This book explores a new perspective for understanding the Roman world, using connectivity as a major point of departure. Globalisation is apparent in increased flows of objects, people and ideas and in the creation of translocal consciousness in everyday life. Based on these criteria, there is a case for globalisation in the ancient Roman world. Essential for anyone interested in Romanisation, this volume provides the first sustained critical exploration of globalisation theories in Roman archaeology and history. It is written by an international group of scholars who address a broad range of subjects, including Roman imperialism, economics, consumption, urbanism, migration, visual culture and heritage. The contributors explore the implications of understanding material culture in an interconnected Roman world, highlighting several novel directions for future research.

This book applies modern theories of globalisation to the ancient Roman world, creating new understandings of Roman archaeology and history. This is the first book to intensely scrutinize the subject through a team of international specialists studying a wide range of topics, including imperialism, economics, migration, urbanism and art.

A study of identity and social change in the Roman empire and the relationship of this knowledge to understanding of the contemporary world.

Modern America owes the Roman Empire for more than gladiator movies and the architecture of the nation's Capitol. It can also thank the ancient republic for some helpful lessons in globalization. So argues economic historian Harold James in this masterful work of intellectual history. The book addresses what James terms "the Roman dilemma"--the paradoxical notion that while global society depends on a system of rules for building peace and prosperity, this system inevitably leads to domestic clashes, international rivalry, and even wars. As it did in ancient Rome, James argues, a rule-based world order eventually subverts and destroys itself, creating the need for imperial action. The result is a continuous fluctuation between pacification and the breakdown of domestic order. James summons this argument, first put forth more than two centuries ago in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to put current events into perspective. The world now finds itself staggering between a set of internationally negotiated trading rules and exchange--rate regimes, and the enforcement practiced by a sometimes-imperial America. These two forces--liberal international order and empire--will one day feed on each other to create a shakeup in global relations, James predicts. To reinforce his point, he invokes the familiar bon mot once applied to the British Empire: "When Britain could not rule the waves, it waived the rules." ? Despite the pessimistic prognostications of Smith and Gibbon, who saw no way out of this dilemma, James ends his book on a less depressing note. He includes a chapter on one possible way in which the world could resolve the Roman Predicament--by opting for a global system based on values as opposed to rules.

The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global history and globalisation theories by Roman historians and archaeologists (Pitts and Versluys 2014, Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture). This approach highlights the characteristics of the Roman Empire as an interconnected world, where numerous cultural, economic, and religious exchanges took place, creating everywhere a common cultural veneer considered as 'Roman'. According to these theories, during the Roman period the Mediterranean knew a high level of economic, cultural, technological, juridical, and religious connection. What happened when these connections were partially interrupted by a 'crisis' period? This book aims to challenge the concepts of globalisation in the Roman Empire, analysing the periods of 'crisis' and 'recovery' between the 3rd and the 5th century CE. Modern scholarship usually assumes that this connectivity came to an abrupt interruption during a period of crisis (Hekster, de Kleijn and Slootjes 2007, Crises and the Roman Empire; Klooster and Kuin 2020, After the Crisis: Remembrance, Re-anchoring and Recovery in Ancient Greece and Rome). Despite abundant scholarly works on the subject, no satisfactory and shared theory of crisis exists. Combining globalisation and crisis as objects of analysis, we aim to explore whether the diverse range of trading and cultural connections - implied by globalisation theories - would continue or be disrupted once the imperial world supposedly almost collapsed. The discussion follows a number of principal themes, including the transformations of the Roman Empire, the nature of interconnections between Rome and its provinces, the creation of new forms of connection, and the development of new identities. Whether 'crisis' and 'recovery' are the appropriate words to describe these phenomena is one of our main concerns: how can we theoretically define the concepts of 'crisis' and 'recovery'? How were these two concepts related to each other? Shall we use these terms to define the phenomena that affected the Roman Empire between the 3rd and the 5th century CE? Despite being apparently opposite phenomena, crisis and connectivity were both characterising the later phase of the Roman Empire. Our aim is to collect a number of essays that will address these complex phenomena from different points of view. Contributions may regard, but are not limited to: Economics, politics, military issues, material and immaterial connections across the Roman Empire; analysis of changes in these areas and how fast they happened; finally, whether globalisation and crisis were two phenomena mirroring each other and to what extent was (or was not) a global empire more prone to experience a global crisis.

In this volume, papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists discuss trade within the Roman Empire and beyond its frontiers between c.100 BC and AD 350, focusing especially on the role of the Roman state in shaping the institutional framework for trade. As part of a novel interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the chapters address its myriad facets on the basis of broadly different sources of evidence - historical, papyrological, andarchaeological - demonstrating how collaborations with the elite holders of wealth within the empire fundamentally changed its political character in the longer term.