9
History and Historiography
Pierre Briant
In the late 1970s I first attempted to clarify a debate that dated back to Droysen concerning the question of the continuity, adaptations, and transformations that marked the history, societies, and economy of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia as a result of the conquests of Alexander (Briant 1979a). That study endeavored to promote the idea that Alexander’s conquests could not really be understood without a knowledge of the history of the Achaemenid-Persian empire that is as precise and intimate as possible. The unprecedented development of the discipline of Achaemenid history since then has only reinforced my conviction.1 New collections of sources have come to the light and been published that are powerful incentives to relocate the history of the Macedonian conquest into the middle- to long-term context of first-millennium Near Eastern history.2
I have revisited the above theme frequently since 1979a3 – if only to emphasize that Rostovtzeff had previously pleaded strongly for this approach (Briant 2000d). If I again address the question here, within the framework of a necessarily concise contribution, it is to organize my reflections about the history of a well-defined theme: the economic transformations brought to the Middle East by the Macedonian conquest. The traditional error (and one which I too have not escaped4) is to consider Droysen’s 1833 study, followed by updated editions until 1877, as the obligatory and exclusive starting point for any investigation of this type.5Admittedly, Droysen developed his theses about the profound transformations that Alexander would have introduced in the lands of the Achaemenid empire, and these theses, in turn, were either embraced enthusiastically or contested without the slightest reserve by his peers and successors. But as E. Bikerman (1944–5: 382)6 and A. Momigliano (1952: 364–6) both suggested, the debate on the nature and the extent of the transformations introduced by Alexander’s conquests started well before 1833.7 Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was generally assumed that “Achaemenid decline” and “Asian stagnation” were followed by a phase of profound “economic regeneration” that was initiated by Alexander and resulted from the Macedonian conquest. The aim of the following pages is to identify the origins and foundations of this view and the variations thereof.
I
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries historians and scholars collected the heritage of Classical antiquity, a corpus in which, traditionally, Greek vigor and Macedonian strength were contrasted with the weakness of the Persian empire. The latter was usually defined by its state of political and territorial disorganization, by its corrupting luxury, and by its irreversible military inferiority, in short by, to use the traditional expression, “Achaemenid decadence.” According to a tenacious stereotype, which can be traced back to Greek authors, this empire was wealthy and weak at the same time.8 It suffices to examine a single example, the Histoire ancienne by Charles Rollin, which was published from 1730 onward to exceptional acclaim in all European states. Influenced by Bossuet (1681), Rollin developed a catastrophic view of the Persian enemy and its continuous decline from Xerxes to Darius III. Based on the same pedagogical and political presuppositions (the values to be impressed upon a prince), Rollin condemned Alexander’s excesses, which he saw corrupted by Asian luxuries:9 “In imitation of the Persian kings he turned his palace into a seraglio, filling it with three hundred and sixty concubines (the same number Darius kept) and with bands of eunuchs, of all mankind the most infamous” (Rollin 1791: 168).
As the polemic brought forth by the Abbé Mably (1709–85) against Montesquieu (1689-1755) shows, two opposing visions developed on the consequences of Alexander’s victories. Referring to Machiavellian authority (The Prince, ch. 4), the former argued that Alexander did not change anything essential in an empire characterized by its gigantic structures, its despotism, and its decadence. In his eyes, it is the same despotism that was maintained before and after the conquest: “The revolution that passed the crown of Darius on to Alexander’s head was not a revolution for the state, it remained in the same condition” (Mably 1766: 226). As a contrasting perspective, starting with Montesquieu, we see a profound evolution in Alexander’s image. He appears more and more as an organizing conqueror and a man of exceptional political talent, who transformed the structures of an empire that, at the same time, he was both conquering and adapting.
The role Alexander played in opening new commercial routes was in fact pointed out prior to Montesquieu. The competition among the great powers which led to the creation of the various oriental Indian companies (England, France, Holland, etc.), prompted political leaders to order reports on the nature of the Indian trade since antiquity. It was thus on Colbert’s urgent demands that the bishop P.-D. Huet wrote his Histoire du commerce et de la navigation dans l’Antiquité (published in 1713), a work that was subsequently translated into every European language and in turn inspired the publication of many similar works in many different languages throughout that century.10 Among the major steps in the evolution of the paradigm is Huet’s strong emphasis on the transformations that were brought by Alexander, himself totally unlike the Great Kings, who were uninterested in anything connected with the sea and navigation after the middle of the fifth century BC:
Things were in that state when Alexander attacked the Persian Empire; by this conquest, so to speak, the face of the world was changed and a great revolution in commercial affairs was brought about. One must thus look at this conquest, and particularly the capture of Tyre and the foundation of Alexandria, as a new era in commerce. The change in the way of governing and in the interests of the populations, having opened new ports and passages, he gave a new route for the conduct of trade. (Huet 1713: 91–2)
Although deeply hostile toward Alexander, Rollin, following Huet, attributed to him too “the great revolution in commercial affairs,” as a result of the destruction of Tyre and the foundation of Alexandria (1821: vi. 469). Huet’s formula was also taken up by Montesquieu, but this time it was integrated into a coherent and global vision of the Macedonian conquest, already introduced in the 1748 edition of his Esprit des Lois (xxi. 7) and particularly developed in the posthumous edition of 1757.11 Though Huet and Montesquieu differed on the reasons for the lack of interest in maritime commerce attributed to the Persians,12 and on the final aims of Alexander,13 they agreed on a more fundamental level. Managed according to meticulously prepared plans, and accompanied by a political friendship with the Persians and the local populations (x. 13–14), the Macedonian conquest brought about major disruptions in commercial exchanges, in particular by the opening of a direct route between the Indus river valley and Babylon via the Persian Gulf:
Four events occurred under Alexander that produced a great revolution in commerce: the capture of Tyre, the conquest of Egypt, that of the Indies, and the discovery of the sea to the south of that country. . . He had scarcely arrived in the Indies when he had new fleets built and set sail on the Eulaeus, the Tigris, the Euphrates and the sea; he removed the cataracts the Persians had put in these rivers; he discovered that the Persian Gulf was a gulf of the ocean. As he set out to explore this sea, in the same way he had explored that of the Indies, as he had a port for a thousand vessels and arsenals built in Babylon, as he sent five hundred talents to Phoenicia and Syria in order to attract pilots whom he wanted to settle in the colonies that he built along the coasts, and finally, as he did immense work on the Euphrates and the other Assyrian rivers, one cannot doubt that his design was to engage in commerce with the Indies through Babylon and the Persian Gulf.14
Several historians from the second half of the eighteenth century insisted on the establishment of commerce between east and west. Even if it cannot be reduced to a single explanation, it seems clear that this new historiographical orientation is to be linked directly with the interests of the European superpowers in the east, and particularly with the profits derived from commerce, after the Portuguese had opened a new direct route to India via the Cape of Good Hope (1498). It is at this time that Arrian’s Indica was rediscovered, considered by its first commentators as a vade mecum for navigators and explorers coming from Europe.15 It is on Arrian that Montesquieu essentially founded the revised edition of the Esprit des Lois.
Influenced by Montesquieu, the work written by William Vincent in 1797 on the voyage of Nearchus is again very clear in its outlook. Not only did the author emphasize the assistance to his research he had received from the employees of the East India Company (x–xii), but he also established a direct link between Nearchus’ voyage in the Persian Gulf and the expansionist and commercial enterprises of modern Europe:
Historical facts demand our attention in proportion to the interest we feel, or the consequences we derive from them; and the consequences of this voyage as such, that is, in the first instance, it opened a communication between Europe and the most distant countries of Asia, so, at a later period, was it the sources and the origin of the Portuguese discoveries, the foundation of the greatest commercial system ever introduced into the world; and consequently, the primary cause, however remote, of the British establishments in India. (Vincent 1797: 2–3)16
The positive transformation brought by Alexander in the history of commercial relations were emphasized by other authors as well, for example, by William Robertson in his work on India (1791–2; cf. Briant 2005a), and John Gillies in his famous study on the history of Greece, published in 1786:
His only remaining care was to improve and consolidate his conquest. For these important purposes, he carefully examined the course of the Eulaeus, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; and the indefatigable industry of his troops was judiciously employed in removing the weirs or dams, by which the timid ignorance of the Assyrian and Persian kings had obstructed the navigation of these great rivers. But Alexander, having no reason to dread fleets of war, wished to invite those to commerce. The harbors were repaired; arsenals were constructed; a bason was formed at Babylon sufficient to contain a thousand galleys. By these and similar improvements, he expected to facilitate internal intercourse among his central provinces, while, by opening new channels of communication, he hoped to unite the wealthy countries of Egypt and the East, with the most remote regions of the earth. (Gillies 1831[1786]: 430)
Introduced by Gillies and reiterated by W. Robertson following Huet and Montesquieu, the theme of the destruction of the cataracts would become a metaphor for change throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the installation of these obstacles (“weirs”, “dams”) across the Tigris and Euphrates during the Persian era, and then their removal by Alexander, then symbolized the passage from a closed economy to an open economy (Briant 2006c; 2008).
The vision set forth by Huet and Montesquieu found an especially determined opponent in the person of the Baron Sainte-Croix. When, in the first edition of his book (1775: 252–3), the author, following Huet, admits that “Nearchus left memoirs of the expeditions that were useful for war and commerce,” he also opposed Montesquieu’s views regarding Alexander’s colonies and their supposed commercial functions. He surmised that the speed of the military marches were incompatible with the conception and the application of a long-term policy (96–8). His criticism is even more detailed and firm in the second edition, and it also targets W. Robertson and W. Vincent. Sainte-Croix vigorously reiterates his doubts on the existence of the “scheme” attributed to Alexander “of expanding geographical knowledge and multiplying commercial relations that could unite the different parts of the world,” and he issues a final judgment: “One makes of the victor of Darius and Porus an armed merchant, and one gives to the emulator of Hercules the ideas of a factory chief. . . To attribute to Alexander, in this state of frenzy, great views of commerce, isn’t that creating a debased form of history?” (1804: 416, 418). In spite of the renown of Sainte-Croix and his work, his restrictive interpretation was not widely echoed. The larger part of historiography at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries continued to see Alexander as the first to have opened Europe up to the riches of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, decidedly striving to trigger profound transformations in these parts. This tendency goes hand in hand with a persistent lack of knowledge about the Persian empire, still considered as an empire undermined by despotism, lack of unity, and decadence. Even though an author like Arnold Heeren describes how entire regions of the Persian empire were developed thanks to irrigation, he does not directly infer that the Great Kings had made productive investments, positive results of which were still observed well into the Hellenistic era. Heeren, citing Polybius (10.28) and James Morier (1812: 163), is one of the few to mention the importance of the underground canals of the Persians,17 but he first draws the lesson that these facilities could have been destroyed by any of the many invasions that the country witnessed (Heeren 1830: 89).
II
When the young Droysen (born in 1808) began to write his book on Alexander in the fall of 1831, he benefited from the historiographic advances of the previous generations. Proceeding from these, he too would present the great economic successes of Alexander, namely, the minting of the immobile treasures of Persia and their reintegration into the economic and commercial circuits (1883: 360, 687–9);18 the abolishment of all levies in kind, and the transformation of the royal court into a locus that was rather creating and diffusing wealth (689-90); the grand works in Greece and Asia (690); the creation of new commercial routes by removing the cataracts in the Tigris (650–1), and by the opening up of direct contacts between the Indus and Babylon (597–603). In Droysen’s view, there is no doubt that this is a totally innovative set of policies, consciously developed by the Macedonian conqueror:
All of these are enough to show the importance of the commercial successes of Alexander from an economic point of view. Perhaps, from this perspective, we have never seen one man’s influence producing such a sudden transformation, so profound and on such an immense territory. This transformation was not the result of mere accidental circumstances, but, as much as one can judge, it was wanted and pursued with full intention to fulfill its goal. (Droysen 1877: ii. 296-7; 1883: 690-1)
Like his predecessors, Droysen (1877: ii. 296 n. 1; 1883: 690 n. 4) simply refers, at this point, to De fortuna Alexandri (1.5, 18), where Plutarch aims to present Alexander not as a conqueror coming to ravage Asia like a brigand, but as a civilizer coming to promote world unity on the basis of Greek values. Altogether, Droysen’s analysis has nothing profoundly original. Described by B. Bravo (1968: 136 n. 164), as “a rational, lucid, political, methodical hero crafting grandiose plans,” Droysen’s Alexander is very similar to the Alexander of Montesquieu and his followers. This is particularly evident in the pages dedicated to the creation of the route to India and the reopening of waterways in Babylon (Briant 2006c, 2007b), but similar observations can be made concerning other aspects. Take, for example, what Droysen writes about the profound transformations that, according to him, Alexander brought to the fiscal system in force under the Great Kings, and the inferences he draws from this regarding the resulting economic boom:
What was most harmful, amongst the Persians, was the infinite number of duties in kind; for the royal court alone, they were estimated at 13000 talents a year, and each satrap and dynasty followed, in his region, the example of the Great King. Certain clues point to Alexander actually abolishing this system of payments of kind. . . The sojourn of the royal court now came to boast the prosperity of a city or a country just as much as the presence of the Great King had previously exhausted it. The pomp that the king was surrounded by, particularly in the later years, no longer bore down on the peoples, but created to the contrary, growth and prosperity of commerce. . . (1877: ii. 295; 1883: 689-90)
Two references in the Pseudo-Aristotelian text Oeconomica (2.32, 39) seem to justify the hypothesis on the removal of levies in kind (1877: ii. 295 n. 2; 1883: 689 n. 2). The first introduces a certain Antimenes, who was selling to soldiers merchandise saved in storage units (thesauroi) situated along the royal roads; Droysen argues that another anecdote is supposed to confirm this system of “voluntary services obtained through force.”19
From a historiographic point of view, the important thing is to observe that debate on payment in kind in the Persian empire had already been started by A. Heeren and Fr. Schlosser. In relation to the mode of remuneration of the officers and the administrators of the Great Kings (Heeren 1830: 514–24), the former cites the passage in Athenaeus (4.146) related to the Great King’s table: he saw in it the typical expression of a despotic regime, whose principle it is to live at the expense of its subject peoples (Heeren 1830: 514; 1824: 262). As for Schlosser, he too cites Athenaeus extensively (1828: 2 n. 2) in order to show to what extent the contributions made for the king’s table were constricting; he also refers to Polyaenus (4.3.32) to illustrate, as a contrast, the relief measures taken by Alexander.20 In addition, speaking of the imperial administration that was put in place, Schlosser does not fail to comment on the passages in Pseudo-Aristotle on “Philoxenus and Cleomenes” (1828: 12–18). In 1812, B.-G. Niebuhr had already emphasized the interest and the importance of the Pseudo-Aristotelian text, which he saw originating in western Asia Minor in the entourage of satraps of the Hellenistic era (Niebuhr 1828[1812]). Although Droysen never cites Niebuhr, Heeren, or Schlosser, there is no doubt that any German student of ancient history had read these authors during his course of study at the university – particularly Droysen who had taken Boeckh’s seminars in Berlin.
Droysen’s treatment of the theme of “Alexander the renovator of the economy,” provokes two additional reflections. It is clear, first, that the insistence on this aspect of Alexander’s politics results from the assumption – accepted without reserve in Europe at that time and still destined for a long life (see Briant 2003d: 116–26) – that conquered Asia was in a state of stagnation and enslaved by its own despotic regime. Thus, at Alexander’s arrival, “the Persian Empire had reached the point at which it had exhausted the constituent elements of the power that lay at the base of its successes; it looked as though it could only maintain itself thanks to the inert force of the established fact” (Droysen 1883: 48). It is from Xerxes’ reign onward that “one started to notice the signs of stagnation and decline, to which the empire, incapable of internal development, had to succumb as soon as it would cease to grow through its victories and conquests” (Droysen 1883: 53–4). Without utilizing the expression, Droysen in fact analyzes the Persian empire through the “predatory state” model, in which the political and social elites nourish themselves from tributary levies of any sort, to the detriment of any productive investment. Such a state is necessarily hit by stagnation as soon as it can no longer increase the number of its subjects. At the same time, stagnation accentuates even more the harshness of these levies, and it feeds the hostile sentiments among the subject states. Hence the enormous change brought about by Alexander, by whose actions the immense riches held by the Great Kings for more than two centuries, hoarded away in their citadels and treasuries, were given back to commercial circulation and regained their productive power:
One of the most energetic fermenting agents that was working this world in a state of formation must have been the immense mass of precious metals that the conquest of Asia had put into Alexander’s hands.. . . When the new royal power which reigned in Asia now gave flight to these hidden riches, when it let them overflow from his breast, like the heart pumps out blood, it is easy to understand that work and commerce began to spread them, by an ever increasing speed of circulation, through the longtime tired limbs of the empire; one can see how, by these means, the economic life of the peoples, which the Persian domination had sucked out their strengths like a vampire, revived and prospered. . . (Droysen 1883: 687)21
With the above, Droysen took up his position in a debate that had started over a century before in Europe, and that was to develop further. In his opinion, there is no doubt that Alexander was not simply a war leader; he also kept in mind the well-being of the inhabitants of the empire that he was conquering and transforming. In fact, for Droysen, ever since the battle of Gaugamela Alexander was convinced that “his power. . . had to find in the good deeds that it brought to the defeated his apology, and through the adhesion of the people his support and his future” (1883: 346). The same reflection is attributed to Alexander when he was in the Indus Delta a few years later: “His power, which for the first time put in direct contact people from furthest lands, had not to be simply founded on the strength of the weapons, but more on the interests of the people themselves” (1883: 597). And here is how Droysen finally introduces the work of the builder during the last two years of the reign: “And it was from there, one could conclude, that started the second part of the task that Alexander imposed on himself, the peaceful work, which, harder than the victories of arms, had to justify them by strengthening the results and assuring them a future” (1883: 684). In this assessment, Droysen is in agreement with the philosophers and historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who felt that the grandeur of a king should not be evaluated on the basis of his military victories, but rather on the basis of the happiness of his people. The historiography of Alexander was itself split between groups of historians: those who condemned him for having spread terror and bloodshed for his sole glory, including the destruction of an existing economy,22 and those who praised him for having introduced the agents of a positive transformation in the countries previously dominated by the Persians: it is this second perspective that Droysen so clearly illustrates.
III
In Germany, reviews of Droysen’s book took a rather critical tone, either because the reviewers emphasized what they considered a questionable use of sources, or because they questioned the too favorable portrait of the Macedonian conqueror. The reception was also mixed in England, as shown by the contrasting responses by Connop Thirlwall and George Grote,23 including that on the question of economic transformations brought forth (or not) by Alexander. Thirlwall repeated Droysen’s views unaltered:
His main object undoubtedly was to found a solid and flourishing empire.. . .
The mere circulation of the immense treasures accumulated [by the Great Kings]. . .
was doubtless attended by innumerable happy results: by a great immediate increase of the general well-being, by a salutary excitement of industry and commercial activity. The spirit of commerce was. . . more directly roused. . . by the foundation of new cities. . . , by the opening of new channels of communication between opposite extremities of empire, and the removals of obstructions [across the rivers] arising from the feebleness and wantonness of the ancient government. . . , by the confidence inspired by the new order of things. . . (Thirlwall 1839: vii. 110–11)
Grote, on the other hand, accepted that the opening of new channels for commerce and the geographical exploration resulted in positive transformations in countries now dominated by the Macedonians; he says nothing, however, of the consequences of the circulation of Persian treasures, nor of the destructions of the cataracts when he mentions (1862: viii. 451–2) Alexander’s navigation on the Tigris and refers to the crucial passage in Arrian (7.7). The line of argument is simple. Grote does not believe that Alexander had any project which targeted economic development. In imagining what could have been the later career of the conqueror, he strongly takes position against the image that Montesquieu had created and which Droysen later developed, and instead adopts the thesis of a pure and simple continuity in terms of despotism and levy of tribute:
We see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest.. . . The acquisition of universal dominion. . . was the master passion of his soul.. . . The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, – of keeping satraps and tribute- gatherers in authority as well as in subordination-, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march, – would occupy the whole life of a world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for such purposes in theory. But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander’s acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the traditions of the Persian empire: a tribute-levying and army-levying system, under Macedonians, in large proportion, as his instruments; yet partly also under the very same Persians who had administered before, provided they submitted to him. (1862: viii. 468–9)
The clash between Droysen’s thesis on the one side and Grote’s on the other continued without interruption during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Briant 2005b: 27–61). The success of the image of Alexander as the “great economist” is due, it seems to me, to the conjunction of two historiographic currents: the scientific prestige of the position taken by Wilcken, on the one hand, and the influence of “colonial geography” on the other.
As a renowned scholar,24 Ulrich Wilcken (1862–1944) showed a particular admiration for Droysen. When, in 1893-4, two volumes of Droysen’s Kleine Schriften were published, the editor asked Wilcken to add his own reading notes and critical comments to a new edition of Droysen’s 1831 thesis. These notes span more than ten tightly packed pages (ii. 432-43). They are introduced by an eulogistic appreciation: “More than sixty years after its publication, the work of the young Droysen. . . remains to this day the starting point for any new treatment of the theme.” The formula was repeated in Alexander der Große which appeared in 1931, and which was explicitly presented by its author as the continuation of Droysen’s monograph, a pioneering book, “fundamental and inspiring” (Wilcken 1931: vii; 1967: xxix, 325).
Actually, in this work one can recognize all of Droysen’s theses on the developments set into motion by Alexander’s conquests, but they are hereafter in a way legitimated by the indisputable scientific prestige of a scholar who dedicated himself to the analysis of the ancient economy. One distinguishes this tendency particularly in the last three chapters of the book. Wilcken revisits several times Alexander’s grandiose plans:
He kept in view the great plan of finding a way by sea from the Indus to the Tigris and Euphrates, and if he succeeded, of forming a connection between the western empire and his new colonial empire in India.. . . The trade of India would be connected with that of Hither Asia, and wide perspectives opened to world-commerce throughout his Empire. (Wilcken 1967: 194)
The destruction of the cataracts (dams) in the Tigris was one element of that great plan, since it permitted accessibility to a river that the Persians had closed off to commerce (218, 255). For this and other reasons, Wilcken holds a view on Alexander that was already Droysen’s:
We see Alexander too as an economist who knew already what he was aiming at, when we recall what he has already related in detail about his development of trade and intercourse.. . . All these are achievements and designs of colossal dimensions, which display a genius at work, who intended to divert into the paths he regarded as right the world commerce of his world-empire. (255)
He returns to this notion in his last chapter, which is dedicated to the legacy of Alexander’s conquests:
The economic revolutions which have been described as brought about by Alexander’s conquest of Asia and Egypt, and which confronted the Greek merchant and industrialist in the East, in process of time increasingly influenced the economic development of Greece itself; the whole foundation indeed of Greek trade in the Mediterranean was changed. . .(293–4)
The power of conviction expressed by Wilcken in these analyses is even more notable in that he never ceased to insist on them throughout his career. They had already been clearly presented in a 1921 article, which made a lasting impression on the minds of historians: the study, which was explicitly in the same vein as Droysen’s (very often cited in the footnotes), seemed to establish with certitude the decisive role played by Alexander in the economic disruption of the world (Wilcken 1931: 349–61), the impact of which was followed by the author down to the evolutions of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Wilcken’s strong support, on the whole, would play a decisive role in relaying and legitimizing the thesis expressed a century earlier by Droysen.
The historiographical influence of Ulrich Wilcken’s vision was of an astonishingly fruitful kind. Even those who contested the existence of a minute and scrupulous design planned by Alexander were ready to admit that, “for centuries, the global economy of antiquity was determined by this twelve year work.”25 It would be easy to mention numerous later authors who cite him favorably. In 1939, R. Cohen, while admitting that “the documentary evidence is particularly rare and subject to almost contradictory interpretations” (434), brings forward very firm propositions regarding the politics of economic transformations conducted by Alexander:
To update procedures of a thousand years old culture: to plant in Asia the trees that have made the fortune of Greece; to install at the crossroads of trails marked by nature and local customs, citadels under the shade of which the merchants can peacefully trade; to fix canals that had become impassable; to improve the course of rivers; in short, to help everywhere in the development of prosperity. . . (1939b: 417)
The same author calls Alexander “a great economist” and concludes his account in the following manner: “What more is needed to assure him of an immense place in the history of universal economics?” (1939a: 248).26 In the same period, one can cite M. Rostovtzeff who, in his conclusion, specifically addresses the issue of the “reclaimed land” (1941: ii. 1160–2). Aside from the drainage works documented for Greece itself and the improvements conducted in Ptolemaic Egypt, Rostovtzeff did not fail, by citing Arrian, Aristobulus, Wilcken, and Cohen (iii. 1609 n. 96), to mention explicitly and as parallels the works undertaken by Alexander in Babylonia, including those on the Tigris (1160–1).
This very “modernist” point of view presented by both Droysen and Wilcken,27 taken and developed in the reference books on Alexander and/or on the ancient economy, was even more easily adopted since it was consistent with the vision of the world as seen through the history of European colonization. In this context, Alexander had been styled a model colonial, according to a very simple rationale: from Alexander to the present, Europe has brought economic progress to countries that had fallen into profound lethargy and were stuck in structural stagnation (see Briant 1979b). Among many other examples, let us simply cite V. Duruy’s assessment of Alexander’s economic achievements, from a manual for young students:
Commerce, the link between nations, developed on an immense scale and met with routes either new or pacified that Alexander had opened; – the ports, building sites, places of refuge or way stations that he had prepared; – the industry vividly solicited by these immense treasures previously sterile, now brought into circulation from the lavish hand of the conqueror. (Duruy 1858)
The vision of the conquest would also fit within a discipline that the French geographer Albert Demangeon would baptize in 1923 as “colonial geography,” starting from the example of the British empire.28 Here is how the author defines it, separating it from two other disciplines, history and regional geography:
Our main object is to study the effects arising from the contact between two types of peoples who are called upon to associate with each other in a colony: the one civilized, well provided with capital and material goods, in search of new wealth, thoroughly mobile, and alive to the spirit of enterprise and adventure, the strange and the unknown; the other isolated and self-centered, faithful to its ancient modes of living, with a limited outlook, and ill equipped with weapons and tools. Our task is to explain how the colonizing race has gone to work to exploit his new territory, to create wealth, and to rule and employ natives. . . (Demangeon 1925: 11–12)
The author introduces the chapter entitled “The Weapons of British Colonization” (105–50) as follows:
To colonize a country is to increase its trading capacity, to link it up with the world system of communications, to make its soil bring forth crops by giving it or restoring to it its fertility, to exploit its resources in the matter of labor, to break down those forces of inertia which hold it bound, and to inoculate its organism with the vital ferment prepared in the hothouses of Europe. (Demangeon 1925: 105)
The author studies successively: (1) means of transport; (2) irrigation works; (3) British capital; (4) scientific investigation and research. Of course, as indicated by item 3, Demangeon was not thinking about antiquity or Alexander. But what one sees is that the proposed conceptual framework adapts itself very well to the European vision of Alexander’s conquests: the development of means of transportation, the integration of the east into a global commercial network, the irrigation works that will increase tenfold the profitability of the land, and the enterprises of discovery. The words and expressions used by Demangeon are identical to those used by historians who like to present Alexander’s conquests as a scientific enterprise:
The power of material resources is not sufficient in itself to endow a colony with life. In most cases material exploitation needs to be directed by a preliminary process of methodological inquiry and scientific research. The art of colonization does not consist merely in the crude appropriations of wealth. It presupposes also an intellectual appropriation of the colonial territory, – a knowledge of the general conditions of relief, climate, flora, fauna, and inhabitants of the country in question. A man cannot live without knowledge of its surroundings and it is only when he has this knowledge that he can arrange and adapt them to its use. (Demangeon 1925: 119)
Demangeon’s definitions are not particularly original; fundamentally, they put into focus ideas and images that, since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the discipline of geography had already partially brought forward. Indeed, one cannot emphasize enough the role played by geography, and geographers and cartographers, in the process of making the geo-historiography of Alexander. The history of Alexander finds itself at the crossroads of the history of discoveries, the history of geography, the history of commerce, and the history of European colonization. The systematic nature of Demangeon’s study clearly demonstrates how this body of doctrine has now become largely accepted, including by historians who are interested in the conquests of Alexander and its consequences in economic terms.
IV
In a 1966 attempt to offer a synthesis of major recent studies, G. T. Griffith did not include any article that, in his eyes, would have contained new approaches to the matter of the profound transformations brought about by Alexander’s conquest. He clearly explained this in the volume’s introduction, and his reasons deserve to be cited in their entirety:
The administration of his empire, though our record of it is very defective, and consequently a subject for controversy, raises only one question that is absolutely vital, namely how far if all at all Alexander changed the system which he found existing in it already. The answer to this question goes some way, perhaps much of the way, towards answering how far if at all Alexander was a man of reflection and a planner, and not predominantly a man of action in war and of improvisation in the art of peace. This approach to him has not yet been made, so far as I know, in any study of a scope for inclusion in this selection (perhaps it is not possible); if it were possible, it would be a valuable step forwards arriving at our final view of the essential Alexander. (Griffith 1966: ix)
Forty years later, an overall evaluation risks not being much more optimistic. Having taken into account the bibliographical surveys published between 1950 and 1993 and the thematic volumes published in the past ten years,29 one can only state, in fact, that the economic consequences of the Macedonian conquest do not raise much interest among historians. It is not mentioned in the work of Seibert (1972),30 and one of the most recent manuals simply refers, with regard to these questions, to Wilcken 1931 and Rostovtzeff 1941 (Wiemer 2005: 176–7, 222), exactly as Schachermeyr had done thirty years before (1973: 534–5). The place that Wilcken’s book still occupies in the debate is entirely characteristic of the state of research. When, in 1974, E. N. Borza gathered studies revolving around the question of the fortunate and/or unfortunate consequences of Alexander’s conquest (“Civilizer or Destroyer”), he decided to introduce the question of the economic impact: to this end, once again Wilcken 1931 was introduced as the only one authoritative contributor (Borza 1974: 149–59: “The Economic View”). In implicit or explicit opposition to Wilcken and his modernist approach, other historians, not necessarily all with a Marxist31 orientation, have insisted on the conqueror’s ambitions, which were solely aimed at introducing levies, and thus insisted on the absence of any economic development.32 This, then, brings us back to the vision imposed by Grote more than a century earlier, while at the same time the new approach owes much to the disruption of the relations between Europe and the colonies after 1945 (Briant 2005b: 42–9).33
These reflections bring us back to the question of continuity and change. The traditional view of change has always been founded on two very closely linked elements: Achaemenid decadence and stagnation as opposed to the economic boom and development triggered by Alexander. It was accepted that the process of Greek revitalization was even more spectacular due to the fact that the Near East was in a state of total prostration. This view persisted as it allowed more forceful argument for the justification of an enterprise which, far from being limited to brutal conquest, was supposed to have brought progress to populations choked by a backward despotism (Briant 2003a: 116–26). Consequently, scholars considered that the peoples of the Persian empire had called for the conquest themselves: “The Near East was being prepared to accept any invader who would offer a firm and efficient administration” (e.g., Olmstead 1948: 487). In short, the history of “Achaemenid decline” and the theme of “oriental backwardness” in contrast to the Greek world is a captivating but overlooked chapter in the history of “orientalism” in the sense defined by Edward Said (see Briant 2000b).
The above study has also demonstrated the great conceptual rigidity of models and interpretations. One has the impression that the discussion is still going on around the same two alternatives sprung from the clash between Montesquieu/ Droysen and Grote, but already introduced by Plutarch in the De fortuna Alexandri: was Alexander simply a man of war or was he also a political visionary? Did he conquer the Achaemenid empire only for booty and to gather levies from its populations, or did he also have the vision of transforming, if only partially, certain elements of economic life in the countries of the Near East? Did the the Greco- Macedonians by taking control empty the riches of the conquered lands,34 or did Alexander, directly or indirectly, trigger a new economic lifestyle? So stated, the question will probably never receive an accurately founded response, because it clearly remains too narrowly focused on the personality of the conqueror, or indeed around his postulated demiurgic capacities.
Moreover, the documentation specifically covering the period 334–323 remains very inadequate. Even though attentive and critical rereading of the literary sources can still and always will provoke fruitful debates,35 it cannot respond to questions that the Classical authors never considered. And though, on the other hand, cuneiform documentation has shed new light on the relations between Alexander and the Babylonians,36 the small number of tablets dating to the reign of Alexander does not allow us to address the economic lifestyle of Babylon during the period 331–323, except in a partial way, focusing on isolated cases.37 As for archaeological documentation, it remains practically absent (with the notable exception of Macedonia).
The only usable extensive corpus is that of the numismatic documentation. Studies of money and coinage are good examples of what one might hope for in the future, focusing less on the explanation of isolated episodes38 rather than on general explanations situated in a longue durée context. The recent synthesis by G. Le Rider introduces essential points for historical reflection as it replaces the image of an Alexander deciding, right from the start, to unify all minting within his empire, with the image of an Alexander who, following the example of his Achaemenid predecessors, ordered the issue of an imperial coinage while preserving regional and local mintings (Le Rider 2003). Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered, not only on the quantitative magnitude of Alexander’s minting (Callatay 1989), but also on the impact that they had on economic life. Le Rider’s thesis undermines the narrow and almost mechanical link that has traditionally been established (since the eighteenth century) between money circulation and economic development. Furthermore, the knowledge that one has today of the daily and frequent use of weighed silver in Babylon in economic exchanges forces one to qualify also the opposition (expressed in the strictest terms by Droysen and his followers) between “a natural economy,” synonymous with stagnation (during the time of the Great Kings), and a “monetary economy,” synonymous with economic and commercial development (under the influence of Alexander’s conquest).39
Historians of Alexander must thus widen their scope of vision and use fully the advancements of Achaemenid historiography: it is in this manner that the documents from the time of Alexander, including the pieces of information offered by literary sources, will take on a new historical significance. This suggestion is not new, since one of the first scholars to plead for a scientific evaluation of the Achaemenid era was Michael Rostovtzeff in the many studies that he published in the early years of the twentieth century. In a review article, which first appeared in Russian in 1913,40 he emphasized that the history of the Hellenistic world could not be removed from the context of Near Eastern history in longue durée. In his opinion, there existed an urgent prerequisite which he formulated in the following terms:
To understand the fundamental organization of the great Persian Empire and, more importantly, to reach a detailed comprehension of the specifics of the reigns of each Persian satrap, in particular those of the satraps of Asia Minor and Syria, including Judea, the Arabic tribes, the Phoenician cities and the temple-states of northern Syria and the confines of Asia Minor, as well as the ancient centers of power, Assyria and Babylon. (1913 [1994]: 15–16)
The difference is that, today, our knowledge of the way the Achaemenid empire functioned, at the global level and in its regional variations, is much more precise. One can even say that at this point the historiography of Alexander can still progress, because it lies at the junction of two of the fields of research that have made the greatest progress in the last quarter-century: Macedonian history and Achaemenid history. The progress made in Achaemenid history allows, in particular, a review of the thesis of stagnation, aided by tools that are of much greater diagnostic value than those used in decades past.
No one thinks that an “economic history of Alexander’s reign” will ever be written, or that a synthesis on the economic transformations generated in the short term by the Macedonian conquest can be given. Still, significant progress is conceivable, with two conditions: one has, on the one hand, to liberate oneself from preconceived models and from theories that lack any basis in documentary evidence, and, on the other hand, to integrate reflections on Alexander into the context of both the Macedonian and the Achaemenid longue durée. As I have often insisted, posing the problem in its fullest extent requires its examination from the wider perspective of the transition from the Achaemenid empire to the Hellenistic kingdoms.41 In other terms, one must “break” the predetermined, even overdetermined, periodization centered on the year 334, and approach the history of Alexander as part of a historical period that had its own dynamic, one that encompasses the entire second half of the fourth century in an area spanning from the Indus to the Balkans.
1 On this progress, see my assessments, 2003c and BHAch I.
2 See, e.g., Shaked 2004 and the papers in Briant and Joannés 2006.
3 See in particular Briant 2000b, 2003d, 2005–6, 2006a; HPE 1007–8. In his recent article (kindly given me by the author), Lane Fox 2006 offers a counter-argument to my past studies, including skeptical remarks on the expression I used in 1979 (“the last of the Achemenids”); but I had already emphasized that it was just a metaphor.
4 I explored the eighteenth-century historiography of Alexander in my lectures at the Collége de France in 2004–5 (see 2005d), to which I have returned. See Briant 2005a, 2006c, 2007a, 2007b.
5 See, inter alia, Borza 1967: xii: “It may be said that modern scholarship began in 1833 with the initial publication of a biography by Johann Gustav Droysen. Droysen was a product of a nineteenth century school of German historiography which had developed the principles of modern critical method.” In fact, Droysen is also the conscious heir of the discussions and reflections that had been going on about Alexander in Europe since the Enlightenment (see Briant 2005a, 2005–6, 2006c).
6 On Bikerman’s review article, too often omitted in recent studies, see my comments in Briant 2005b: 42–9.
7 See in particular Briant 2005a, 2005b, 2005–6, 2006c.
8 See Hdt. 5.49 and my discussion in HPE 691–876.
9 Rollin 1821: vi. 346–71; see Briant 2003d.
10 On the forgotten place of Huet in the historiography of Alexander, see in particular Larrére 2002; Briant 2006c: 17–26; among many other works of the same type, see Schlözer 1761; Ameilhon 1766; Berghaus 1797.
11 See Volpilhac-Auger 2002; Briant 2005–6.
12 For Huet, the explanation must be sought in the constraints imposed on the Persians in defending immense frontiers; for Montesquieu, religious precepts prohibited the Persians from dedicating themselves to the navigation of rivers and the sea (an explanation endorsed later on only by W. Robertson 1791: 201): see Briant 2006c: 20–33.
13 Contrary to Huet, Montesquieu did not consider that Alexander was fighting for the monarchie universelle: see Volpilhac-Auger 2002 and Larrere 2002.
14 Montesquieu 1989: 364–7.
15 This image is already in place with Ramusio in 1563.
16 See also the commentaries of Heeren (1830: 357 and n. 1): “[Nearchus] gave us an exact description that is still used to this day by navigators. . . . This comparison of relations by the English captains and the accounts of Alexander’s admiral that were advantageous to the latter: it has confirmed almost every detail.”
17 See Briant 2001b. The first author to use Polybius in the same sense was Montesquieu 1989: 289; see Briant 2007b.
18 I am working from the French translation of 1883 (published in a German edition 1877: ii. 255–7; 290–8); on this point, the 1877 text has almost no changes from that of 1833 (507–9; 538–45).
19 The text (2.32) is also cited in the 1833 edition: 541–2; on its place in more recent discussions see HPE 364–5, 453; Le Rider 2003: 303–10.
20 Schlosser 1828: 2: “Alexander, one can say, tipped a bronze column that was an edict to this subject; but it was no doubt due to simply to the fact that the edict was unreasonable, and not to disprove the luxu- riousness of the Persian kings.” For this passage of Polyaenus, see HPE 286–92 and Amigues 2003.
21 See also Droysen 1833: 537; 1877: ii. 294; on the Droysenian concept of monetary circulation and its links with the economic theories of the eighteenth century, see the comments in Briant 2005d: 593–4.
22 See the interesting example offered by the popular book by J. Abbott still in print today: “He was, throughout most of his career, a destroyer. He roamed over the world to interrupt commerce, to break in upon and to disturb the peaceful pursuits of industry, to batter down city walls, and burn dwellings, and kill men” (Abbott 1848: 162).
23 On these two authors and their context and thoughts on Alexander, see Briant 2005b: 18–27.
24 See the short presentation by Borza 1967: xix-xxi.
25 As expressed by P. Roussel (1932: 53) in his overlapping reviews of Wilcken 1931 and Radet 1931, where he calls into question “the systematic characterization” of the administrative organization of the empire postulated by Wilcken; precisely as Radet had done (1931: 413, 422), Roussel cited Montesquieu and the rational image he gave of Alexander (Montesquieu 1989: 148–51), but, altogether, he neverthe¬less felt that many of Alexander’s decisions “escape . . . analysis” (60).
26 In these two cases, Cohen refers to Wilcken (Cohen 1939a: 246 n. 145, 247 n. 156; 1939b: 434–5).
27 For Droysen’s modern vision of the economy, see the apt comments by Bravo 1968: 355–7.
28 Demangeon’s work (1923) was translated immediately into English by E. F. Row, without any change (Demangeon 1925: 5); that translation is cited here.
29 See bibliographical references in Briant 2005c: 124–5, and Wiemer 2005.
30 The same is true for Lane Fox 2006, though it is explicitly dedicated to the problem of the imperial succession from the Achaemenids to Alexander.
31 See, e.g., the discussion by Kreissig 1982: 62–74 that, also in citing Finley (64), denounced in many different ways the conclusions found in “bourgeois historiography.” For the Marxist point of view, see Jahne 1978 (a discussion based on a combined review of the works of the Russian scholar Shofman 1976, Schachermeyr 1973, Wirth 1973, and Seibert 1972).
32 See, e.g., Welles’s formula: “Alexander’s economy was like that of Republican Rome, based on plunder. War was his source of profit and income . . . He was not concerned with the needs of a trader” (Welles 1965: 226 = Borza 1974: 140).
33 For my own position, see Briant 1982: 475–89 (where I argue against the thesis of “Asian stagna¬tion” cherished by Marx), and, most recently, Briant 2005c: 73–84 (with a few changes from the 1st edn. of 1974).
34 See, e.g., Bosworth 2000b: 49: “The conquerors created a desert and called it empire” (the author explicitly places himself in the tradition of Niebuhr and Grote: see Briant 2005b: 49–62).
35 See the debate, ongoing since 1775, on the consequences of the destruction of the cataracts in the Tigris by Alexander – fortunate in the eyes of some (reopening of navigable routes), detrimental for others (suppression of instruments to regulate the flow of water); see also Briant 2006c: 43–67 and 2008.
36 See Briant 2003a: 79–84, 562–5, with bibliography.
37 See the various papers bearing on this region in Briant and Joannés 2006.
38 On this reservation see Briant 2003a: 52–61, 71–7, 563–4.
39 See now the discussion by Le Rider and de Callatay 2006, with my remarks in Briant 2006a: 314–16.
40 The article was translated into Italian in 1994, preceded by an introduction by A. Marcone. On Rostovtzeff’s place in the historiography of the transition from Achemenids to the Hellenistic kings, see Briant 2000b: 32–4.
41 See most recently Briant 2006a, 2006c, and Briant and Joannes 2006.