Roman Agrarian History
Publication Date: 1 June 2008
Prof. Richard I. Frank has
translated into English Max Weber’s 1891 doctoral dissertation dealing with
Roman agriculture. Weber was born in 1864, the son of a wealthy family with
connections in the upper levels of German business, political, and academic
circles. Like his father, Weber studied law and wrote his doctoral dissertation
on medieval trading companies (1889) under a family friend, Professor Levin
Goldschmidt. That gave him the title Dr. phil. and qualified him in German law.
He then decided to qualify in Roman law as well, a most unusual course, and embarked
on a study under another family friend, Theodor Mommsen, Europe’s
leading Romanist. The result was the present work (1891), which was his Habilitationsschrift and as such
entitled him to teach in any German university.
The first thing to be noted
is the work’s scope. It begins with a three-fold classification of surveying
procedures from an obscure handbook, goes on to describe the triumph of
capitalism and cities, then their replacement by manors, and closes with an
allusion to mankind’s dream of world unity. This is not a narrow monograph! He
focused on particular institutions and times and sought “to understand” each as
a result of the interplay of various political, economic, and ideological
forces. In this he followed the philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey: “We explain
nature, but we understand (verstehen)
mental life.”
If
Weber drew any lesson from the history he traced it was the dynamic, decisive
role of capital. It determined the various legal categories of land, it used
slaves to develop plantations, and when the supply of slaves declined it
replaced them with tenants, and later it changed tenants into serfs and
plantations into manors. Indeed it has been argued that through all Weber’s
works on antiquity “the key, unifying theme in them is the issue of the
existence and nature of ancient capitalism.
An excellent reading choice for both academic and legal scholars.
Features: Bibliographical data, tables, graphs, and maps.
Weber, Max (translated by Richard I. Frank)
258 Pages (PB)
$ 24.95