ABSTRACT
Justifications for the study of historical economics abound in the relatively small field of the history of economic thought. Perhaps this was a reaction to its declining importance in the teaching of modern economics. Any examination of the ideas that have come to form modern economic science must begin where western civilization itself began, in ancient Greece. The Greeks were remarkable both in their influence on western ideas, and on their ability to maintain a powerful civilization for so long. After the fall of the Roman Empire, European political and economic structures shifted to deal with the new reality. During this time, the political system of feudalism and the economic system of manorialism emerged. The feudal structure was thus one in which the local lords performed the legal and administrative functions that would later be subsumed under the nation-states.
