Download PDF | (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman studies) Alex M. Feldman - Orthodox mercantilism_ political economy in the Byzantine commonwealth-Routledge (2024).
306 Pages
Orthodox Mercantilism
This book demonstrates how the political economy of mercantilism was not simply a Western invention by various cities and kingdoms during the Renaissance, but was the natural by‑product of perpetually limited growth rates and rulers’ relent‑ less pursuits of bullion. It contributes to discussions of the economic history sur‑ rounding the so‑called “Great Divergence” between East and West, which would consequently lend context and credence to differences of economic thought in the world today. Additionally, it seeks to explain present economic thought as tacitly derived from implicit antique paradigms. This book advances fields of research from numismatics and sigillography to historical materialism and historical politi‑ cal economy.
Divided into three parts, Orthodox Mercantilism first examines the political the‑ ology (the sovereignty) of the œcumene from the early 11th century. Second, it analyzes its peripheral legislation from the customary laws of newly Christianized dynasties up to the Kormčaja Kniga’s adoption (the Nomokanon) by 13th‑century Orthodox dynasties across Eastern Europe. Third, it explores how these dynasties (and their own satellite dynasties) hoarded finite bullion to pay for defense, re‑ sulting in the 11–14th‑century coinless period across Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. Appealing to students and scholars alike, this book will be of interest to those studying and researching economic and mercantile history, particularly in the con‑ text of Byzantine and Eastern European societies.
Alex M. Feldman is the chair of the department of languages and literature at CIS‑Endicott International University of Madrid. He received a BA from Roger Williams University of Rhode Island and received an MRes and PhD from the University of Birmingham. He has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Univer‑ sity of London’s Warburg Institute and has taught at the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey, the State University of New York, Rockland and the University of Birmingham.
Preface and Acknowledgments
If money grew on trees, it would be worth no more than leaves – and words would sprout like weeds. Sometime in the early 1910s, some soldiers purchased a bill of goods from a local beekeeper and distiller named Efraim Ukopnik in the Pale of Settlement for some coins – one of which was a Russian imperial gold coin worth five rubles. One’s gain was another’s loss. Following his father’s murder in a cossack‑led pogrom, it was sewn into his coat and the coats of millions like him as they were expelled or emigrated from the Russian empire and left their ancestral homes for ports like Odessa, Riga and Antwerp to cross the sea for new lives in America. Once in America at the outset of the 1920s, where Efraim Uko‑ pnik changed his name to Fredrick Kaufman, married his wife (also an immigrant) Adele and raised a family, these coins and the stories and lessons attached to them were passed down to their children (my grandparents) in New York and Pennsylva‑ nia. In the 1930s, as my grandparents fought for economic justice in the streets of New York (the Feldman‑Kaufman side) and Pennsylvania (the Mesibov‑Charney side) and depicted the struggles of impoverished workers in words on paper and brushstrokes on canvas, they set the tone their posterity would follow.
Their strug‑ gles against the tyranny of privilege, inequality and greed stretched from the fight against robber barons and gold standards in the factories of New York and New Jersey to the fight against fascists and imperialists in the shipyards of Pennsylvania and the opera halls of Marshall‑planned post‑war Europe. The ideas in this book were first seeded in these early family lessons and stories about the stark nature of economic history exemplified by the five‑ruble coin. Then, following 2008’s Big Short in 2011, they germinated in a new chapter of the same old story when I lived in Greece, witnessing firsthand the turmoil caused by uncon‑ trolled speculative financial markets, and took my first classes in labor history and Byzantine history respectively at Roger Williams University of Rhode Island and Arcadia University’s Athens Center for Greek, Balkan and Mediterranean Studies. Many thanks go to Professor Stavros Oikonomides who combined both topics into one single story that stretched from remote antiquity through 12 centuries of Byz‑ antine history and has continued right up to the present.
Then, in 2012, the germination sprouted when I met Archie Dunn at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies (CBOMGS) of the University of Birmingham and took his class on the economic history of Byzantium. Archie has become a long‑time supervisor, mentor and dear friend whose ideas about economic history have guided my own – monumental thanks go to Archie for his suggestions, patience, edits, references and the so many other ways he has offered his utmost sup‑ port. Genuine thanks also go to Mike Berry of the University of Birmingham’s Cen‑ tre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, who proofread rivers of translations of Russian scholarship, much of which has been crucial for this book. Sincere thanks also go to my adviser, guide and the social glue who held together all of CBOMGS, Ruth Macrides, who steadfastly prodded me toward better expression in English and better reading in Greek, and who was continually patient through countless drafts of many articles with “Teutonic” footnotes. When she sadly passed away in 2019, CBOMGS was devastated – we (and myself personally) will always feel her loss! This book stems from the sixth chapter of my doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham. Over the course of six years, the sprout grew into a sapling and it was nearly a thesis‑within‑a‑thesis when it was submitted in 2018.
At that point, John Haldon and Paul Stephenson, two seasoned veterans in the cultivation of history, read through an original PhD thesis which went to over 600 pages. Special thanks go to John and Paul, without whose suggestions and advocacy, this book would not be in your hands. This book has also osmotically absorbed elements of the previous master’s thesis as well as separate bits of other articles and research projects, which owe much to the economic research of the renowned Ukrainian Byzantinist, Sergei Soročan. For this reason, it is a kind of outgrowth of the previous book based on the first five chapters of the doctoral thesis, The Monotheisation of Pontic‑Caspian Eurasia; however, there are specific differences between this book and the previous one.
In Monotheisation, the extent of the use of numismatic evidence to analyze political economy amounted to the simple observation that all rulers have always implemented economic and monetary policies to maximize gain (bullionism) and minimize loss (protectionism), which “effectively amounted to early versions of the political economy of mercantil‑ ism.” But it didn’t branch out from this zero‑sum logic much further. Fortunately in this regard, the personal input of several colleagues in particular has been fundamentally granular for this book: Marek Jankowiak, Jonathan Jarrett, Maria Vrij, Dionysios Stathakopoulos, Francisco López‑Santos Kornberger, Yan‑ nis Stamos, Fernando Dameto Zaforteza, Valerio D’Angelo, Anthony Verrecchio and Gabriel Ferrer. Marek’s and Jonathan’s numismatic advice and analyses have been vital regarding comparative coinage and the movement of precious metals through 9th–13th‑century Pontic‑Caspian Eurasia. Maria, aside from facilitating many long hours in the UoB Barber coin study room, has generously provided the much‑needed guidance on 6th–8th‑century Byzantine coinage.
Dionysios has been a staunch advocate with a strong sense of justice throughout the odyssey of cultivat‑ ing history ever since we first met in 2016. Francisco López‑Santos Kornberger and Yannis Stamos, friends and co‑historians in the Brummie “diaspora” ever since our first pints at the University of Birmingham’s Bratby Bar in 2014, have offered vital ideas and research in our joint efforts and overlapping projects reflected in this book. Finally, ever since I came to Madrid’s CIS University in 2022, I have been delighted to be teaching alongside Fernando, Valerio, Anthony and Gabriel; Fernando’s work on 16th–19th‑century Hispanic mercantilism has been critical in our own joint ef‑ forts and is reflected in this book as well as Valerio’s research on political science, Anthony’s advocacy for human rights and Gabriel’s professional eye for design. Friends and colleagues from everywhere, many of them long‑time experts in the process of cultivating economic history – from the United States, Britain, Ger‑ many, North Macedonia, Croatia, Greece, Ukraine, the Russian Federation and everywhere in between – must be thanked for their personal communications and suggestions.
This includes (but is by no means limited to) Peter Rogers, Mitko Panov, Hrvoje Gračanin, Günter Prinzing, Christian Raffensperger, Jonathan Shep‑ ard, Florin Curta, Peter Golden, Robin Miller‑Gulland, Anthony Kaldellis, Dan Davis, Andrej Opaiţ, Vjačeslav Kulešov, Georg Christ, Adelina Angusheva‑Tih‑ anov and Vera Tolz‑Zilitinkevich. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the eternal support, in‑ spiration and encouragement (even from afar) of my parents, Deborah Mesibov and Richard Feldman, my grandparents, Eudice and Hugh Mesibov; Annette and Abraham Feldman and the rest of the Mesibov and Feldman clans – my whole fam‑ ily. Lifelong friends have also shown strong encouragement and support every step of the way: Thomas, Warren, Corey, Michael, Jared, Jonathan, Maria and Jill. And for all her patience, strength, support and faith, I thank my partner and companion, Pilar Hernández Mateos – y toda la familia de Hernández y Mateos: Pili, Juanjo y Jesús. Saludos grandes desde la página! The cultivation of family and friendship is worth far more than gold – love is never a finite resource. Economics must always serve humanity (people over profit, human‑ ism over economism) rather than vice versa.
This has been the root lesson of the Russian ruble and it’s as true when it was minted in 1898 as it is today, once again in a period of corruption, privilege, inequality, speculation, rent‑seeking, accumulation by dispossession and war. Furthermore, the coin teaches us that economic history is a laborious pursuit – to reap and to sow. It requires long‑term, structural fertilization; its seed supply in the past is tantamount to its harvest demand in the future. Yet I am certain the era is reapproaching when the discipline of economic history, and of the social sciences generally, returns to its rightful place,1 not among the last groves of a scorched landscape, burned in a forest fire of short‑term profit and long‑term igno‑ rance, but among the giant sequoias of learning astride civilizations they’ve always been, where humans can once again climb, trying to peer out from ever greater heights.
Alex Mesibov Feldman
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