Economy
The east-west Roman roads carried a variety of commodities: wine, manufactures, and luxury goods from the coast; metals, cattle, timber, wool, skins and leather from the interior. This economic development made it possible for the creation of the Empire. Important roads were the ancient Roman Via Militaris, Via Egnatia, the Via de Zenta, and the Kopaonik road among others. Ragusan merchants in particular had trading privileges throughout the realm.
Srebrenica, Rudnik, Trepca, Novo Brdo, Kopaonik, Majdanpek, Brskovo and Samokov were the main centers of the mining of iron, copper and lead ores, and silver and gold placers. The silver mines provided much of the royal income, and were worked by slave-labour, managed by Saxons. A colony of Saxons worked the Novo Brdo mines and traded charcoal burners. The silver mines processed an annual 0.5 million dollars (1919 comparation). In East Serbia were mainly copper mines.
The currency used was called dinars, an alternative name was perper, derived from the Byzantine hyperpyron. The golden dinar was the largest unit; the imperial tax was one dinar coin, per house, annually.
Read more about this topic: Serbian Empire
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)