AN UNDERDEVELOPED ECONOMY 79prosperous by observers ancient and modern, and for the rich few this was
doubtless the case: they became richer. But for the vast majority of the
population the situation was otherwise. To take agriculture, the basis of the
economy, for subsistence farmers the margin of surplus production was
narrow and was largely siphoned off by the imperial authorities and city-
based landlords in taxes and rents. The workers on the larger estates,
whether they were technically slave or free, did not share the profi ts and
standard of living of the landowners. The rich, for their part, were consumers
rather than investors of wealth. Technology – an important determinant of
the economy as a whole – remained backward, preventing a major advance
in the productivity of agriculture, and also standing in the way of an
expansion of trade and manufacturing.^14 To take the factor of power: the
Roman world remained largely dependent on animals and humans for its
power. The windmill was unknown in the countryside until the eleventh
century. The draught- horse was not employed for farm- work for lack of a
satisfactory harness; the ox and mule were slower animals with less traction
power. This had consequences also for land transport. It was expensive to
haul heavy goods, among which must be counted wheat, overland, though
one must not forget the vital importance of rivers navigable to small
commercial boats. Sea transport was cheaper but insecure and largely
restricted to the period from April to October. The primitiveness of
commercial institutions and commercial law is consistent with this picture
of a relatively small and underdeveloped ‘trading sector’.^15 Industrial
technology, if we except the Phoenician invention of glass- blowing in the
fi rst century BC , registered no major advance. Traditional techniques
remained in use. Production was in small units, methods and tools were
simple and overheads low. The poverty of the masses restricted demand.
The picture can be drawn too bleakly. A failure to pursue the goal of
higher productivity in industry or agriculture through heavy capital
investment and economies of scale was not peculiar to the Romans. For the
same reason it is only of limited interest that the Romans lacked the full
legal concept of agency, double- entry bookkeeping or sophisticated credit
and banking institutions, and merely to observe these defi ciencies does not
help us to isolate the characteristic features of Roman underdevelopment.
Our position is that the economy was capable of a measure of expansion,
and is likely to have expanded, under the Principate. This is essentially a
modest claim. Thus, for example, industry could achieve expanded output
(not to be confused with higher productivity) merely through the
multiplication of small producers working in isolation or in integrated
enterprises. Where slaves were employed, as they characteristically were in
fi rms larger than the family, for example in the Italian pottery industry, there
is the likelihood that owners would seek higher returns through greater
exploitation of the labour force in order to pay for the not inconsiderable
investment that slaves represented. However, we would not claim that such
growth as the economy experienced as a by- product of the injection of slave