Andre Tchernia graduated as Agrege des Letters in 1960 and, after his National Service, was chosen as a member of the Ecole Francaise de Rome in 1963. For three years, he directed an excavation in Bolsena, and specialized in the study of Roman amphorae. Back in France in 1966, he lectured in Latin at the University of Aix en Provence and became a pioneer in underwater archaeology, directing for ten years the excavation f the great Roman wreck of La Madrague de Giens. He obtained his "Doctorat d'Etat" in 1984 and published "le vin de l'Italie romaine, essai d'histoire economique d'apres les amphores" in 1984. In 1957, he was appointed Deputy Director of the Department of Human Sciences of the National Center for Scientific Research. He left this post in 1990 to become "Directeur d'Etudes a l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales," where he finished his carreer.

"a highly illuminating and stimulating piece of work that offers special insights into the concrete processes and the people that shaped and structured Roman trade. Tchernia has given us plenty of building blocks for fruitful discussion, which is precisely what great scholarship ought to do." -- Dimitri Van Limbergen, Ghent University, Journal of Roman Archaeology

"In conclusion, the excellent work of André Tchernia on the Romans and commerce can rightfully be considered a real work of reference, whose dissemination, thanks to this recent version in English, can only bear good fruit." --Michele Stefanile, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Supporting the outstanding technical material in The Romans and Trade is the excellent quality of the editing; the translation is a pleasure to read, and the typesetting and binding are of the highest calibre... It is an appropriate culmination of a superb career, accurately reflecting decades of insights into numerous facets of the Roman economy; it will be consulted by students of ancient trade and nautical archaeology alike, and it certainly belongs in the collections of individuals interested in this aspect of the Roman world." --David Rufff (Texas A&M University), The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology