Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
As long as we're both saying it's not an inherent handicap, I think we agree that the decline was gradual in relation to the rise of the West. The West was probably passing the Islamic world by about 1540 or so. But I still don't see how the military and administrative failures that led to the losses of Spain, etc. were related to any dogmatic shift, which is how I would see the religion "causing" the economic stagnation. I don't think the converse has had all that profound effect in the same regions. For example, the rise of a secular Turkish republic has probably been a good thing, but I wouldn't say Turkey is leaps-and-bounds better off under the republic than under the Ottoman Empire, economically speaking.
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Something you all may want to think about is the relative value of trade versus manufacture in economies of the different religious worlds. In the middle east and in southern Europe, the Catholic heartland, capital was drawn to and tied up in trade. Why weave cloth or silk when you can trade them both? The reason is that weaving leads to innovation and that the world economy that emerged from the middle ages was one that, except for the discovery of untapped natural resources in North America, was fed heavily by innovation. As innovation led to, for example, better sailing ships and sails, trade was also altered for the benefit of the manufacturing economies.
And if you look in the late middle ages, you find that the manufacturing centers tend to be England, Flanders, North Italy, and Anatolia -- but that those most exposed to competition from trade quickly fell from the running, with additional centers, like parts of Germany, just a bit off the beaten track, overtaking them.
--G3, economic determinist
