The title of R.'s stimulating book, Italy's Economic Revolution, is actively in dialogue with that of P. Kay's Rome's Economic Revolution (2014). While Kay focuses on the activities of Roman Republican elites, R. turns her gaze to the Italians, emphasising not only the economic prosperity of many Italian communities in the years following Roman conquest, but also their agency. Italians were not simply victims of Roman conquest, nor were they passive recipients of a supposedly Roman culture. Rather, Italians considered themselves the equals of the Romans. They negotiated their place within the Roman hegemony and contributed much to the cultural change experienced within the Italian Peninsula from the fourth century bce onwards. R. explores in particular the relationship between economic activities and the process of wider civic, legal, social and cultural integration within Italy. In doing so, she also engages with ever-present debates about the process of ‘Romanisation’. New Institutional Economics are central to her methodology; throughout the book she considers the different ways in which the expansion of the Roman state and the subsequent extension of Roman institutions across Italy reduced transaction costs and encouraged economic growth and prosperity, albeit not in a uniform manner across the peninsula.
Following an opening chapter setting out the book's overall thesis and methodology, R. goes on to consider all the possible points of contact between Romans and Italians, arguing that, while interaction does not necessarily mean integration, it is likely that one will eventually lead to the other. Points of contact explored include the setting up of colonies, the widespread mobility of people, and interaction of both a religious and an economic nature at temples and sanctuaries, as well as contact at fairs and markets, during military service, and more social interaction, such as marriage alliances and patronage. R. concludes that social and economic interactions were ubiquitous, stimulating integration, especially at the elite level, but also lower down the social scale.
Chapter 3 turns to economic integration, contending that Italy in the third to the first centuries bce experienced an economic revolution. Here we see Italian traders around the western and eastern Mediterranean, profiting from the favourable conditions created for trade by the Romans, including a reduction in piracy and the opening up of new areas and new markets as well as the expansion of military and legal protections for Italian traders. In this way the Romans created the conditions for economic prosperity in Italy, even if they largely left the Italians alone to exploit these new opportunities. R. presents clear evidence for the involvement of Italians in the export market in wine and olive oil, as well as pottery, and to a much lesser extent in the supply of Rome, which was an internal market for central Italy in particular. This points to the diversity of economic experiences within Italy, which is explored further in a series of microstudies of Italian regions.
In the following chapter R. considers whether increased interaction between Romans and Italians led to institutional and cultural change, focusing initially on institutions such as law, local government, coinage, and weights and measures. She argues that the Romans had little interest in imposing institutional change on Italy, but that Italians gradually adopted Roman systems over the course of the third century bce for largely practical reasons. She emphasises the agency of Italians in this decision-making process, in which communities must have decided that the benefits of adopting Roman institutions and the consequent reduction in transaction costs outweighed the disadvantages of losing certain aspects of their local identity. Again, the pace of change was not uniform across Italy. Furthermore, Roman weights and measures were much slower to be adopted. It is unlikely that changes in weights and measures were more central to local identity than, say, coinage and therefore faced particular resistance; more probable is that they simply had less of a practical impact on transaction costs, and so local practices were maintained for longer. In this chapter R. also discusses the public building boom of second-century bce Italy and its relationship to cultural change, articulating clearly the methodological issue of identifying the spread of a ‘Roman’ culture. Architectural and cultural developments such as the atrium and peristyle house, theatres or urban grid systems that are typically seen as ‘Roman’ in later periods were part of a Hellenistic culture that was being adopted across Italy at this time. This is the Hellenisation of Italy rather than its Romanisation. She does note, however, that Rome could be seen as the facilitator of this change, which was at least in part financed by the wealth gathered by the Italian elite through the favourable economic conditions created by Rome. This detailed chapter ends with a consideration of language change, which is similarly presented as organic and gradual, and a discussion of the concept of Italia and the development of a collective Italian identity. R. argues that before the Roman hegemony there was no concept of an Italian identity as such, but that Italians abroad now often acted as a unified group. Moreover, outside of Italy people either simply could not tell the difference between Italians and Romans or did not care if they could, slaughtering both in times of tension.
This collective Italian identity was well established by the time of the Social War, which saw Italians rebel against Rome. In the final significant chapter of the book R. revisits the debate over the causes of this war, in which Italia became a rallying cry. She argues that the grant of Roman citizenship to the Italians that followed the Social War was not the end point of integration but rather the starting point, allowing Italians to participate in Roman politics but also to express local or regional pride at the same time. Italy at this point was still diverse, and the cultural uniformity that we see later was more a product of the Augustan period than of the first century bce. A concluding chapter sums up the argument of the book, noting that, while many of the issues raised have been discussed before, they have not been considered in the light of Italian economic activity and its importance for the gradual social, political and cultural integration of the Italian Peninsula.
While oddly not mentioned or referred to in the book, the publisher's website hosts an excellent and useful interactive distribution map of Romans and Italians in the Republican period that deserves much more signposting in the book and more publicity from the press (https://global.oup.com/booksites/content/9780198829447/). As the manual states, the map will assist with prosopographical research relating to the Roman Republic, but also illuminates migratory movements and patterns of Italians overseas. This important new resource is a significant achievement in itself, as is the closely argued and well-researched book that it accompanies. The move away from the typical Romano-centric perspective is to be welcomed, as is the focus not only on the agency of the Italians (albeit if at times the positivity might be a little overplayed), but also on their economic prosperity. Rome did not impose its institutions on Italy, but the Italians recognised the economic benefits of adopting Roman coinage, legal systems and (in the context of trade at least) the Latin language. They were perfectly willing to exploit the economic opportunities created by Rome across the eastern and western Mediterranean, and to reinvest the profits locally. As the now well-worn adage goes, ‘it's the economy, stupid’.
