Random Riches

Gambling Past & Present

Manfred Zollinger, Manfred Zollinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317071556
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Europäische Geschichte des Mittelalters

Gambling is a fascinating subject which for many centuries has attracted public interest. Yet, despite its ubiquity, gambling (or gaming) leads a marginal existence within the boundaries of scholarly research. Providing a longue duree survey, this volume promotes a historical understanding of the subject enriched with a diverse academic approach that draws upon sociology, economics and psychology.

Each chapter in the collection is the work of a renowned scholar with a long standing interest in gambling research. The contributions offer historical analyses of the medieval origins of the 'Gambler State' and of mathematical risk calculation. They cast light on the roles of different stakeholders in gambling including the playing public, business, and the state. They provide a controversial discussion of the alleged 'pathological' nature of chance games and the reasons for either regulating or freeing them from state control. Last but not least, two authors deal with country-by-country specifics in gaming cultures and gambling markets.

Taken as a whole, the chapters in this volume chart the development of European gambling culture from the medieval to modern times. In so doing it provides essential context for both historical and current debates about the nature of gambling and lotteries, addiction to gambling, poverty and social degradation on the fringes of the welfare state.

Part I

Paths Toward Modern Gambling

1 The Ancient Roots of Modern Gambling

Gherardo Ortalli

In discussing the origins of modern gambling we obviously have to take the long view: to understand any new developments we must place them in the context of what came before. I will start with a general overview, a quick analysis focussing on what I see as the fundamental stages in the long evolution of gambling, from its beginnings to today. Then I will look more closely at the decisive moment that saw the birth of modern gambling. I shall be concentrating exclusively on gambling as manifested in the European cultural tradition, leaving aside other important areas of the subject which, especially as regards Chinese culture, are equally and perhaps even more interesting.¹

When Justinian’s Corpus juris civilis (sixth century) for the first time gave an explicit definition of alea, chance, it was the combination of two licit elements (money and betting) that produced an illicit result: wagering with money. The ban on gambling, instituted by both the Digesto and the Codex, allowed just one exception: staking money on virtutis causa, that is on athletic activities such as throwing or jumping or wrestling or racing, in which victory is determined by the objective abilities of the competitors, not by chance.² Of course, it does not follow that there was no gambling in the Roman world. There are records even of emperors who were prepared to stake enormous sums of money: the Emperor Augustus, for example, who lost as much as 20,000 sesterces in a single day, and Nero, who frequently gambled huge amounts of money, while the Emperor Claudius actually wrote a treatise on games of chance.³ But the interdiction was clear and well defined.

The second crucial phase started in Late Antiquity and continued throughout the Early Middle Ages, coinciding with the gradual spread of the new Christian culture to a degree of dominance that gave it a profound impact on the centuries to come. At this point Roman hostility towards the wagering of money fused with the new religion’s suspicion of the entire ludic system because of the especially risky or ethically reprehensible nature of many of its expressions. Games therefore became subject to even stricter moral prohibition than previously, but as regards gambling there was another element, more of a structural than a cultural or religious nature, that had an even greater impact. In the West, the third and fourth centuries saw the beginning of a period of far-reaching decline.

Things finally began to recover from the tenth and eleventh centuries, but in the meantime, society had been undergoing a very difficult financial and monetary period, with cities falling into decay and ruralization becoming widespread. Contracting economies suffered a dramatic shortage of circulating currency and commerce and trade slipped towards atrophy. Social stability and living conditions also deteriorated and all this had a profound effect on the ludic system in general and obviously on gambling too. Dice— which remained the sovereign expression of chance in games—certainly did not disappear altogether, but their role in the social structure of the time became more or less negligible. They were not a worrying phenomenon, so moral, economic and religious considerations converged to relegate them to an area of thoroughly marginal significance.

This long second phase was destined to come to an end with the great regeneration of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. This third phase is central to the subject we are addressing. Europe, a depressed area, now began to revive rapidly, and sensational developments brought it to the forefront of the international scene. It was precisely this period of vigorous growth that triggered the birth, the invention of modern gambling.

Both the origins and the explosive growth of gambling practices were associated closely with the ancient central role of dice. But before long gambling began to find expression in other social behaviours and recreational activities: by the fifteenth century etiquette and the “civilizing” of manners were well established. The Middle Ages had given way to the refined culture of Humanism and the Renaissance and playing cards now took their place beside dice, bringing with them another type of social interaction and a change in the ways people gambled. We are now in a new, fourth phase: the age of the Europe of courts, of the Prozess der Zivilisation (Norbert Elias’s “Civilizing Process”) with a greater social disciplining, which also characterized the overall ludic system.

The dominance first of dice and then cards was followed by that of lotteries, a period in which public authorities assumed a new role seeking to exercise much greater control over gambling than had previously been feasible. During the sixteenth century in particular, the subject of wagers became ever wider-ranging: people bet on the outcome of papal elections and the succession of sovereigns, on the sex of unborn babies, on how soon a fleet would return to port, on the outcome of a battle or a war. In such an unstable ludic situation there was naturally an increased risk and incidence of underhand gambling, but the public authorities, with the help of smart entrepreneurs, were adept at finding ways of exploiting the wagering of money. This opened the way to the Genoese lotto and its proliferation in most of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This takes us back to the height of the Middle Ages, after the revival of Europe at the beginning of the second millennium. The upswing in the economy had led to a period of resurgent development. Most importantly money had begun to circulate again, thus creating the essential conditions for a substantial increase in gambling. Mints started once again to strike gold coins, something that for centuries had remained exclusive to the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. From the twelfth century onward, merchants, jurists and theologians began to devise and develop the fundamental concepts and instruments of modern economics: loss of profit and accruing damage, fair price, joint-stock companies, money transfers, bills of exchange, interest-bearing loans, insurance, the double-entry book-keeping system etc.

This new, revolutionary state of affairs combined with ancient, innate ludic impulses meant that the taste for games and gambling could now count on a system based on putting large amounts of money to work. Faced with these utterly changed circumstances, the old attitudes to gambling were bound to buckle. The new order that was now establishing itself after the difficult centuries of early medieval depression inevitably sought also to normalize the ludic universe. In a world that had changed, games, festivities and leisure activities were regaining a place for themselves in the overall social system.

Ludus now took an acknowledged place amongst the activities regarded as legitimate. Just as attitudes in the previous period had by no means involved real strong repression but rather marginalization, so now it was not that the doors were suddenly flung wide open and permissiveness became the rule. The fact that it was above all through the efforts of ecclesiastical thinkers that ludic matters had regained a place within the boundaries of social organization meant that the ludic universe now occupied well defined areas and fell within clear boundaries and this situation brought with it both new tolerance and new, sharper strictures.

It was a change that affected all aspects of ludicity and which obviously concerned the public authorities too. Their greatest concern, obviously, was about games involving money, the most delicate area and the one most fraught with risk. In previous centuries they had solved the ethical and social problem (the economic aspect was secondary then) with a clear-cut judgement: virtuous or evil; good or bad; fair or foul. Such a response no longer sufficed. It became clear that gambling and the impulses that drove it could never be stamped out by proscription. So the authorities started to attempt to contain these undesirable practices by other means.

A number of minor safety valves already existed: small concessions and seasonal periods of toleration. The Christian culture had inherited one in particular from the ancient Roman Saturnalia. In honour of Saturn, for several days following December 17 the constraints of normality were set aside and amongst other things, people were allowed to gamble.⁴ Other ancient Roman customs survived in Christian cultural practices. Christmas and the days that preceded the calends of January and the octava Domini (January 1) were in some way heirs to the climate of permissiveness and condonement of gambling of the ancient festival. People were allowed to gamble with money. And if things that were normally censured became permissible during the Christmas period, why not at Easter or at Epiphany or at Whitsun? And if exceptions could be made for the great religious festivals, why not for important lay occasions: fairs and other festivities? For the most part these took place at the same time as religious feast days (Saint Martin’s Day, celebrations honouring the patron saint of the town or city, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, commonly celebrated on August 15, and so on). All these were periods of license when the authorities turned a blind eye.

The centuries-long progression from the Saturnalia to religious festivities and from them to major occasions in the secular calendar was in effect experimentation for the future compromise involving the granting of regulated consent for what was generally prohibited. This then was the great change that occurred in the thirteenth century. In various places around Europe, starting with the countries that were more advanced in economic and financial matters (Italy, Spain, Flanders), the authorities indicated parts of towns and cities where prohibited activities were allowed to take place. This was the first great compromise. In Italy, places were designated where people could gamble, but only during the day and in the open air, only in a precisely determined area, somewhere very central like the cathedral square or the town square, where everything could be seen and therefore controlled. Here, a practice that remained strictly forbidden was tolerated. The decision involved giving license to something that was ordinarily forbidden, but at the same time provided for its confinement. A dangerous, suspect practice may take place there, but at the same time it can only take place there. The place granted for the practice of a dangerous activity must also prevent it moving elsewhere and invading areas of normality. Such are the same concerns as those that preoccupy today’s authorities.

This first compromise between the law and outlawed behaviour very quickly led to a further important passage. These were years in which, as I mentioned earlier, the entire European system was relaunching itself. After the long depression state organisms, which had emerged from the Early Middle Ages in a fragile, “liquid,” much simplified condition, also became more complex and organic. Gradually they refined and developed their functions, establishing broader-based, better coordinated, more efficient structures. But these new forms of organization were inevitably more expensive. And it was this need that triggered the decisive innovation. The authorities’ first concessions to gambling had been granted free of charge, but why not turn them into a source of income? If gambling generated wealth, why not...