Africa,
and down the Red Sea to Arabia, Axum (Ethiopia), and the Indian Ocean,
across which lay India, Ceylon, and Southeast Asia. In another direction Gaul
opened northwest to Britain and Ireland and northeast to Germany,
Scandinavia, and the Baltic region while the Danubian provinces accessed
the Black Sea, southern Russia, and Siberia. The North African provinces
were entryways to the oases of the Sahara and the Niger Valley. The possi-
bilities appeared limitless, although the level of commercial activity as it
developed was very uneven depending on direction.
Long-distance trade within the empire may be more complicated to
reconstruct than the empire’s trade beyond its borders. One view is that the
empire was a single integrated economic unit, but critics see this as too
simple. Another places Italy at the center of the system with peripheral zones
extending outward: the core provided mostlyfinished goods, and the per-
ipheral zones provided raw materials. Critics see this as too contrived. Still
another model sees the empire as consisting of autonomous regional econo-
mies linked under the imperial political structure, each with its own core
and peripheries so that, for example, southern Gaul served as a center not
only for the rest of Gaul but for Britain and Spain and for foreign trade into
Germany. Critics see this as unnecessarily complicated.