Roman Professional collegia and Economic Control: A Monopoly of Information?

Abstract

Most of the time, professional associations of the Roman West had no legal monopolies on a specific economic activity. Yet, they exercised a form of economic control, which is difficult to challenge but also to define precisely. To what extent did the control exercised by associations over economic life regard information? If a so-called de facto monopoly on activities existed, to what extent did it result from an unequal access to information, which depended on membership or non-membership in a professional association? This paper considers from this perspective two trading communities attested during the second and early third centuries: the corpus splendidissimum Cisalpinorum et Transalpinorum, an association of merchants from both sides of the Alps, and long-distance merchants trading olive oil from the province of Baetica. Roman collegia were able to foster and facilitate exchanges of information amongst traders, about multiple and, sometimes, complex commercial patterns. Yet associations offered integration to their members, just as much as they organised exclusion of outsiders. Furthermore a narrow elite of dignitaries dominated Roman collegia, through family networks. As a result, information was also a resource controlled by the most powerful members. Trading communities were structured in concentric circles. Traders went into partnership with their closest colleagues. Many of them belonged to a broader network, which was itself a part of an association. At each level, merchants would have defined what they kept for themselves and what they shared outside the circle. But which information did they share or not? The knowledge of diverse and reliable economic partners, with whom merchants had to get in contact, was crucial. Some associations’ members had a particular expertise on producers, transporters or public officers that they could share with peers. They played a pivotal rule between collegia representing different occupations.