Cicero's advice that successful merchants should cash out into land, that trade is only respectable once you've left it, isn't a cultural preference. It's a compulsion: to be recognised as a man of standing, you had to convert. Not doing so signals political exclusion, not just cultural disdain.
The Roman landowning aristocracy was politically unchallenged, so its disdain for trade was a status assertion that worked. It carried coercive force. Where merchants did sit inside the constitutional settlement, as in England and the Dutch Republic, the disdain lost that force, and the rhetoric of the bourgeoisie became possible.
McCloskey's point is precisely this: bourgeois rhetoric required constitutional standing, the kind that made status conversion optional rather than compulsory. Roman merchants had wealth but not that standing.
On that basis, aristocratic disdain for trade wasn't a free-standing cultural fact — it was produced by the underlying political settlement, a symptom of who held power (and wanted to preserve it), rather than a cause in its own right.
It's worth asking, then, whether Schiavone's equilibrium is truly cultural. Or maybe the cultural story is downstream of a simpler political fact: merchants who can't challenge aristocratic power have no choice but to imitate it.
One theory I've been playing around with is that the problem with merchant wealth was that it was unstable. You had to constantly manage your business and were always at risk from shipwrecks or price fluctuations. As opposed to land which was passive income.
First - for most of history land was by far the best investment - good returns, least risk. It was also the scene of continuous improvements in Roman times: new crops, better animals, new techniques and so on. Plus, for much of the time, prospect for expansion (both Roman and medieval landowners invested in clearing land, draining marshes and finding better uses for marginal lands). So a preference for land is quite understandable - the richest people in mid-Victorian Britain were the great landowners, on the back of leaps in productivity. It was far more than a passive investment.
Second - wealth is not understanding, or even a considerable enabler of understanding. The Romans lacked most of the necessary tools and understandings to advance industrially. In fact they lacked the tools to make the tools, and the materials to make the tools to make the tools. Mere money could not make up this lack.
Lastly, slavery played a major role until quite modern times, contributing significantly to the wealth of Amsterdam, London and Paris. Nor was it absent in medieval times: around 10% of the population of England in the 11th century were slaves, and it figures heavily in the mercantile republics of Italy.
Cicero's advice that successful merchants should cash out into land, that trade is only respectable once you've left it, isn't a cultural preference. It's a compulsion: to be recognised as a man of standing, you had to convert. Not doing so signals political exclusion, not just cultural disdain.
The Roman landowning aristocracy was politically unchallenged, so its disdain for trade was a status assertion that worked. It carried coercive force. Where merchants did sit inside the constitutional settlement, as in England and the Dutch Republic, the disdain lost that force, and the rhetoric of the bourgeoisie became possible.
McCloskey's point is precisely this: bourgeois rhetoric required constitutional standing, the kind that made status conversion optional rather than compulsory. Roman merchants had wealth but not that standing.
On that basis, aristocratic disdain for trade wasn't a free-standing cultural fact — it was produced by the underlying political settlement, a symptom of who held power (and wanted to preserve it), rather than a cause in its own right.
It's worth asking, then, whether Schiavone's equilibrium is truly cultural. Or maybe the cultural story is downstream of a simpler political fact: merchants who can't challenge aristocratic power have no choice but to imitate it.
One theory I've been playing around with is that the problem with merchant wealth was that it was unstable. You had to constantly manage your business and were always at risk from shipwrecks or price fluctuations. As opposed to land which was passive income.
First - for most of history land was by far the best investment - good returns, least risk. It was also the scene of continuous improvements in Roman times: new crops, better animals, new techniques and so on. Plus, for much of the time, prospect for expansion (both Roman and medieval landowners invested in clearing land, draining marshes and finding better uses for marginal lands). So a preference for land is quite understandable - the richest people in mid-Victorian Britain were the great landowners, on the back of leaps in productivity. It was far more than a passive investment.
Second - wealth is not understanding, or even a considerable enabler of understanding. The Romans lacked most of the necessary tools and understandings to advance industrially. In fact they lacked the tools to make the tools, and the materials to make the tools to make the tools. Mere money could not make up this lack.
Lastly, slavery played a major role until quite modern times, contributing significantly to the wealth of Amsterdam, London and Paris. Nor was it absent in medieval times: around 10% of the population of England in the 11th century were slaves, and it figures heavily in the mercantile republics of Italy.