Book dossier

The Mediterranean tradition in economic thought

by Louis Baeck

The Mediterranean Tradition in Economic Thought surveys the development of this tradition over four millennia. It considers the economic context of the scriptures of the Mesopotamian civilizations, Pharaonic Egypt and the Biblical peoples and the contributions of the Greeks and Romans, and their influence on Islamic civilization and on the Medieval scholastics. The flowering of the school of Salamanca as recently as the seventeenth century demonstrates how long-lived the tradition was, and throughout, the author demonstrates how these ideas continue to survive and resurface, citing the renewed interest in the ethical dimension of economics, the revival of interest in the history of Islamic thought, and the re-emergence of Slavophile doctrines in contemporary Russia. It has become commonplace to consider economic thought as if it were almost entirely an Anglo-American affair, with only cursory references to economic thinking before Adam Smith. However, each of the civilizations that flourished in the Mediterranean basin long before the rise of the Atlantic economies left a rich legacy of thinking on economic affairs. This tradition is rooted in politics, ethics and religion: it was a more complete view than ours.