Posted on 08/14/2021 7:59:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Federico De Romanis, "Comparative Perspectives on the Pepper Trade." ...compares quantitative data and other accounts of the pepper trade in Roman and Early Modern times and finds many broad similarities. Through his reading of both Roman and Early Modern European sources, De Romanis establishes that the Romans must have used both large and small ships carrying a very high proportion of pepper in their cargoes on the voyage from India. On the basis of recent readings of the Muziris papyrus, he argues that the Hermapollon, a large Roman ship, carried about 620 tons of pepper. De Romanis also considers the impact of the pepper trade on the lands where it was produced; he argues against the household production of pepper in the hinterland of the Western Ghats in favor of large-scale production there, which transformed agriculture within Malabar into a plantation system.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu ...
Adding to my reading list
So the Romans are responsible for the plantation system?
Or is it the greedy Indians in Malabar?
Wow, history is hard! We should stop studying and just get our reparations from the evil we know.
Thanks for the ping!
Dutch East Indies Company ship Batavia. 186 feet long with 34 foot beam...carrying 341 people.
Oops, my bad... 620 tons pepper cargo IS mentioned..
darn droid scrolling
The Age of Sail came about during the age of gunpowder, and (supposedly) the Romans only used square sails and couldn’t tack. Both would save weight relative to our more recent and familiar sailing vessels.
During Caligula’s reign (Gaius was 3rd in the usual list of Emperors), a 300+ ton obelisk was brought by sea from Egypt, in one piece, in a ship custom made for the project. Even the Romans were impressed by this ship, and they were used to seeing large grain-haulers and whatnot. It was moored in the river and became a tourist attraction.
:^)
I’ve read this book. It’s quite good. It really opened up my eyes to the idea of the Roman World being much bigger then just the Mediterranean.
It’s right here, I’ve actually been reading more, which is a small part of the explanation for my spending less time on FR. :^) Looks like my having bought the last softbound copy when I did was a good idea!
Droids are the worst, should be called hemorrdroids.
Holy crap, the De Romanis title is over $100 as a kindle title!
Okay, looks like the publisher in the UK still ships it, reasonable price.
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Roman-Empire-and-the-Indian-Ocean-Paperback/p/14733
Using the Batavia 650 cargo tonnage vs 1200 ton displacement ratio that Roman 300+ ton Obelisk ship would have had a 600+ ton displacement. Impressive for the times.
Of course that doesn’t taken into account the gross weight of all the rats on board....which leads to question y.pestis plague outbreaks, were there any contemporaneous reports of such?
Shh. Don’t everyone look at the same time, but the book reviewed is available as a PDF.
https://www.academia.edu/11292779/Across_the_Ocean_Nine_Essays_on_Indo_Mediterranean_Trade
Across the Ocean: Nine Essays on Indo-Mediterranean Trade. Columbia studies in the classical tradition, 41
Federico De Romanis, Marco Maiuro, Across the Ocean: Nine Essays on Indo-Mediterranean Trade. Columbia studies in the classical tradition, 41. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2015. vi, 204. ISBN 9789004289192 $128.00.
Review by
Pierre Schneider, Université d’Artois; Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée.
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2016/2016.02.27/
My pleasure.
Ok then I’ll want for the movie ! :)
There’s no DNA evidence for yersenia pestis, which differs from the various European outbreaks since the Middle Ages. A smallpox outbreak may have been a factor in the Crisis of the Third Century. Earlier, during the Spartan siege of Athens, typhus apparently carried away a big chunk of the Athenian population.
Hauling a 300+ (hmm, sez here 350+) obelisk would indeed require a larger displacement for the freeboard. Same goes for their grain haulers. From the descriptions that survive for their Indian trade, those ships may have been enormous, larger than the Med ships, which had to ply a lot of small ports.
Lionel Casson cites a Roman-era grain ship which due to foul weather had to ride it out in the Piraeus of Athens. It was not a place that saw such ships by that time (and Hellenistic vessels of any size would have been military rather than commercial), and everyone in town came by to gawk. Casson writes that the grain haulers were really only practical at large ports, like Alexandria (Egypt was the source of much of Rome’s grain supply), Rhodes, Athens, and Rome.
In general, Roman-era vessels pushed the envelope for size, and exceeded what has in more recent centuries been considered the practical limits for wood vessels.
The ships of the yavanas referred to in Tamil literature do not (as the ancient astronaut astronuts claim) refer to UFOs, but to the Greeks’ and Romans’ vast ships, which were a spectacle each time they arrived, and due to the reliance on the monsoon winds, they arrived in great numbers during a relatively short window of time.
There’s a Roman mosaic showing an orangutan, which is from much further east, and a Han court reference to the arrival of a Roman trader from the time of Marcus Aurelius.
It’s no surprise that one classical scholar referred to the simultaneous heyday of the Roman, Satavahanan, and Han empires as the happiest period of human history.
Want for the movie? *Wait* for the movie. Who do you think you are, SunkenCiv?!? ;^)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3985128/posts?page=15#15
And LOL!
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