The Economics of Food Production on Roman Imperial Estates in North Africa.

Abstract

One of the difficulties that the Roman empire faced was to adapt the resources of its provinces to the interests of the empire. While Rome incorporated North African institutions into its administrative apparatus, it is not clear how much of an impact "romanization" had on the North African economy. A series of inscriptions from the middle Bagradas valley in northern Tunisia, one of North Africa's most fertile areas, was discovered around the turn of the last century. These inscriptions came from estates belonging to the emperor, and contain regulations concerning the management of these estates in the second century AD. The inscriptions reveal a system of agriculture under which sharecroppers, coloni, farmed l and on the imperial estates under perpetual leasehold and paid their rent to middlemen called conductores. The revenues that the estates provided the government are significant because North Africa produced possibly two thirds of the grain consumed at Rome. Thus the information that the inscriptions provide offers an opportunity to study how the Roman imperial government sought to exploit the l and resources in one of its most fertile provinces. The purpose of this dissertation is to formulate an economic model for the production of food on these imperial estates. In formulating this model, I examine the economic relationships that existed between the coloni, the conductores and the imperial government and analyze the economic purposes and effects of the regulations that the inscriptions present. I also take full account of the most important factors that affected the interests and prosperity of these groups, such as the relative population density of the North African countryside, the relative abundance of l and , and the economic significance of sharecropping as a form of l and tenure. One of my conclusions is that the coloni, instead of forming a peasant labor force, as has been argued, were independent farmers who could exercise economic leverage against the government.