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The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets resources

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2 I N T R O D U C T I O N must direct continuous, urgent attention to achieving profi table sales. Th at characteristic distinguishes businesses from all other enterprises. Th t fi rst arose in Mesopo- e concept and possibility of selling at a profi tamia about fi e mentality and skills essential to ve thousand years ago. Th business operations developed in the Middle Eastern states, as did govern- mental accomplishments that expanded trade and other business activities (part 1). But it took the Greek combination of coins and markets to make busi- ness more than a marginal activity. From the sixth century b . c . e . an entre- preneurial market system became central to the urban economy of Athens and other democratic city-states. By 200 b . c . e . Alexander the Great and his followers had spread this economic system to hundreds of cities through- out Western Asia and the Mediterranean region (part 2). Roman sources provide most of what we know about early business operations, including Roman blacksmith shops. Th e Romans favored cit- ies with entrepreneurial market systems and established them in the parts of Africa and Western Europe they conquered. Th ey invented multi- national business corporations, and between 200 b . c . e . and 200 c . e . their empire’s favorable business environment allowed fi rms to attain consider- able infl uence and importance. During that same period, from Roman Judea came Hillel and Jesus with their humanistic teachings, the Christian church, and the complete dispersal of Jewish communities throughout the Eurasian landmass. Th uence later ese developments would strongly infl European business and provide moral justifi cation for the consumerism that characterizes modern economies. Aft er 200 c . e . Roman business de- clined, but the nexus between money, markets, and business remained fi rmly established (part 3). For each part, I have asked a similar set of questions: What were the main businesses? How did they operate? What was business’s role in the economy? What was the nature of business labor? How were business people regarded? In short, what was new about business, and why so? To address such questions, we must range far beyond an account of business itself to account for impersonal forces that aff ected the business environment, such as climate, geography, and technology. To quote the editors of a grand recent survey of Greco-Roman economic history, this account like theirs “recognizes that classical antiquity saw one of the stron- gest economic effl orescences in premodern history but keeps this perspec- tive, refusing to confuse the ancient economy with the modern. In short, it

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