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MICHAEL jURSA

The state’s contribution was arguably crucial for creating and sustaining
' this dynamic economy. The Neo-Babylonian empire, and later the Persian
empire, mostly managed to maintain peace in the land, the decisive predomdi:
tion for the economic development of the long sixth century. Second, large-

scale state-sponsored building projects aiming at land reclamation and ameli- ’


'
oration transformed parts of the rural landscape. Royal land allotment-

schemes of the seventh and early sixth centuries gave the initial impetus for
the reclamation of the barren or underused land around the cities after
decades of war and unrest. The Crown shaped the institutional. administra-
tive, and technical foundations of Nee-Babylonian agriculture. It promoted
commercial development by furthering entrepreneurial activities at the inter-
face between the institutional and the private economy. It also interfered with
the monetary system, by introducing various means for safeguarding the
quality of silver (and by attempting to set fixed interest rates). Next to their
investments in the agrarian infrastructure, the most important contribution of
the Neo-Babylonian kings to the economic expansion during their reign
consisted in their extravagant building activities. The huge new temples,
palaces, city walls, and cross-country defense structures were financed to a
large degree with tribute and booty from Assyria, Syria, and the Levant. These
building undertakings brought large amounts of bullion into circulation and
temporarily allowed many urban unskilled laborers to subsist largely on
money wages because they could find employment for much of the year.
Imperial domination is thus at the root of the inflationary process that caused
the value of silver to fall to about a third of what it had been in the second
millennium BCE, allowing silver to function as an all-purpose money for the
first time in Mesopotamian history. Furthermore, royal demands for (cash)
taxes and for labor and military service contributed to the increasing mone-
tization of economic exchange: willingly or unwillingly, taxpayers were forced
into the monetary economy. -

in conclusion, the narrative that results from the reading of the evidence
that is proposed here is that of a limited Smithian success story, as
occasionally
occurs also in other pre—modern economies. The interest of this case lies in its
early date and in its particularities, in the combination of longue-durée
factors of
demography and climate with certain much more transient elements of
l'histoire conjoncturellr and événementielle, to use the Braudelian terms. In
particular, it was imperial domination that fiirthered agrarian development
and the monetization of exchange that led to economic growth and increased
prosperity. Correspondingly, it was also through political change, as an
indirect consequence of the conquest of Babylonia by the Persians (539 ace),

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Babylonia in the first millennium BC}!

that the particularly prosperous long sixth century came to an end; the

country's prosperity was harnessed by a new ruling class in a way that


eventually undermined its foundations. -

In the later fifth century and thereafter, after an unsuccessful rebellion


jagamst Persian rule, the fortunes of the traditional Babylonian urban elites
who had been the principal agents of the economic expansion of the preceding
period declined. Their economic interests were no longer served by state
politics as they had been under the Neo-Babylonian empire and, by institu-
tional inertia, in the first decades of Persian rule. The expansion of large—
scale
land ownership of Persian nobles and Babylonian supporters of Persian rule
introduced into the Babylonian socio—economic system a class of agents who
depended for their prosperity on their use of political power rather than on
commerce and agricultural business founded on a stable legal system and
generally recognized property rights. The new elites had more power to
compel labor than the Babylonian urban upper classes in the sixth century,
and there may have been a tendency to extract from the province as much of
the available resources as possible. Wage levels fell, and, if the sketchy data
that are available have been read correctly, prosperity levels seem to have
stagnated, if not declined. In the longue durée, the process of agrarian change
and expansion that was initiated in the long sixth century continued in later
centuries and laid the basis for the exceptional prosperity of Iraq in the early

. Islamic period. The development was not linear, however. The exceptional

economic expansion of the sixth century had been created by a fortuitous


combination of long-term economic and climatic background conditions and
much more short~livcd political factors. With the disappearance of the latter
this short-lived Malthusian singularity came to an end.

References

Adams, IL McC. (1981). Headland ofCilies: Survey: ofAncicnt Settlement and Land
Use on the
Central floodplain on the Euphrates. University of Chicago Press.

Andreau, J. et al., eds. (1997). Economic antique. Prix at fornication dc: pn’x
dam les tconomies
antiques. Entretiens d’archéologie et d'histoire 3. Saint-Bertrand-de~Comminges:
Musée Ardiéologique DEpartemental.

Attinger. P., W. Sallaberger. and M. VVafler (2.004). Anndhenmgm 4, Mesopotamian.


Di:
althabylonischc Zeit. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160 I4. Frlbourg and
Gottingen:
Academic Press/Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Baker, H. D. and M._lursa, eds. (2005). Approaching tlm Babylonian Economy:


Proceedings afthe
START Project Symposium Held in Vienna, 1—3 July 2004. AOAT 330. Munster:
Ugarit-
Verlag.

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