Alright, alright, now that I’m awake and fed and done my daily posts, I can satisfy your curiosities at least a little bit. I didn’t think there would be so many people asking, I just picked a random obscure Roman topic. XD

So, North Africa was, during the Roman Empire, a major commercial and agricultural hub. It was, in fact, the second-richest province in the Western half of the Empire, just behind Italy itself. The reasons for this are numerous, but two of the biggest were grain export (as the city of Rome, in particular, was a massive market for wheat), and olive oil export. Olive oil in the Roman Empire was extremely important - not just in cuisine (a staple for rich and poor, legionary and civilian, Britain to Syria), but also as lamp fuel, lubricant for wheels and machinery, bathing (it was scraped off the skin with a special tool), sunscreen for athletes, cosmetics, and even as medicine (though perhaps the Roman conception of food as having medical properties makes this less surprising than it would otherwise be).

Notably, there’s extensive evidence for both large-scale olive oil processing by elites with access to significant amounts of capital as well as fairly primitive homestead-presses from well-off freeman farmers that nonetheless are thought to have been able to produce a considerable surplus for export (at least, considerable from the point of view of a single village).

While the resulting mash often remained locally, being used for animal feed, fertilizer, or fuel, the olive oil itself, of varying grades and quantities, was exported all across the Empire. That North African pottery was also produced on a massive scale for export helped - both ‘mid-grade’ African Red Slip (what a well-off peasant or day-laborer might bring out as tableware when the in-laws come 'round) and utilitarian clay amphorae for transport.

Many of the places the olive oil would be exported to, like Italy, Spain, and Syria, were suitable climates for growing olives themselves - it was not an absolute inability to acquire olive oil locally that drove this trade, but comparative advantage - that, even including transport costs, it was more profitable for these regions to acquire at least some of their olive oil from far-off Africa than try to produce all of it themselves at the expense of other uses for the land. Olive oil also has the advantage of keeping for a good bit of time, unlike foodstuffs which rot quickly and can only be transported a short distance by cart or sailing ship.

The apparatus of the Empire itself found an interest in encouraging this trade, though the primary concern was usually grain for the ever-hungry city of Rome, which may have numbered a million(!) people at the time. There is widespread evidence of free distribution of ‘waste’ (uncultivated but theoretically arable) land by the Imperial apparatus to North African farmers simply for pledging to make agricultural use of the land.

There was a study I read a bit back which identified hundreds of olive oil mills in modern-day Libya that were primarily active during the Greek and Roman periods, not for sustained periods afterwards. In other words, in the Greek and Roman periods, North Africa was producing considerably more olive oil than it would for hundreds of years after the decline of Roman power. Olive oil is more reliant on stability than other common crops - olive trees need years to mature, during which the farmer is financially vulnerable. And if unrest or disaster causes the destruction of some or all of the orchard, that’s 5-10 years down the drain for nothing.

After the Arab invasions in the 7th century AD, much of this productive capacity was lost - not necessarily because of any particular failings on the part of the new rulers, but simply because long-distance trade before the modern day is always in very fragile equilibrium, and “What was once under the control of one polity is now split between two intermittently hostile polities” is not conducive to trade. The stability, security, and economy of scale (particularly regarding the size of the market) enjoyed under the Empire (admittedly in decline at that point anyway) was washed away by the winds of political upheaval. C’est la vie!

I could say more, but this is already long and there’s a thunderstorm and I don’t want to lose all of this, so I’ll end it here. XD

@Admax@lemmy.world @SnortsGarlicPowder@lemmy.zip @otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com @HKPiax@lemmy.world @PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zone

PugJesus casually threatening us with a good time. Joke’s on you, I’m into that shit!

I just started teaching German, which is so freeing because I finally feel like my bizarro grammar obsession is not only useful, but also welcome. The other aspects of my audhd are not as great while teaching, but you can’t win them all.

Okay but now I wanna hear about the economics of olive oil press in Roman Africa…

Why do I hear boss music