Book Review: The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean

The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: the ancient world economy & the kingdoms of Africa, Arabia, & India, by Raoul McLaughlin. 4.5 out of 5 stars. There are some bits that are repeated between chapters on different kingdoms when the author hits information that applied to more than one area, with no in-text mention of “as seen in Chapter X”. So if you don’t recognize the name or place from a couple chapters back, you might miss the connection. And you have to make connections to see the big picture, because there is an incredible amount of information in this book. Ranging from about 100 BC to about 200 AD, the author uses modern archaeology and sources of the time to cover the extent of Rome’s trade with everything south and east of the Mediterranean. (The bibliography is 3.5 pages of very tiny print.)

A couple of odd interesting points I came away with. First, by any sane economic standards, Rome should have left Britain out of the Empire. Given they financed the imperial government largely by taxes on goods coming across the border from outside the Empire, they would have made more money if Britain was a foreign nation. On top of that the occupied territory was a money sink, providing enough taxes for three legions when it took over four to keep it pacified.

Second, if what you’re trading for is a renewable resources – incense, pearls, silk, etc. – what you’re trading back darn well better be something you can replenish as well. Trading gold and silver for anything else will not work, long term, if the precious metals never come back. (Caches of Roman coins in India, peppercorns in Arabia, and splinters of ivory in Roman warehouses are just some of the contributions archaeology made to this book.)

Third, the tighter a network of trade pulls nations together, the more likely the whole system is to collapse like a house of cards when an unforeseen catastrophe occurs. Long term drought, as seen in 1177 BC: the year civilization collapsed. The Antonine Pandemic in this book, circa 160 AD-189 AD and later. Measles, smallpox, some unholy combination of both; whatever it was, it killed about three out of ten people everywhere from the Han Chinese army to Roman miners in Britain. Many of those who survived were seriously injured; blind, halt, lame, and/or deaf. The resulting collapse may have been worse for average Roman citizens given Rome’s dependence on merchant shipping bringing in grain as well as luxuries from Egypt and beyond, but the Han regime collapsed as well.

Fourth, despite all this, relatively free markets let the Roman Empire exist longer and work more cheaply than the later bureaucratic mess they had to establish to collect taxes directly from citizens. Swarms of merchants after individual profits are much more efficient than top-down one-size-fits-all bureaucratic regulation. A lesson I wish our own government would learn.

Some of the interesting odd tidbits in this book: Buddhist Romans. This was not a thing I was aware had existed.

The human tendency toward graffiti has left interesting archaeological evidence all over the place, including ship designs in Pompeii and international spice shipping across the Eastern Desert of Egypt to Red Sea ports.

The Roman Empire may have had some clue about scurvy on long eastern sea voyages. One pharmakoi (medicine) consignment that kept showing up was jars of quince-flavored honey, that would have been high in Vitamin C.

If you want to write a historical fiction set in ancient Rome with characters from Somalis to Tibetans, yes, they could have been there. Probably as slaves, but there. OTOH if you want to write Romans in India, they were there, too; sometimes as slaves, often as merchants, or mercenaries!

All in all, a fascinating book. I got it to get a picture of how worldwide Iron Age trade might work, and it did not disappoint. So if you’re writing in a similar setting (like, say, the Magi fandom), and you really want to get into the economic nuts and bolts, check it out. And there’s a sequel on the Silk Road!

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