On Provincial Taxes And Taxation Of The Roman Empire

The territorial expansion extended Rome to a multi-ethnic,multi-religious,multilingual and multi-cultural power in the Mediterranean world.The victory of the First Punic war made Sicily the first Roman province from a true sense.After Augustus established the Roman Empire,Rome continued to expand to the outside world.During the reign of Emperor Trajan,the Roman Empire mounted to its peak,the economic prosperity was unprecedented,and the territory was the largest.To sustain such a large empire and operate the ruling machine,Rome has to feed well its huge army,bureaucracy and large population,all of which are to be supported by the national finance contributed mainly by provincial taxation revenues.As the Empire’s carefully crafted military defense,ties of trade and cultural exchange between East and West,Near Eastern provinces serve as an important source of finance.The supreme rulers of the empire constantly reformed the taxation system,developed new taxes,perfected the relevant institutions,and promoted the provincial tax income to meet economic needs.With the outbreak of the crisis in the third century,the provincial taxation increased,the currency devaluated,together with internal and external troubles,the Roman Empire finally went down on to the path of collapse.This dissertation will explore the tax-related issues,and the structure is arranged as follows:The first part is Introduction,from the basis and significance of the topic,moving on to the necessity and value of the research,then followed methodology and the main historical materials.Before the end,the published achievements and current situation in the field are summarized in the literature review section.Chapter I is background information.There is great necessity to outline the connotation,origin and development of the concept “provincia”,the foundation of Near Eastern provinces,as well as the provincial taxation in Roman Republic period,including taxation in the earliest Roman province Sicily,and also the mining revenues from Spain,for which the Italians were exempted from direct taxes.Chapter II discusses provincial taxation policies and management from the central Empire level.This part starts from a reference to the existing research results,and,by means of defining terms relating to tribute and tax in the Roman period,brings out the modern division of “direct tax” and “indirect tax” in classical economic history;then it dwells on the dispute of how the provincial tax was levied,only to shed some light on whether the taxation was fully monetized by that time.Afterwards,the writer probes the important concept of “Ius Italicum” and explains the tax privileges enjoyed by native Romans,also the term “publicanus” is thrown out and a brief comment is made on it;before the end,several important stages in the taxation history of the Roman Empire are highlighted,because the study tries to reveal the policy changes by reigns.Chapter III sees Near Eastern Egypt as a special case in provincial taxation research because of the relatively rich materials passing down from that region.This chapter explores the connection and difference of taxation policy between Ptolemaic period and Roman period,the basis and management of Egyptian taxation,types and forms of taxes in Egypt,and then going further to the Eygptian taxation in the later Empire.Another consideration in “isolating” Egypt is,for reference,to a horizontal study among provinces.Chapter IV is about taxes and taxation in the other Near Eastern provinces within the empire,including Syria and Judea.The precious inscriptions on customs laws from Palmyra and Asia definitely help to reveal the features of provincial taxation.Chapter V is provincial taxation and the Roman Empire,which clarifies the role and impact of provincial taxation on imperial society,the positive side from the corn and money supply,political and military importance,macro-economic value,to its influence on system construction,the negative side from an overall analysis on the problems existed in the system,this section tries to answer the question that whether heavy provincial taxation is the root for the empire’s final collapse.The Conclusion,a short appendix,bibliographies and the author’s postscript jointly form the end of the dissertation.