The Friday 21 Sept Global Asia Colloquium
KJCC 701 (53 Washington Square South) 
4:00-6:45
with wine and cheese

features two presentations on the Global Asia connectivity of ancient Greece  and Rome

Andrew Monson, “Alexander’s Tributary Empire.”  (Full paper at Google Drive link)

and

Norman Underwood, “The Spice of Life: Buying Indian Pepper and Other Eastern Goods in Roman Egypt.”

Abstract:

Over the course of the first five centuries of the first millennium, the Roman Empire developed complex maritime trade connections across the Indian Ocean. Through these connections Romans imported hundreds of thousands of tons of “Eastern” goods such as Indian pepper and cinnamon. Indeed, as the presentation will explore, the scale of importation was sufficient enough for Indian-Ocean spices and aromatics to become staples of consumption among Roman elites and non-elites. As revealed by Egyptian papyrus documents and other material evidence, these patterns of Indo-Roman exchange and consumption endured well into the sixth century CE. This consistent bulk importation of Eastern goods was not, however,  solely the product of market forces and private entrepreneurship. Rather, as I will argue, the transportation and financial underpinnings of Indo-Roman trade were very much facilitated and subsidized by the Roman state, which sought to maintain the availability and relative affordability of Indian imports. From public spice monopolies, maritime insurance systems, to state-backed loans and military escorts of trade caravans, the Roman state served as a crucial actor in the economic network that linked the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. In this way, I hope to recast the history of the Incense / Spice Route less as a narrative about the movement of items over space and more as a narrative of social systems.