古代地中海和近东的债务:John Weisweiler 编著的《信贷、货币和社会义务》(评论)

IF 0.5 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Brent D. Shaw
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As for the first, it is a qualified success; the second will leave many readers, including the reviewer, with an unresolved paradox. Graeber's overarching program in <em>Debt: The First 5000 Years</em> (2011) is clearly explained in Weisweiler's introduction (chapter 1). Graeber held that credit, and therefore debt and attendant moralizing ideas, have been primal driving forces of human economic exchange. Other than moral injunctions, he argued that violence has been the key creator and enforcer of large-scale indebtedness and that states were the formalized structures that invented coinage as an efficient uniform computational mode of paying their hired enforcers, the soldiers in their armies. Whenever this configuration of state power receded—what Graeber calls the currency-slavery-warfare nexus—so did money in the form of currency and slavery as a form of labor. The structure of debt and state power, vitally linked to chattel slavery, first occurred on a global scale in Karl Jaspers' \"Axial Age.\" Each contributor therefore considers Graeber's ideas within his or her own scholarly bailiwick in this time <strong>[End Page 273]</strong> span—from Babylonian Mesopotamia to the post-Roman states of western Europe. Since the focus of this journal is Late Antiquity, I shall consider the final half dozen contributions that are most relevant to its concerns and, amongst these, focus on the ones that most directly grapple with Graeber's big theory. These chapters are especially welcome because, as Neville Morley observes, \"Rome is a striking absentee from Graeber's historical narrative\" (85).</p> <p>Of the latter contributions, one that puts Graeber's ideas directly to the test is, paradoxically, John Weisweiler's essay on late Roman antiquity (chapter 7). I say \"paradoxically\" because, unlike the paean to Graeber with which Weisweiler begins the book (chapter 1), all the facts arraigned in his essay speak directly against the big picture advocated by the anthropologist. Late Roman antiquity, he shows, was not a time marked by the dissolution of previous economic or political forces; it did not lapse into a species of non-currency economy; it did not witness a much weakened system of coinage; there was no great decline in trade networks; large rural estates did not become autarkic; in most regions of the empire populations did not plunge downward; slavery did not decline; and the general economy was not in recession or becoming \"proto-feudal\" in nature. Weisweiler demonstrates the falsity of such claims in detail. He could have added much more. Far from gradually becoming an under-monetized entity, the empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, was relatively saturated with coinage—a picture sustained not just by the evidence of coin hoards (as pointed out by Weisweiler) but by a host of surface and other occasional finds. There was not less but more coined money around than ever before. And as the detailed research of Kyle Harper has shown, far from vanishing slavery remained as deeply entrenched as ever. Furthermore, the contributions by Arietta Papaconstantinou (chapter 10) on the Egyptian papyri of the late antique to early Islamic period and the essay by Alice Rio (chapter 11) on the early mediaeval west both confirm how fundamentally mistaken Graeber was not only in his claims about coinage but about the economy in general and its relationship to militarized states. Indeed, Papaconstantinou (148) wonders aloud why Graeber had not consulted a work as basic as Chris Wickham's <em>Framing the Early Middle Ages</em> (2005). 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引用次数: 0

摘要

以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:评论者: 古代地中海和近东的债务》:John Weisweiler 编 Brent D. Shaw Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East:由约翰-魏斯韦勒主编的《古代地中海和近东的债务:信贷、货币和社会义务》,牛津大学出版社,2022 年:牛津大学出版社,2022 年。第 xii + 296 页。ISBN: 9780197647172 本卷收录的十篇文章宣称有两个目的:一是为 "古代信用制度史 "做贡献,二是 "检验 "大卫-格雷伯(David Graeber)著名的债务宏大叙事的准确性(2)。前者取得了一定的成功,而后者则给包括评论者在内的许多读者留下了一个悬而未决的悖论。韦斯韦勒在引言(第 1 章)中清楚地解释了格雷伯在《债务:最初的 5000 年》(2011 年)中的总体方案。格雷伯认为,信用,也就是债务和随之而来的道德化观念,一直是人类经济交换的原始驱动力。除了道德训诫,他还认为暴力是大规模债务的主要创造者和执行者,而国家则是发明硬币的正规化结构,硬币是支付其雇佣的执行者(即军队中的士兵)的一种有效的统一计算模式。每当这种国家权力结构消退,即格雷伯所说的货币-奴隶制-战争关系消退时,货币形式的金钱和作为劳动形式的奴隶制也随之消退。与动产奴隶制密切相关的债务和国家权力结构首次在全球范围内出现在卡尔-雅斯贝尔斯的 "轴心时代"。因此,每位撰稿人都将格雷贝尔的观点纳入了自己在这一时间跨度 [尾页 273]--从巴比伦美索不达米亚到西欧后罗马时期--的学术领域。由于本刊的重点是 "晚期古代"(Late Antiquity),我将考虑与本刊关注的问题最相关的最后六篇文章,其中,我将重点关注那些最直接地探讨格莱伯的大理论的文章。这些章节尤其受欢迎,因为正如内维尔-莫利(Neville Morley)所言,"罗马在格雷伯的历史叙事中是一个明显的缺席者"(85)。在后几篇文章中,约翰-魏斯韦勒(John Weisweiler)关于晚期罗马古代的文章(第 7 章)直接检验了格雷伯的观点,这真是自相矛盾。我之所以说 "自相矛盾",是因为与魏斯韦勒在本书(第 1 章)开头对格雷伯的赞美不同,他在文中列举的所有事实都直接与人类学家所主张的大局观背道而驰。他指出,罗马古代晚期并不是一个以前的经济或政治力量解体的时代;它并没有陷入一种非货币经济;它并没有见证一个被大大削弱的钱币体系;贸易网络并没有出现巨大衰退;大型农村庄园并没有成为自给自足的庄园;在帝国的大部分地区,人口并没有急剧下降;奴隶制并没有衰退;总体经济并没有衰退,也没有在本质上成为 "原封建制"。魏斯韦勒详细论证了这些说法的虚假性。他本可以补充得更多。第四和第五世纪的帝国远非逐渐成为一个货币化不足的实体,而是钱币相对饱和--这种情况不仅有钱币囤积的证据(正如魏斯韦勒所指出的),还有大量表面和其他偶然发现的证据。与以往任何时候相比,硬币的数量不是更少了,而是更多了。正如凯尔-哈珀(Kyle Harper)的详细研究表明,奴隶制远没有消失,而是一如既往地根深蒂固。此外,阿丽埃塔-帕帕康斯坦丁努(Arietta Papaconstantinou)(第 10 章)关于古代晚期至伊斯兰早期埃及纸莎草纸的文章,以及爱丽丝-里奥(Alice Rio)(第 11 章)关于中世纪早期西方的文章,都证实了格雷伯不仅在钱币方面,而且在总体经济及其与军事化国家的关系方面,都存在着根本性的错误。事实上,帕帕康斯坦丁努(Papaconstantinou,148 页)不禁要问,为什么格雷伯没有参考克里斯-维克汉姆(Chris Wickham)的《中世纪早期的框架》(Framing the Early Middle Ages,2005 年)这样基础性的著作。她指出,格莱伯使用的分析框--希腊城邦、罗马帝国、"中世纪"--都是传统的西方文明故事。它们的有效性没有受到质疑,也没有任何解释......
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Credit, Money, and Social Obligation ed. by John Weisweiler (review)
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Credit, Money, and Social Obligation ed. by John Weisweiler
  • Brent D. Shaw
Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Credit, Money, and Social Obligation Edited by John Weisweiler Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 296. ISBN: 9780197647172

The proclaimed aims of the ten collected essays in this volume are two: to contribute to a "history of ancient credit systems" and "to test the accuracy" of David Graeber's well-known grand narrative on debt (2). As for the first, it is a qualified success; the second will leave many readers, including the reviewer, with an unresolved paradox. Graeber's overarching program in Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011) is clearly explained in Weisweiler's introduction (chapter 1). Graeber held that credit, and therefore debt and attendant moralizing ideas, have been primal driving forces of human economic exchange. Other than moral injunctions, he argued that violence has been the key creator and enforcer of large-scale indebtedness and that states were the formalized structures that invented coinage as an efficient uniform computational mode of paying their hired enforcers, the soldiers in their armies. Whenever this configuration of state power receded—what Graeber calls the currency-slavery-warfare nexus—so did money in the form of currency and slavery as a form of labor. The structure of debt and state power, vitally linked to chattel slavery, first occurred on a global scale in Karl Jaspers' "Axial Age." Each contributor therefore considers Graeber's ideas within his or her own scholarly bailiwick in this time [End Page 273] span—from Babylonian Mesopotamia to the post-Roman states of western Europe. Since the focus of this journal is Late Antiquity, I shall consider the final half dozen contributions that are most relevant to its concerns and, amongst these, focus on the ones that most directly grapple with Graeber's big theory. These chapters are especially welcome because, as Neville Morley observes, "Rome is a striking absentee from Graeber's historical narrative" (85).

Of the latter contributions, one that puts Graeber's ideas directly to the test is, paradoxically, John Weisweiler's essay on late Roman antiquity (chapter 7). I say "paradoxically" because, unlike the paean to Graeber with which Weisweiler begins the book (chapter 1), all the facts arraigned in his essay speak directly against the big picture advocated by the anthropologist. Late Roman antiquity, he shows, was not a time marked by the dissolution of previous economic or political forces; it did not lapse into a species of non-currency economy; it did not witness a much weakened system of coinage; there was no great decline in trade networks; large rural estates did not become autarkic; in most regions of the empire populations did not plunge downward; slavery did not decline; and the general economy was not in recession or becoming "proto-feudal" in nature. Weisweiler demonstrates the falsity of such claims in detail. He could have added much more. Far from gradually becoming an under-monetized entity, the empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, was relatively saturated with coinage—a picture sustained not just by the evidence of coin hoards (as pointed out by Weisweiler) but by a host of surface and other occasional finds. There was not less but more coined money around than ever before. And as the detailed research of Kyle Harper has shown, far from vanishing slavery remained as deeply entrenched as ever. Furthermore, the contributions by Arietta Papaconstantinou (chapter 10) on the Egyptian papyri of the late antique to early Islamic period and the essay by Alice Rio (chapter 11) on the early mediaeval west both confirm how fundamentally mistaken Graeber was not only in his claims about coinage but about the economy in general and its relationship to militarized states. Indeed, Papaconstantinou (148) wonders aloud why Graeber had not consulted a work as basic as Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005). She points out that the analytical boxes that he uses—Greek city-states, Roman empire, the "Middle Ages"—are conventional ones of a canonical Western Civ story. Their validity is not questioned nor is any explanation...

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Journal of Late Antiquity
Journal of Late Antiquity HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
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