Capital in the Sixth Century: The Dynamics of Tax and Estate in Roman Egypt

Bransbourg, Gilles

doi:10.1353/jla.2016.0017

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…S1). Moreover, the connection between the plague and any broader fiscal concerns, including the fiduciary issuing of coinage, are deeply unclear (37).…”

Section: Promulgation Of Laws and Issues Of Coinage Not Affected By Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?

Mordechai

Eisenberg

Newfield

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them.

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“…S1). Moreover, the connection between the plague and any broader fiscal concerns, including the fiduciary issuing of coinage, are deeply unclear (37).…”

Section: Promulgation Of Laws and Issues Of Coinage Not Affected By Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3). Moreover, the authors know of no papyrus document that definitely refers to the plague among the tens of thousands of surviving papyri from the period in which plague allegedly ravaged the Mediterranean (37, 38).…”

Section: Papyri Demonstrate Strong Continued Administration and Economentioning

confidence: 99%

The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?

Mordechai

Eisenberg

Newfield

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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What Made a Peasantry: Theory and Historiography of Rural Labor in Byzantine Egypt

Tedesco

2021

J. Egypt. Hist.

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Modern discussions of rural labor in Byzantine Egypt (300–700 CE) have been bedevilled by disagreement over the definition of that concept. There are three main competing conceptualizations: (i) Rural labor has been defined in terms of serfdom as a parallel outcome to the emergence of “private” (or feudal) large landowners as opposed to the decline of “public powers”; (ii) Rural labor has been described as “free” since it was based on contractual arrangements (primarily, rent tenancy) and on the payment of a public levy to the state; and (iii) Rural labor has been characterized in terms of exploitation, that is, as the instrument through which landholders (both landowners and tenants) extracted unpaid wealth from the population of producers. Building on a vast literature, this essay seeks to clarify that while the notion of feudal serfdom does not find corroborations in the Byzantine sources, the contractual, tributary, and “exploitative” characterizations of labor were not mutually exclusive, but instead describe different aspects and possible developments of the employer-employee relationships.

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Capital in the Sixth Century: The Dynamics of Tax and Estate in Roman Egypt

Cited by 2 publications

References 46 publications

The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?

The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?

What Made a Peasantry: Theory and Historiography of Rural Labor in Byzantine Egypt

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