Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction générale et remerciements par Christian Buchet
- General introduction and acknowledgements
- Introduction (français)
- Introduction (English)
- La mer est le propre d'Homo sapiens
- PREHISTORICAL CASE STUDIES
- HISTORIAL CASE STUDIES: The Ancient Near East and Pharaonic Egypt
- HISTORICAL CASE STUDIES: The Mediterranean world
- Mediterranean ship technology in Antiquity
- Greek colonization, connectivity, and the Middle Sea
- Les infrastructures portuaires antiques
- Alexandria and the sea in Hellenistic and Roman times
- The development of Roman maritime trade after the Second Punic war
- La mer et l'approvisionnement de la ville de Rome
- The Roman Empire and the seas
- Les techniques de pêche dans l'Antiquité
- The consumption of salted fish in the Roman Empire
- Taxing the sea
- Les détroits méditerranéens dans la construction de l'image de la mer Intérieure dans l'Antiquité
- Ancient sea routes in the Black Sea
- Maritime risk and ritual responses: sailing with the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean
- La mer, vecteur d'expansion du christianisme au Ier siècle
- Maritime military practices in the pre-Phoenician Levant
- La naissance des flottes en Egée
- The Athenian maritime empire of the fifth century BC
- Financial, human, material and economic resources required to build and operate navies in the classical Greek world
- Les expéditions athéniennes en Sicile, ou la difficulté pour une marine de garder sa supériorité
- Pourquoi Alexandre le Grand a-t-il choisi de licencier sa flotte à Milet?
- Hellenistic and Roman republican naval warfare technology
- La marine de guerre romaine de 284 à 363
- Rome and the Vandals
- HISTORICAL CASE STUDIES: The Indian Ocean and the Far East
- Conclusion (français)
- Conclusion (English)
- Conclusion générale par Christian Buchet
- General conclusion
- Comprendre le rôle de la mer dans L'histoire pour éclairer notre avenir
- Understanding the role the sea has played in our past in order to shed light on our future!
Taxing the sea
from HISTORICAL CASE STUDIES: The Mediterranean world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction générale et remerciements par Christian Buchet
- General introduction and acknowledgements
- Introduction (français)
- Introduction (English)
- La mer est le propre d'Homo sapiens
- PREHISTORICAL CASE STUDIES
- HISTORIAL CASE STUDIES: The Ancient Near East and Pharaonic Egypt
- HISTORICAL CASE STUDIES: The Mediterranean world
- Mediterranean ship technology in Antiquity
- Greek colonization, connectivity, and the Middle Sea
- Les infrastructures portuaires antiques
- Alexandria and the sea in Hellenistic and Roman times
- The development of Roman maritime trade after the Second Punic war
- La mer et l'approvisionnement de la ville de Rome
- The Roman Empire and the seas
- Les techniques de pêche dans l'Antiquité
- The consumption of salted fish in the Roman Empire
- Taxing the sea
- Les détroits méditerranéens dans la construction de l'image de la mer Intérieure dans l'Antiquité
- Ancient sea routes in the Black Sea
- Maritime risk and ritual responses: sailing with the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean
- La mer, vecteur d'expansion du christianisme au Ier siècle
- Maritime military practices in the pre-Phoenician Levant
- La naissance des flottes en Egée
- The Athenian maritime empire of the fifth century BC
- Financial, human, material and economic resources required to build and operate navies in the classical Greek world
- Les expéditions athéniennes en Sicile, ou la difficulté pour une marine de garder sa supériorité
- Pourquoi Alexandre le Grand a-t-il choisi de licencier sa flotte à Milet?
- Hellenistic and Roman republican naval warfare technology
- La marine de guerre romaine de 284 à 363
- Rome and the Vandals
- HISTORICAL CASE STUDIES: The Indian Ocean and the Far East
- Conclusion (français)
- Conclusion (English)
- Conclusion générale par Christian Buchet
- General conclusion
- Comprendre le rôle de la mer dans L'histoire pour éclairer notre avenir
- Understanding the role the sea has played in our past in order to shed light on our future!
Summary
ABSTRACT.This contribution focuses on the sea as a source of substantial income for ancient states of the Mediterranean through taxation. It reviews its forms, and balances the sea as a source of corruption by the alien with the amounts earned by the States in taxing the sea, and shows that for that reason, connectivity eventually wins. It also points out how little was the perception the Ancient had of economic growth with respect to the immediateness of fiscal income.
RÉSUMÉ.Cette contribution s'intéresse à l'utilisation de la mer comme source de revenu conséquent via sa taxation par les anciens états de la Méditerranée. Elle examine les formes d'imposition et évalue la mer en tant que source de corruption venu de l'étranger contre le montant du revenu sous forme d'impôts, et démontre qu'en fin de compte la connectivité finit par gagner. Elle souligne également le peu de perception qu'avaient les peuples de l'Antiquité quant à l'apport direct des revenus fiscaux sur la croissance économique.
INTRODUCTION: ‘FRUITFUL FOR EVERYONE?’ (PLINY, LETTERS 10, 41)
Why should the Océanides project include a chapter on ‘taxing the sea’? Especially one which centres on the Mediterranean, and draws most of its material from the ancient Greek and Roman world? All tax regimes vividly evoke how societies picture their world, reflecting and creating priorities and patterns. The tax systems of the Greeks and Romans and their neighbours had an extraordinarily emphatic place for the sea. That derived from, and speaks eloquently of, the role which the sea, and above all the sea which they saw as ‘their own sea’ (which we call the Mediterranean), had in the fabric of social, economic, cultural and political life. Trade, sea-warfare, communications, all speak directly of how basic the sea was to the consistency of ancient societies, but the theme of exactions levied on movements by sea – which intersect with all three of those domains – expresses that centrality more completely and clearly.
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- Information
- The Sea in History - The Ancient World , pp. 319 - 334Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2017