ABSTRACT
Embarking on any study of poverty in the pre-modern world is challenging. First, historians have relatively few sources upon which to base their investigations. In many of the world’s societies, statistics, like the concept of material poverty itself, is a relatively new idea. This, unfortunately, limits the detail and depth of our understanding; the farther back in time we search, the more tentative our conclusions must be. With few exceptions, most scholars must content themselves with studying broad, sweeping causes without achieving clear indications of the scope and extent of poverty within given societies. Conditions improve only slightly when the focus shifts to the various explanations and strategies that each community devised in the face of need and want. Elites, and the states they served, were far more interested in detailing their own actions and thoughts, particularly if these reflected well on their sense of generosity and piety. But even given their limitations, the written records are spotty and reflect the attitudes of only a small minority of the world’s pre-modern population; rarely do they indicate how the majority lived and experienced hardship. Second, beyond the source deficiencies, the study of poverty in the pre-modern world is complicated by significant diversity. Before the sixteenth century, both the causes of poverty and the reactions it inspired were primarily rooted in the internal dynamics of individual civilizations and their immediate surroundings. The fledgling, far-flung networks of trade that joined the Afro-Eurasian landmass together into one “world” system were weak and had little impact upon how most of the world’s societies functioned, let alone how their people lived their lives. As a result, the history of poverty during these centuries must be sought in the different socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts that emerged in each civilization, especially their systems of resource allocation and their religious precepts and institutions.
