The Occupation Economy

Roman Britain Unit 10`
Who, if anyone, benefits -- Economic exploitation

Roman Britain was characterized by economic exploitation with the Romans extracting vast amounts of natural resources like wood, wool, timber, tin, gold, iron, lead, and silver for the Roman Empire's benefit alongside imposing heavy taxation and using forced labor, including slavery, of local populations.

This process involved creating industrial infrastructure, such as mining operations and a road network to efficiently transport raw material resources and finished goods and agricultural end products (grains and produce) to markets in Britain and to ports for transshipment to continental Europe. Introduction of new methods and technologies ultimately displaced native populations and eroded traditional economic patterns.

Efficient extraction of fuels, i.e., coal and wood, was developed to benefit reduction of ores into usable metals and alloys and metal finished products for sale to private consumers and, often predominantly, to the Roman occupation military units, the latter being a major and privileged consumer.

Food supplies for the Roman occupiers of Britain and for export for Roman continental military units also required more efficient production and exploitation of Celtic labor. Supplying wood for building urbs in Britain and on the continent (part of Rome's "civilizing mission") deforested some sections on the land but it is obvious that the process had already been started before the Roman arrival as iron age Celtic farmers were clear cutting to open more land for farming and grazing.

Labor:
The efficient exploitation of labor has always been important to occupying armies, particularly when the ideology of the occupying country included the belief that it was starting with a vacant area that needed improvement that might bring it up to the standard of the occupying power.

Legions were often considered to be builders of infrastructure, but in practice the legions often were supervisors or overseers, and the local population literally did the heavy lifting, like the moving and emplacing heavy building stones and timbers. When, perhaps as punishment, legionaries were ordered to actually do the hard work, it was considered a maximum degradation, it attracted ridicule and could permanently disgrace a military unit.

Slave labor or corvee labor was often used. And Roman technical innovations did not necessarily lower the number of laborers needed. Rather, an innovation would be seen as a way of increasing production, and expanding production might cause administrators to demand an even larger work force to open new or to enlarge existing production facilities, to clear more forests to provide more farm or pasture land, to deepen or to open new mines.

On the other hand, innovations could make individual slaves more valuable. The empire's rapid 1st and 2nd century AD expansion brought in so many slaves that the value of individual minimally trained slaves like miners and field hands plummeted to the point where feeding them might cost more than replacing them. But if you had trained them, for example, on how to operate and maintain equipment needed for hydraulic mining, then individual slaves had added value and maintaining their health and welfare became desirable.

(An extreme example of the same way of thinking is the way the US military thinks of its airplanes and pilots. They always tell pilots, in unmanageable emergency situations, to save themselves and dump the 50 million dollar plane: replacing a trained pilot costs more than replacing the plane.)

When utilizing raw materials or anywhere along the route to their becoming finished products as commodities (and that included untrained and trained labor), any type of exploitation that the military occupation itself might conceive, or that might be the conception of a civilian entrepreneurial accomplice or supplier to the military occupation, was tried as a way of increasing overall profit to cover the massive costs of maintaining the military forces needed to bring and keep control over the British occupied territory.

Modern logisticians estimate that peak numbers of Roman and auxiliary troops in Britain (mid second century AD) was about 55,000 troops, roughly 12% to 15% of the total Roman armies that were required to control 230,000 square kilometers of territory. Britain was slightly less than 3% of total Roman controlled territory.

There is no agreement today, nor, apparently, has there ever been agreement, after the fact, about whether "Rome" was ever breaking even in Britania. But that, of course, wasn't a concern at the time. Rome was planning to be compensated later by a "civilized" and profitable Britain for any losses it might have suffered in early stage military occupation.

The Roman system, i.e., "Rome" (essentially the various competing imperial court bureaucracies), was simply self-deceptive enough to believe that a payday would eventually arrive before constantly growing indications of impending system failure would prevent eventual recompense.

Meanwhile, Roman and Roman backed entrepreneurs could turn in healthy temporary profits, and that was always necessary to keep an Emperor in power.
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Metals:

bined

Upper map shows locations of metal mines south of Hadrian's Wall.

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Map below is more general, showing location of mines and best crop lands (darker yellow in the south). The two black hexagons near the top were the best coal areas with famous Newcastle near the eastern shore.

Map below shows locatioms of Industrial level works introduced by the Romans

Before the Romans ever arrived in Britania, they had already discerned the presence of metals in Britain. Julius Caesar certainly knew that some of the long slashing swords that were being wielded against his forces in north-western Gaul were in the hands of Britons who had come across the channel from Britania as paid allies.

They were allies
or employees of continental tribes. Caesar knew that the Britons had brought their own forged iron (somewhat mass produced) weapons with them.

That was Caesar's main excuse for invading Britain
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Location of Iron
Ores in Britania

As shown on the map, the largest Iron deposit was in the south in the Mendip Forest area to the southwest of London. That deposit also contained other metals that provided the minerals that infused the naturally heated waters of Bath.

Long-Sword blanks -- The Romans were involved as end-users in trade with the British Celts and as observers of trade and aid between Briton and northwest continental European Celts. They knew that one medium of trade that was routinely used as currency as well as one of the things traded was what modern archeologists call "currency bars" like those shown here. British Celts knew about coinage, but the way they used coins was different: they were commemorative or prestige gifts, marks of appreciation or reward, and too valuable to be used in daily economic exchange.

One thing that Celts in Britain used like we would use cash in domestic or international exchange was "currency bars", blanks for Celtic iron long-swords. The found blades have pre-rolled tangs ready for handle insertion and partially hammered but unfinished and unsharpened blades. The fact that multiple almost identical blades have been often found together in trading environments implies mass production. The largest number of quite similar blades which were found together is 47 and they all look almost identical wherever fund.

Before any Roman legion stepped ashore, "currency bars" were in the Roman-frequented market place: Roman military logistics buyers were already among the buyers there.

That was the problem. Britanic metal was obvious. Also obvious was the fact that the sellers, whether Romans or natives of other parts of the emipre (known to be there by their coins) might be identified as war profiteers (AKA, a military industrial complex). What the Roman military establishment wanted to do was to cut out the cagey middle-men. Why not just go to Britain, find out where the mines are, run them for ourselves (for a while), smelt the metal(s) ourselves, make the product(s) ourselves (all of this, for a while), and, after we find out what all these processes really cost, we can let the entrepreneurs back in with price controls.

Nice theory if your logistics system was itself honest -- is it ever?

Recently, the US Navy convicted persons, ranking US Navy personnel, of participating in what became known as "The Fat Leonard Scandal", which involved, at last count, at least 33 defendants including officers and an admiral. That logistics corruption defrauded the Navy of tens of millions of dollars. Read about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal

But a point of argument might also be that "it is always better to get that profiteering money circulating in our economy than in theirs."

The Romans also knew that already, centuries before, their erstwhile Carthaginian competitors (enemies!) for control of western Mediterranean had monopolized trade in British and CeltIberian tin that was necessary to make bronze, and that the other ingredient for bronze, copper, could also be bought from Briton Celts. In fact, after the Carthage trade in the metals had been extinguished, it had been taken over by Roman and Roman-provincial entrepreneurs.

The Romans were using those same entrepreneurs to buy the huge amounts of Briton lead that they needed for everything from water pipes (in and out), to lead linings to winery tanks, to coffins and lead missiles for slinger auxiliary forces . It turns out that lead fresh water pipes did not put folks into those coffins: hard water quickly layered the inside of Roman era lead fresh water pipes with a layer of impervious calcium carbonate that protects consumers from lead contamination. But the lead lined winery tanks did put Romans into coffins: wine is always acidic, and the acid level always increases as alcohol gradually becomes vinegar.

It also turns out that, in terms of cost, lead imports from Britain vastly outweighed all the other metal trade throughout the Roman occupation.

After establishing the production of almost pure Roman occupation-period lead and the trade of lead from britania into the Roman Empire, the occupation authorities turned the whole lead operation over to two commercial firms, one of which was operated by what we might identify as a Pentagon-revolving-door type of entrepreneur. Gaius Nipius Ascanius apparently ran a 1st century occupation administration lead department before reappearing as a private lead merchant, one of the only two that were licensed to trade Britanic lead. His marks apeared on several ingots found in Britanic lead producing areas.

Lead ingot of G Nipi Ascani
The symbol between the part of his name identifies the metal as lead. The form of the name-parts is possessive.

This kind of carry-over, from provincial official to private businessman was not considered undesirable favoritism, rather the whole Roman system was designed to operate that way. It take a person with some knowinglege of a particular kind of transaction, make him a government bureaucrat to control that thing, and then reward him for his service.

It is not by accident that petroleum specialists had their progress to becoming petroleum company executives interupted by Ambassadorial tours in Saudi Arabia, or accidental that Auto-Workers Union leaders could become Ambassadors in Japan, or that international commercial traders were sent as ranking US diplomats to the EU or the UN in Geneva before becoming "beltway bandits". Come on, you must know of some -- you might even be one.

The other lead entrepreneur was Tiberius Claudius Triferna, whose Claudius name identifies him as part of a very distinguished Roman Gens (= family) unlike the known, but not exceptional, Nipius gens.

Under the control of these two businessmen, lead mines were contracted out to lower level companies who paid for their contracts. Half of the lead went through the bureaucracy directly to the occupying government and the other half went on the market at market price although most of that half was always also sold to the largest consumer, the government. All of the "participant" of these deals were satisfied. The goverment end of these and other transactions was always covered, in the short term, by collected taxes and the hope that it all would pay off later.

Today we can buy a license or "concession" to dig, drill, operate a broadcasting facility, cut or manage timber, put up windmill electric generating towers, even open a privately operated prison or federal detention center for illegal immigrants. You make your money either directly or by being paid by the government. Any profits are shared with the level of government that issues the license or concession -- nothing has changed.

Lead was special. Lead ore, Galena, might and often did include a small admixture of silver (and lead ore in Britain usually did contain silver). By using selective mining for ores that had silver content, Roman British suppliers by 90 AD had become the Empire's largest supplier of silver for coinage, jewelry, plate, decorative items, and an occasional panoply of ornamental, usually Emperor's armor. (At that point, 90 AD, Iberian silver producers are recorded to have complained to the emperor.)

The "Cupellation" process of separating silver from the much greater amount of lead in the ore is rather simple, but it can be expensive if the "cupellator" cares about ecology. The Romans did not. It involves putting mixed metals under high heat, for lead-silver separation 1100 degrees celsius (2012 degrees f.), which oxidizes the lead producing removable waste, today called litharge. (Litharge can be, but was not always, refined again into lead.) Other impurities would be absorbed by the vessel (the "cupel") that housed the process, which was made of various mixtures of bone ash, wood ash, and portland cement.

The remnant, remaining in the vessel, would be molten silver, ready to be poured off. The vessel used in cupellation is called a cupel, which is derived through French from earlier forms and means "little, i.e., diminutive cup".

Very small batch cupellation

We know the cupellation process was carried out in Roman Britain because waste litharge in quantities of about 17 pounds have been found, and because ancient Romans, including Pliny the Elder, described in some detail how cupellation was used to refine gold as well as silver from lead ores in Britania.
-- Pliny's Natural History, ca. 77 AD.

As in other fields, certainly in exploitation of Britain's natural resources, the Romans introduced more advanced technologies than those that had previously been used by the Britonic indigenes. Among those interventions were those that allowed Romano-Celts to raise metal smelting temperatures to the temperatures needed to separate precious metals from base metals -- essentially large bellows operated by more than one person that would introduce higher oxygen levels to coal or wood fires and, importantly to the cupel to oxidize the base metals. In the gold cupellation process it would sometimes be necessary to introduce extra lead to the cupel with the gold mix to maintain the oxidation. This step was seldom needed when separating silver from lead because the proportion of lead to silver was already very high in lead ores.

The price of gold per ounce may have been higher in Rome and the value added in workmanship raised it even more, but the really big deal was in the silver market. And that was simply because of the total amount of silver in the market was very much greater than the amount of gold.

Over all, however, both silver and gold were, quite literally, a steal. Imperialist exploitation of natural resources always is. The resources belong to the natives, not to the imperialists, who are there to steal the resources.

Inside a northern Welsh gold mine

Gold production is much lower now, but spoil heaps are now being investigated (evrywhere), looking for traces of rare elements used in modern electronics, etc.

Gold export ingot "hides"

Marked with seals, but weight and size unspecified. Called "hides" because, like most metal export ingots, their shapes resemble stretched out animal hides. The shape actually made lifting and carrying easier.

Among other Roman technological improvements were hydraulic mining processes to extract and separate ores, ventilation shafts, which allowed deeper underground mining and later improved production by increasing and improving the miners' air supplies (and allowing oil lamps to have enough air to keep the mine face lighted).

Immediate right, a bronze double piston liquid pressure pump of the type used in Roman mines and for fighting fires (far right). Diagram between. Same design is still used in fire areas where electrical sparks might be dangerous. Roman miners usually used gravity to pressurize water at the working face and this kind of pump to evacuate water from the mine. Miners had to learn leet management as well as pump use and maintenance.

A bronze double piston pump artifact, probably used for fire fighting, but parts of the same kind of pump have been found in mines.

The same kind of pump diagrammed. At the center of the image is an air pressure tank: as the pistons forced water into the vessel air at the top was compressed,adding to the height to which water could be pumped.

A single piston pump with a pressure vessel shown in use by firefighters. Rome's firefighters, instituted by Augustus, were, and still are, called vigiles, "those who stay awake to keep watch", sometimes AKA "spartoli" or "bucketeers".

After the Great Fire, Nero raised vigile forces in Rome above 7000 men and also mandated outside fire escapes and platforms on structures from which firefighters could work.",

Improved soil management and irrigation that increased production of fruit, vegetabe and seed crops, including placing small fish or something else, which one might be less inclined to touch, in the grain seed furrow to facilitate growth.

By the way: It has recently been determined that Squanto didn't introduce this millennia-old idea to the Plymouth Pilgrims. The knowledge was actually transferred from the Europeans to the Native Americans.

Wood use for fuel and construction:
Although the Romans used up a tremendous amount of wood (which, when burnt with equally large amounts of coal started human-caused pollution and warming) the Roman method of forestry also appears to have increased wood production in still forested areas -- it is hard to tell the balance in this case although, during the Roman period woodland decreases matched cropland and crop production increases while wood use for construction and fuel continuously increased. There was a conscious decision to reduce forests, which is still debated today. Decisions were made in Roman times when few people (e.g., Pliny the Elder) even conceived of the possible consequences.

Note that the Celts believed that oak forests, even small groves were sacred and were places appropriate for Druidic religious activity, which, the Romans believed, could include human sacrifices. Roman disgust for such activity may have partially motivated destruction of tree lands.

Oak forests south of Hadrian's Wall

That Elder Pliny died while trying to investigate the Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD. He and the Roman fleet that he commanded had already failed to rescue inhabitants of Herculanum, where they arrived after the overnight and early morning pyroclastic surges and flows had killed anyone still in town. Pliny then decided, a fateful decision, to proceed to the south end of the Bay of Naples and watch the continuing volcanic events -- and died on the beach the next night. Doctors now think it may have been a heart attack, perhaps induced by oxygen deprivation by volcanic gasses, but almost certainly ultimately caused by a his well established gross obesity.

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Animal husbandry
The Romans introduced new strains of cattle and sheep greatly increasing meat and especially wool production: a particular type of Roman hoodie made in Britain of still-fleeced sheepskin or from tightly woven yarns from which lanolin had not been washed, even became a fad in other cooler areas of the Roman empire. British fleece and wool industries today trace their beginnings to the Roman period.

The Romans knew better how to build and maintain healthy herds and that included introducing bigger and stronger cattle breeds, some of which were based on European continental aurochs. Size was important both for increased meat production, but perhaps more importantly, a more robust animal could pull improved Roman plows.

The iron age coulter addition just may have already been in Britain before the Romans, but it is definite that the fully developed moldboard plow arrived with the Romans. The coulter is a circular blade that cuts the soil ahead of the share through matted vegitation, clumps, clods or compacted soil allowing the share to penetrate more deeply. The mold-board is an inwardly curved hard panel, primatively just a wooden board, later an inwardly curved piece of iron, that was directly attached to the side and back of the share, the purpose of the board being to actually invert the plowed up soil before it fell back into the furrow. In addition, by steepening the tilt of the share and perhaps adding weight to the whole apparatus deeper plowing could be possible in the sometimes clay soil soil bases encountered in Britania. Deeper plowing required stronger cattle.

A modern moldboard plow, but it shows all of the parts aleady used by the Romans when they occupied Britania

More robust skull of bovine introduced during the Roman occupation. It is not clear whether this was a direct government intervention or perhaps done by private breeders (perhaps at government request).

Advance plow technology required bigger and more robust bovines than had been bred bred by the Celts, and the Romans quickly introduced the new breeds. Roman period bovine bone finds include longer more robust leg and body bones and wider longer skulls.

Importantly, horn cores on the slulls, instead of curving forward pointed outward and upward indicating probable aurochs antecessors.

Auroch, above

European Bison

Bigger stronger cattle did allow deeper plowing that brought less depleted soils to the surface, and the addition of the moldboard, which turned surface soil downward burying weed seeds to a level, at which they were less likely to germinate, increased yields, particularly of grains. However, it also encouraged erosion just by the very fact of disturbing and loosening soil to a deeper level than earlier shallow plowing did. The Romans also introduced irrigation, which, without modern contour plowing, might also increase erosion. And deeper plowing, even with Roman initiated "three field" ("food, feed, fallow") crop rotation could only delay but not prevent soil depletion.

And if that was not enough to worry about, there was a major climate change throughout Europe right around 400 AD, which had the effect of lowering food crop production. Average annual temperature dropped as much as 2.5 degrees F (1.5 C) and rainfall increased until by 450 AD it had risen by ten percent. In the north of Britania and in Ireland there were food shortfalls, which caused demands on the south that were hard to meet. Overall, the growing season in Europe shortened by a month, northern fields were not warm enough to produce as much as they had during the "Roman climate maximum", AKA the "Roman warm period" (c, 250 BC to 400 AD). Higher altitude plantation and transhumance, the annual seasonal movent of animals to graze in higher altitude pastures, had to be curtailed. Meanwhile the increased rainfall caused increasing soil erosion and leeched of nutrients from soils that had already been disturbed by deeper plowing, and caused per-acre productivity to decline.

During the warmer period Celtic population had grown to four and one half million, and 50,000 hungry Roman soldiers added to the strain: 50 to 60,000 productive acres just to feed the legionaries, and there were just as many hungry auxiliary troops, not to mention how much additional land was needed to grow fodder for their thousands of mounts, pack, and cart pulling animals. As noted, the food situation was felt more strongly the further north you lived and in Ireland, and that may have been a motivation for the Picts raiding southward from Scotland (and, after the troop withdrawal, their breaking through th unmanned Hadrian's Wall).

Paleometeorologists now theorize that European and Britanic 5th century cooling was not part of a worldwide trend, but glacier coring and dendrochronology prove similar effects in continental Europe that may well have prompted Germans and Franks to cross the Rhine and Danube Rivers into Roman provinces.

For more information about the effects of 5th century climate change, see:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/saxonadvent/climate.html

In addition to the previous concerns, deep plowing had a result that concerns modern archeological researchers rather than Romans or Celts. Deep plowing can also disturb the top levels of artifact stratigraphy, which, in a British archeological site, could be where Romano-Celtic things (artifacts!) are found. Yes, they usually are still found at "plowed out" sites, but they are not in their original "context".

Other vexations of archeologists are moles, which carry small artifacts downward into their nests and badgers that carry small and slightly larger artifacts up and away from their burrows. And people, who have always found use for any artifacts, from small to even very large. Much "stuff" is hidden in private collections or was stolen to be held and displayed in the Louvre or British Museum (Etc.), or to be street ornaments in London, Paris, New York, (obelisks) or Rome where there are, in fact more obelisks than are known still to be in Egypt. Want to see a Roman tombstone? Look in the walls of European Christian churches. Ancient Roman marble columns? Same churches.

(But new spotless 60 foot tall 1960s white Carrara marble columns? Chicago, Saint Anthony Italian Catholic Church. A comment at the time of instalation by a distinguished congregation member and relative of mine: "The mob can afford NEW".)

The point is, that probably, over the centuries, more is lost than found, both to history -- defined as what is "known" and was written down, i.e.,recorded, close to the time it occurred, perhaps even by (elusive) unbiased historians -- and to archeology -- what is deduced and analyzed from"stuff", artifacts, in or out of "context".

So bigger stronger Roman introduced cattle, Bovines, improved meat and dairy production and plowing which meant more grain and produce, even enough to export and feed Legions on the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Until the "Warm Period" ended.

Roman Ovine introductions,
the sheep that the Romans introduced, but first:

Pre-Roman sheep
Excavated bones of preRoman Celtic "soay type" sheep indicate much smaller stature of Northern European short-tailed breeds. They were hardy, horned, and had colored hairy fleece that could be plucked or that molted naturally, and they were primarily bred for meat not wool.

Romans certainly brought in bigger, more productive improved breeds of sheep, but, as it was with the introduced bovine breeds, it is not certain whether this was an Military Occupation Government policy initiative or the initiative of canny meat suppliers to the Legions or the idea of savvy wool merchants. Whoever promoted the deal, it had positive results, both short and long term.

Ryland short-wool sheep were recorded to have been introduced by the Romans.

Many historians believe that the ancestors of British long-wool sheep, including this Cotswold breed, were also introduced in the Roman era.

Archeological analyses of animal bones show a clear increase in size during the Roman period. Size increase appears to have been the result of introduced "improved" continental breeds as well as selective breeding in Britania.

Two layers of introduction are apparent:

One, Ryland sheep are an example of a short-wool breed documented to have been introduced by the Romans.

Two, although definitive proof is lacking, many historians agree that the ancestors of modern British long-wool breeds, e.g., Cotswold sheep were also introduced during Roman times.

The birrus Britannicus:
In the colder climates of some parts of the Roman Empire a new type of winter garment, a birrus or cloak, became extremely popular, especially among the military. Sometimes still-fleeced sheepskin, but most often made of thick, lanolin-impregnated woven wool and thus water and wind proof, it looked like a hooded poncho except that it was open down the front. Contemporary illustrations often show an annular broach holding the two sides of the open front together at the neck. As the name implies, the birrus Britannicus was a product probably invented and made in Britain, although once it was seen, it easily could be copied elsewhere. But the fact that it retained its geographic name implies that British made export versions retained their popularity as long as they remained available.

The garment apears to have been very versatile. Images show that the garment reached about to the knees and was wide enough to fully cover outstretched arms. Either or both sides could be thrown back over the shoulders to cool down or thrown over an opposite shoulder to wrap up around the neck to further warm that area. A belt or cord could snug it to the waist, and if more leg mobility was needed the birrus could be pulled up behind the belt, just as were some very long women's dresses.

-- British woolen goods and cloth seem to have dominated Roman Empire markets for most of the Romano-British period, but lost their dominance after the Roman withdrawal. But similar cloths and garments then regained popularity under the Anglo-Saxons, and has held a large European market share since then.

Conclusion: Who benifitted from the occupation?

As noted above, it is questionable whether the Empire ever actually had any monetary or other gains from Britain, although merchants and entrepreneurs did carry away profits. It really didn't / doesn't matter, since the Western Roman Empire was well on its way to final dissolution from the time that Constantine I moved his capital eastward to confront the Parthians, who were viewed as a greater threat.

From the modern view of British scholarship, and providing many and larger opportunities for Doctoral Dissertations, both Revisionist and, more recently, re-revisionist degree candidates, is the question of what Britain may or may not have gained from the Roman Occupation.

Did the Romans speed or did they delay development of British "civilization"?
After the Romans left to fight other (generally losing) wars in far and farther other theaters, there was temporary backsliding in British industry, agronomy, mining, and urbanization. But it was only temporary. British scholarship maintained, for centuries that there was forward movement among their forbears, who had learned things that they quickly recovered when opportunities once again presented themselves.

One thing that Britain learned from the Romans, and which, for centuries, they thought was "good", was the benefit of "empire building". The proverb went, "To prevent becoming part of someone's empire, build one of your own".

After WWII, as the British and other "Great Power" empires dissolved, and, as CNN and other news outlets started and made ubiquitous their news coverage of current (20th and 21st century) military occupations, academic and popular opinions reversed. British"public opinion" today sees few if any benefits to local populations in the military occupations that they see in their TV room after dinner every evening or which they can Google at any time.