Thus much of the intellectual and political energy of sixteenth-century Europe was consumed by the religious and dynastic warfare that racked the continent until the peace of exhaustion at the end of the century. Set against this background, it is easy to see why European expansion was a meagre threat to the Islamic empires or the great states in E

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This tremendous growth came about, in significant part, because of a rather revolutionary reform to the taxation policies of the realm.

As of 100 CE, the Roman and Han empires each had a population of around 60 million, and the Indian subcontinent had roughly the same or perhaps slightly more. The population of Parthia might be guessed at around 15 million. Combined, these regions were home to perhaps 200 million of the estimated 225 million world population. The populations of sub

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According to these calculations, the number of coins being minted in the late 60s BCE fell so sharply that there were fewer overall in circulation than there had been a few years before. The reasons for this we cannot reconstruct. Like most states before the eighteenth century or even later, Rome had no monetary policy as such, nor any financial in

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