42 ALAIN BRESSON (TRANSLATED By EDwARD M. HARRIS)
societies lived from the production and sale of manufactured commodities
to the same extent that modern societies do? In the same way, the emphasis
on the role of agriculture as the main factor in production can no longer
be doubted in any way. On the other hand, we should immediately bear in
mind that this description of the ancient economy is not really original: to
adopt such an approach is to return to what seemed obvious for scholars of
the nineteenth century, partly because they lived in a world that was closer
to that of pre-industrial societies, but also without a doubt because they
knew better than their immediate successors that one should not reject the
portrait painted by our sources of a society in which agriculture played a
key role as a factor in production. These remarks should suffice to show that
agreement about certain theories held by the New Orthodoxy does not a
priori imply complete agreement with the entire approach. Such agreement
may simply result from a similar analysis of the same evidence even if this
evidence has been long neglected. It is therefore also clear that challenging
the ideas of the New Orthodoxy in other regards does not necessarily imply
a return to the outdated theories of modernism.
This is certainly not the place to present a ‘General Theory of the Economy,’
which would claim to replace the New Orthodoxy. There is a very simple
reason for this: such a general theory, if indeed there must be a general the-
ory, could not be sketched in a few sentences, based on a priori concepts
and ready-made formulas, of the sort that might stir the imagination and win
short-lived acceptance but not lead to any lasting results. There is nothing
more dangerous than to present prematurely ambitious theories, which are
only generalizations based on tentative conclusions and often turn out several
years later to be questionable, if not completely untenable. A reasonable the-
oretical assessment in the field of ancient history will only be possible after a
series of studies in which the main issues are examined. We should be grateful
to the New Orthodoxy for raising these issues at a time when modernism and
its de facto ally, positivism, held sway.
Among these key issues,^5 there is a view that has become one of the founda-
tions of the New Orthodoxy: the absence of any practical policy or any politi-
cal discussion about foreign trade in the city-states of the ancient Greek world.
Strictly speaking, there was only one exception: the Greek city-states had a
policy of securing the imports necessary to maintain their population’s food
supply. Beyond that, the state’s attitude was only a reflection of a universal lack
of interest about economic matters and in general about foreign commerce, in
particular about exports.
The most significant arguments on this topic have been those made by M.I.
Finley in the chapter ‘The State and the Economy’ in The Ancient Economy:The existing documentation, admittedly thin, is marked by a com-
plete absence of anything we can recognize as commercial clause, or