PAX ROMANA! Tariffs & Open Borders in the Imperial Age

If you were a lowly plebeian, just trying to eke out a living in the rough-and-tumble world of Rome, globalization was about as much fun as a Bushwick Vegan Spoken Word recital

A wave of far-right movements has been sweeping across the industrialized world, much to the intelligentsia’s consternation. From the baffling rise of Trumpism to the French National Front, to the Brothers of Italy (who, despite their name, are not a charming Italian boy band), this phenomenon has been commonly framed as a backlash to the most modern of inconveniences: globalization and its discontents, ranging from the scourge of free trade to the invasion of mass migration to the slow but inevitable erosion of national culture.

Yet to understand the backlash, it won’t suffice to look at 2020 or 2016. You gotta back to 50 BC.

The Roman Empire, that august exemplar of ancient globalization, is often praised for its Pax Romana - that period of relative peace and stability ushered in by Rome's military might. Pax Romana, it is argued, facilitated an unprecedented flourishing of trade, cultural exchange, and economic integration across the Mediterranean world and beyond. The empire's legendary network of roads, like so many capillaries, carried the lifeblood of commerce to every corner of the Roman domain.

At first blush, this narrative of Roman globalization as an unalloyed good, a rising tide that lifted all boats, seems unassailable. The empire's territorial expansion opened up vast new markets for Roman goods, while the influx of tribute and slaves from conquered lands swelled Rome's coffers and labor force. The Eternal City itself, with its teeming forums and grand edifices, stood as a shining testament to the wealth and grandeur that imperial globalization could bestow.

On the one hand, everyone - in theory - could trade and travel and enjoy exotic goods from far-flung corners of the empire. And sure, that was all good and jolly if you were some wealthy patrician lounging about in your Etruscan villa, sipping diluted wine from Gaul and munching on figs and garum (an ancient Roman pungant fish sauce, the ketchup of its time). It was the same discourse around trickle-down-economics. And much like today, not much trickled down. Not even the fig and afternoon orgies.

You see, if you were a lowly plebeian, just