Deconstructing the Discourses of Roman Imperialism

The reputation of the Roman Empire has proved peculiarly resilient to postcolonial revisionist views. It is still widely regarded as the paradigmatic empire of all ages and nostalgically revered as the cornerstone of Western civilization. Its more negative impacts are widely ignored or excused. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this historical reception of Roman imperialism is that it is out of step with the debate about other imperial societies. Even an archapologist for the British Empire like Niall Ferguson has to acknowledge a substantial body of historical writing that points out the faults and failings of imperialism in general and the British Empire in particular.

Thus, while studies of modern empires now start with the acceptance that a postcolonial critique of imperialism and its impacts must be either embraced or countered, Roman studies seems to lag far behind. Indeed, many of the key research agendas relating to the Roman Empire appear to be relatively unchanged from those set in place more than a century ago, and any challenge to the cozy consensus view of a largely beneficent empire is liable to be met with skepticism or outright hostility. Why does classical studies persistently emphasize the benefits and cultural achievements of Roman civilization and ignore the negative aspects of colonialism in antiquity? Why dowe persist with an analytical framework based on outmoded attitudes about empire?

From Thomas Arnold, Jacob Henry Brooke Mountain, and J. B. Ottley, The History of the Roman Empire: From the Time of Julius Caesar to that of Vitellius (London, 1853).

Some classicists and some modern historians have objected that it is not legitimate to compare the Roman Empire with later (or earlier) manifestations of imperialism. Opinion is divided, and many differences between Roman imperialism and modern capitalist empires have been pointed out. But I have no problem with using terms like "empire," "imperialism," "colonialism," and "colonization" in relation to the Roman state as long as proper definitions are offered. To do otherwise is to deny an intrinsic quality of the Roman Empire at its height—its overwhelmingly greater scale and complexity when compared with its constituent parts or virtually all its neighbors and other states of the ancient world. Factors that set the Roman state apart include overall territorial extent, reach beyond its frontiers, size of population, armies (both for scale and organization), communications and the infrastructure of power, urban networks, economic structures and the scale of interregional trade, the scale of exploitation of natural resources, consumption patterns, and the extraordinary opportunities for wealth, luxury, and power available to leading elites. In the end, the size, structures, and pathways of power in the Roman Empire (and the problems of maintaining these) have much in common with other imperial regimes across a broad diachronic span.

Amajor objection to comparing the Roman Empire with modern European empires has been the lack of economic drivers for the former in comparison with the capitalistic tendencies of modern colonialism. However, it can be argued that there was an economic bottom line for the Roman imperial government. The huge cost in preindustrial terms of its army and administration influenced decisions relating both to conquest and how to use conquered lands and natural resources. In this, Rome follows quite closely the behavior of other imperial powers, where short-term deflections caused by ad hoc measures and personal vainglory are counterbalanced to some extent by long-term mechanisms to exploit systematically the territory, resources, and people incorporated. In the Roman Empire these mechanisms were the census, tax systems, land survey and redistribution, and impressive supply systems. I characterize these elements as the components of an "imperial economy" that operated alongside other cycles of global and local economic activity.

One problem with many modern attempts to model Roman imperialism is the implicit assumption that this was somehow a static and once-and-for-all phenomenon, with one set of motivations and an unvarying ethos. On the contrary, I argue that it was a dynamic and multifaceted entity, which changed radically over time. The Roman case resembles several modern models of empire and colonialism in that...