. Apparently, it's not the Jews who did it to the downtrodden Arabs. It's the coincidence that medieval Islam didn't like corporations. Well, that's the short version. The book itself offers a longer one.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
How Corporations didn't save Egypt
If you're the kind of person who prefers thoughtful books to breathless media or blogger reports so as to understand events, the Economist offers an interesting review of a new book which tries to explain why the Muslim world is so far behind: The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East. Apparently, it's not the Jews who did it to the downtrodden Arabs. It's the coincidence that medieval Islam didn't like corporations. Well, that's the short version. The book itself offers a longer one.
. Apparently, it's not the Jews who did it to the downtrodden Arabs. It's the coincidence that medieval Islam didn't like corporations. Well, that's the short version. The book itself offers a longer one.
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9 comments:
It's a good book. The best explanation why, over time, the Islamic world became economically disadvantaged relative to Europe
Unfortunately, the author does put in some hard - impossible? - to parse sentences.
Steven Zoraster
based on the review I ask whether this might be another attempt at advocating from yet another angle for "benevolent" Ottoman hegemony (Pax Ottomana), an idea that seems to become popular to be hypothesized upon.
I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who told me in an The Atlantic piece that Egyptians didn't have land deeds in the way we know them i.e. property that could be used as collateral for taking loans with which to finance start-ups and enlargements.
Also the review says the Torah forbade interest taking, how come then that my history of Venice tells me that Venetians had to rely on their Jewish co-citizens to provide banking for a long time long before the ghetto came into being.
and come to think of it that is another thing which is glaringly absent in the review the beneficial role Jews played in developing a money system or am I wrong and they didn't?
My best story is still that of Lady Montagu (?) who got acquainted with the luxury item of terry cloth in a Turkish Harem, took it to England and the local weavers immediately started building special machines which would allow them to sell the stuff to the masses. Supremacistically minded me thinks of it after every shower.
Could it be that discovering the masses as customers and producing stuff for them was the really good idea?
Both Robert Graves and Lawrence of Arabia were convinced that "they" never innovated much but just used and recycled stuff they found. Since I read that I read all stories claiming past grandeur with a grain of salt looking for propagandistically minded half sentences.
I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who told me in an The Atlantic piece that Egyptians didn't have land deeds in the way we know them i.e. property that could be used as collateral for taking loans with which to finance start-ups and enlargements.
The book author writes that tenant farming became necessary in Muslim lands because Muslim rules of inheratence forced fragmentation of farms when the owner died.
Much of the book concerns how Muslim rules for inheretance forced fragmentation of partnerships, farms, etc.
Steven Zoraster
as best I know areas of Germany and elsewhere in Europe had similar splitting the land endlessly laws
the difference is that in our areas land can be used as collateral for loans while in the piece I remember O'Rourke? claimed that that wasn't possible in Egypt.
Anyway I distrust any monocausal explanations.
Anyway I distrust any monocausal explanations.
The book is not based on just one explanation. The author does argue that primogeniture came relatively early in Europe. That helped make partnerships and corporations longer lasting institutions than they could be in the world of Islam. Also, the early Islamic form of a corporation, the Waqf, could not change the purpose described in its founding document, making adaptation to new circumstances impossible. Western corporations got over this limitation quickly.
Steven Zoraster
Western business didn't restrict terry cloth to a life as a luxury item for the elite, they built a machine so they could mass produce it and sell it to lots and lots of people independent of where these people sat on the social ladder.
It may be a good book but the review doesn't suggest that to me it suggests a certain by now familiar bias.
I think the story of small pox vaccination teaches a similar story. In it that same enterprising Lady Montagu played the role of informant and a clever Brit put it to mass use ...
OTT -- It's Lady Mary Wortley Montagu -- "Lady" because she was an aristocrat, her husband wasn't (OK, trivial point).
It was smallpox variolation she introduced (from Turkey) -- much more dangerous than vaccination because it involves infecting a person with smallpox, though in small amounts. Edward Jenner developed vaccination with cowpox
about 75 years later.
The Guardian, always on the lookout for spreading the benefits of Islam to an unbelieving world, has several times had articles touting the benefits of the Islamic way of doing business, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Take away the oil and there would be literally nothing.
The latest was Is your economy sharia compliant?
"Such a rating would show which economies are sharia-compliant and hence suitable candidates for asset-backed Islamic bonds in the form of sovereign sukuks. The metrics used in such a rating would mean that countries would be judged on their default risk, as well as on how ethical (and hence how Islamic) their economies are".
Incredible that such garbage can find a home in a Western newspaper that considers itself "leading".
Just mention I put up my own review of "The Long Divergence" at Amazon.com. Probably not available until Monday....
Summary: A great book.
Steven Zoraster
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