Agrarian Origins of Management Ideology: The Roman and Antebellum Cases

Abstract

Drawing on archival materials from the Roman Republic and US antebellum South, this paper challenges the distinction between research on `modern' and `pre-modern' management thought, where the former commonly entails a critical analysis of management thinking within a social context and the latter offers documentation of past knowledge and practices. Contrary to this division, we offer a critical analysis of management discourse taking place in agrarian societies based on chattel slavery. In the late Roman Republic and early empire, the patrician elite confronted challenges to their large-scale land ownership, run by hired managers upon the landlord's absence. In the antebellum South, following the Nat Turner revolt, plantation owners staved off threats from abolitionism and Northern political activists. These challenges led to a considerable effort devoted to the elaboration of principles regarding the private management of unfree labor. Texts not only provided practical managerial advice, but also promoted an ideology supportive of the labor arrangements in dispute. We conclude by pointing to the relevance of these case studies from both an historical and a contemporary perspective.