Speaker Bio

Dr. Kim Yeong-chei is a historian of the ancient world with particular interests in the agrarian and political history of the Roman Republic. Born in Seoul, she received her BA and MA in History Education from Seoul National University and MSt and DPhil (2017) in Ancient History from the University of Oxford. She subsequently spent two years in Rome as a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2017-2019), held a research fellowship from the Pony Chung Foundation (2020-2021) and was a Research Professor and Instructor at Seoul National University (2021-2023). She has been a Jangwon Humanities Scholar of the Amorepacific Foundation since 2022.  Her publication includes ‘Privatization of Ager in Africa from 123 to 63 B.C.’ (Classical Quarterly, 2023) and ‘Centuriated Luceria: a Latin colony and its territory’ (Papers of the British School at Rome, 2021). She is currently writing a book that examines Rome’s agrarian laws and their role in the outbreak of the full-scale revolt of Rome’s allies in Italy in 91 BC, known as the Social War.

Recapping the Academic Seminar “The Causes of the Social War: Land and Politics in the Roman Republic” on 30 January 2026

On 30 January 2026, Dr. KIM Yeong-chei, Jangwon Humanities Scholar, delivered a seminar at CUHK entitled “The Causes of the Social War: Land and Politics in the Roman Republic.” Drawing on her book-in-progress, Dr. KIM revisited the Social War (91–87 BC) and challenged the familiar view that it was simply a struggle by Rome’s Italian allies to gain Roman citizenship.

Dr. KIM began by reconstructing the political landscape of pre-war Italy. Rome did not govern the peninsula as a unified state but through a complex network of alliances. Roman citizens, Latin communities, and the allied peoples (socii) occupied different legal positions. Although the allies were crucial to Rome’s military expansion and shared the empire’s prosperity, they remained excluded from central political power. This imbalance, Dr. KIM argued, created deep social tensions within a system that depended on allied cooperation yet denied them equality.

Against this background, Dr. KIM proposed that the Social War is better understood as a revolt that increasingly took on the character of a fight for freedom and independence, rather than a straightforward bid for citizenship. While demands for citizenship played a role, repeated refusals made clear to many allies that equal status within Rome was unlikely. Wartime symbols, such as Italian coins depicting a bull attacking a wolf, suggest a determination to confront Rome itself, not merely to be absorbed into it.

One key of Dr. KIM’s interpretation is land. She emphasized the central importance of ager publicus (Roman public land), much of it seized during the conquest of Italy. The redistribution of the land, especially from the time of the Gracchan reforms onward, disrupted arrangements under which allied communities had long occupied or used public land. Continued agrarian schemes in the decades before 91 BC heightened insecurity over landholding and sharpened awareness of political subordination.

Dr. KIM concluded that Rome’s repeated policy of redistributing public land was the most systematic and damaging source of allied resentment. Because land was the foundation of economic and social life, these policies made inequality tangible across Italy and contributed decisively to the outbreak of the Social War.