What were Julius Caesars reforms?

Answer 1

Caesar's reforms were the most extensive in Roman History to that date, inspired by populists such as the Gracchi brothers and Marcus Drusus, but much more comprehensive. They fall into economic, political and social realms, but very much overlap.

Economic:

He canceled a 1/4 of the debt, largely owed by the lower classes who were victimized by usurious aristocrats. For the rest, interest rates were fixed at 12%, a major blow to the creditors who were in large part responsible for breaking the backs of Rome's workers. Usury was prosecuted energetically. One reason Caesar was called a "traitor" to his class.

He reduced the number of citizens on the free grain dole (a type of welfare) from 300,000 to around 180,000. Many of those who were taken off the dole were in fact not in the lower classes and simply abusing the system.

He once and for all rid the provinces of "Tax Farmers", private citizens given contracts to collect taxes from exploited provincials, setting up a clear tax system based on set land value to be collected by the provinces themselves, giving them a freedom and sense of economic security.

He passed a tax on foreign ships doing business in Rome's harbor.

He drained marshlands around Rome while at the same time expanding the city borders allowing for easier trade and more commerce.

Social

Connected to the tax farmers, provincial governors were given fixed terms, one year for propraetors and two for proconsuls. The governors and collectors were often working together. Combined with an earlier law of Caesar's consulship, the governors now had to follow very strict rules and were not given the time to set up any kind of exploitation racket.

He ordered that all large Roman estates had to employ freemen as 1/3 of their workforce, He essentially reduced slavery by a third and created a kind of government stimulus for the workers. Caesar is rumored to have planned ending slavery entirely within Italy.

Connected to this: No Italian male could be forced for any reason to live outside of Italy for more than three years. This was one of the reasons "middle-class" Roman farmers lost everything in times past. Now, their farms were safe from land stealing creditors.

Stable provinces in Spain, Gaul, and all around the Mediterranean were either given full Roman citizenship or the Latin rights (a goal of the most forward thinking Roman populares). Now, people who were considered outsiders had all legal rights that those living within Rome had. Moreover, people now had a stake in Rome, not simple subjects.

Doctors, Teachers, and Architects were given full citizenship and economic incentives to come live in Rome. It was Caesar's goal for Rome to rival Athens and Alexandria as a place of learning and culture. This was combined with a building program of libraries, a new Curia (still standing today) and other projects.

To reduce over-population and unemployment (with concurrent crime) he set up new colonies, rebuilt old ones (such as Carthage) and passed laws giving both ex-soldiers and poor Romans their own land and farms. This, combined with the mass citizenship laws, was one of the MOST important social and economic reforms bringing stability to the empire. The seeds of the Pax Romana are here!

He began ending the use of private police forces, which were the only ones used in Rome to that date. The goal being that police were bound to the public and not to the magistrate who was paying them.

He gave economic incentives to couples to marry.

Political

Caesar enlarged the Senate from 600 to 900. But, more importantly, he opened the Senate to non-Romans. With the enfranchisement mentioned above, non-Romans not only had legal rights, they could be Senators! Of course, they would all be clients of Caesar. But power and justice are not mutually exclusive.

He granted clemency to his defeated civil war enemies on a scale unheard of at the time. Not just their lives, but their estates were, for the vast majority, returned to them. While he seems to have been genuinely concerned with ending internal strife, it was clear they owed him everything. And they hated him for it.

His reform of the calendar is his most famous (though perhaps too famous). This was primarily a political reform as it didn't allow priests to change important dates at their whim, almost always because of the interests of the powerful senators.

Combined with an earlier law on daily Senate meetings, proceedings in the Senate were more transparent than they had ever been.

He essentially practiced a form of autocracy that, while not technically kingship, made the Senate essentially his servants. They in turn gave him the office of Dictator for Life. Senatorial equality was nonexistent.

He created a smaller, municipal government that concerned itself chiefly with affairs within Rome itself.

For the ancient Roman nobility, all of these reforms drew their enmity, making Caesar forever a villain. Many moderns still take this view; however, most today admire Caesar's economic and social reforms while condemning how he did them, i.e. the political.

Finally, many of the reforms of Augustus are properly Julian. While Augustus certainly should be credited with keeping most of Julius Caesar's reforms in place and enacting those that were planned, it was in Augustus' interest to give himself credit for being the "father of his country". The first emperor is certainly admirable politically, but at heart he was no populist and used his adopted father's name to advance his own popularity.

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Answer 2

He wanted honest politicians , and citizenship for ALL conquered people