Ancient Greek Trade And Commerce

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Trade and commerce in the archaic Greek world established itself through many means, including political institutions that would control areas such as Emporia, city state economy, and would establish and enforce commercial laws and regulations. Despite this, trade and commerce can also be discussed as being prevalent in other areas such as gift-giving and plundering from warfare during this period. Due to this, the argument can be established of to what extent was trade and commerce regulated by political institutions in the archaic period. Firstly, trade and commerce can be identified as being regulated by polis institutions through city state economy and the Agora, which was a central marketplace within the polis where people gathered. Within the Agora, artisans and craftsmen could sell the goods they produced and commercial activities could occur, including buying, selling, and exchange of goods. Herodotus suggests this when …show more content…

This is because even though city-states did not have extensive regulatory frameworks that controlled trade and commerce, they instead developed informal customs, such as gift-giving, and marketplaces which allowed for some form of regulation to still occur via the polis. Because of this, it can be argued that trade and commerce were regulated by political institutions to a certain extent, but not to the same level as a modern economy would as they simply did not have the means to do so during the archaic period. It can also be argued that primary sources such as (Herodotus Histories, and (Homer Odyssey), help enforce the concept that social and cultural customs also had a significant role in regulating both trade and commerce at the time, as both sources show practices of gift-giving and hospitality as significantly important topics which regulated a lot of the archaic

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