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.This wasless an empire than a single large and over-arching territorial state;and its mode o f extra-economic exploitation was less like what wethink o f as colonial exploitation than like the direct exploitation ofpeasants by a tax/office state, which in another form existed even in,say, absolutist France.Like other empires ruled by central bureaucracies, the Chineseimperial state always confronted a dilemma: the direct reach of thecentral state was necessarily limited, while the means by which thatreach could be extended - a proliferation o f officers with localadministrative and fiscal powers - always threatened to create localpower centres and dynasties that might challenge the central imperialpower.This tension no doubt limited the state s imperial ambitions.The Romans were not similarly inhibited.In keeping with itsown specific social property relations at home, the Roman Republic,dominated by a self-governing aristocracy o f landowners, made avirtue o f necessity in its project o f imperial expansion, by mobilizing,and even creating, landed aristocracies elsewhere as an instrument ofempire from the start.They embarked on a ruthless programme ofterritorial expansion, a massive land-grabbing operation.The transition from republic to empire certainly required the development ofa complex imperial state.But even after the republic was replaced byimperial rule and bureaucracy, the Romans administered theirempire with a relatively small central state, through what amountedto a wide-ranging coalition o f local landed aristocracies, with thehelp o f Roman colonists and colonial administrators. The Empi re of Property 29If the redistributive kingdom o f the ancient world was thefoundation o f other great non-capitalist empires, the basis o f theRoman Empire was a very different social and political form.Theancient Greek and Roman states were city-states governed not bymonarchies or bureaucracies but by self-governing communities ofcitizens, with varying degrees of inclusiveness.The state apparatuswas minimal, and the governing bodies were assemblies o f one kindor another, with relatively few standing offices.Although peasants aswell as landlords were citizens in, for instance, both Athens andRome, the balance of relations between rich and poor, large landowners and peasants, varied and was reflected in different politicaldispensations, such as the democracy in Athens or the aristocraticrepublic in Rome.But in all cases, land, not state office, was theprincipal source o f wealth; and taxation was never the problem forGreek and Roman peasant-citizens that it has been for other peasantsthroughout history.At the same time, the peasants relative freedomfrom dependence, protected even in aristocratic Rome by their civicstatus as citizens o f the city-state, encouraged the development ofslavery as an alternative source o f surplus labour for largerlandowners.The city-state or polis became the basis o f the Hellenistic empire,which created a new kind o f imperial hierarchy.Here, although therewas a monarchical centre, the hierarchy descended from the monarchto the city, dominated by a local aristocracy o f private landholders,who often had land grants from the monarch.The Romans essentially took over this form o f imperial rule, adopting its municipalstructure.Although in the East the Empire tended to be superimposed on already well developed political and economic institutions,the western parts o f the Empire were reshaped by this municipalform o f organization.But while the polis in ancient Athens had beenremarkable for its democracy, the Romans, in keeping with their 3 0 Empi re of Capi talaristocratic base at home, used the municipal form (even in ruralareas with no real urban centre) to organize and strengthen localaristocracies.In fact, where no sufficiently dominant propertied classexisted, the Romans were likely to create one; and everywhere theyencouraged the development of Romanized local propertied elites.The material base o f the Empire was correspondingly distinctive.The growth o f slavery certainly marked out the Roman Empire fromother great empires.But, although slavery became very important inthe imperial homeland, it never dominated the Empire as a whole;and throughout Rome s imperial history, peasants probably stillremained the majority o f the population outside Rome itself.Thereis certainly a sense in which the peasantry was no less the basis ofthe Roman empire than it was o f the Chinese imperial state, butpeasants played a very different role in Rome than they did in China.In many parts of the Empire, local peasantries continued to playtheir traditional role as producers of surplus labour for landlord andstate, by means o f rent and tax, especially in those regions in theeastern Empire and North Africa where the Romans largely tookover already well developed political and economic structures.Butthe Roman peasant himself was a different story.He was the militarybackbone o f Rome s imperial expansion.Many peasants experiencedexploitation more as soldiers than as rent-producers or taxpayers,and their creation o f the empire was the principal means by whichthey enriched their aristocratic compatriots
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