When Did the ME Go Wrong?

[Malthus]

Think for a second about the world economic situation in the 1950s.  There is the developed world - consisting of Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia.  There is a second tier consisting of Japan and the more prosperous Latin American countries like Argentina and Venezuela.  There is a large bottom tier where masses of people lived at near subsistence level - encompassing China, India, and much of Africa.

The ME at this time was mostly in the "middle income" tier between the high-middle countries like Argentina, and the subsistence-level low income countries.  The per capita incomes of countries like Syria and Lebanon outpaced those of Spain, Portugal, and eastern Europe - and while Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan etc trailed a bit behind - there were still way ahead of countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. 

By the 70s there started to be significant divergence among the ME countries.  Iran was developing very quickly and made it into the second tier.  Iraq was not far behind.  The other major ME countries - Syria, Lebanon, Turkey - were lagging signigicantly.  Since the mid-70s the main developments are that Iran and Iraq have fallen way back, while Turkey has made significant advances.

The main point is that from the standpoint of economic development, the ME at the end of WW2 doesn't really look that much different from the mass of countries that are not part of the charmed "west".  In certain respects it appears well-positioned for the future if the right decisions were made.  Even as late as the mid-70s, at least couple of countries look like they could have a positive future.

I don't chalk up the failures of the ME countries to Islam any more than the apparent failures of east Asian economies c. 1950 could be ascribed to confucianism or buddhism (both claims commonly made for quite a long time).  I do think that failures of political development, self-defeating responses to perceived neocolonism, the corrupting effects of oil, and the replacement of reformist insurgent Islamism by Salafist (or Khoemeinist) insurgent Islamism all played roles.

I think though the issue is not the modern history of these countries per se, but rather why the Islamic world lost out over the long term to the Western Europeans - that is, why the "charmed west" for the last few centuries has been made up of Western European nations & their colonies, and not the civilization of the Islamic ME.

After all, the very division of the ME into their modern "nations" is a development dictated by the West. Why was the West in a position to dictate, and not vice versa?

I'd agree that this was not a development that simply arises out of Islam, though I do think that the inability of the Islamic world to develop a satisfactory method of dealing with political leadership has something to do with it - the notion of a universal Caliphate having more detrimental effect seemingly than the parallel notion of Christendom unified under a Roman Empire/Pope combo. More significant IMO was the ability of the barbarians to penetrate right to the centre of Islam as its military slaves & rulers - as if the Vikings took over all of Europe & retained the shield-wall as the primary method of waging war. The parallel here may be the Normans attempting that trick with heavy horse; of course eventually the Turks replaced steppe archers with musket armed Janessaries, but essentially never developed any more sophisticated method of leadership than blood tanistry and military slavery ... a legacy of the steppe, not Islam.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think though the issue is not the modern history of these countries per se, but rather why the Islamic world lost out over the long term to the Western Europeans - that is, why the "charmed west" for the last few centuries has been made up of Western European nations & their colonies, and not the civilization of the Islamic ME.

I don't think it is a question of the Islamic world per se losing out, as opposed to a relatively small core western group pulling ahead of everyone - including the Islamic world, the South Asian world, China, Japan, southeast Asia, and even other parts of Europe.  The Islamic world's apparent failings are not unique in this respect.  The problem of figuring out the causes of the "rise of the west" remain, but that is a different question.

That's why I think it may be more fruitful to focus on the post WW2 era, in which certain formerly developing nations have made major strides, others have made incremental improvements, others have stagnated, and others fallen back (at least in relative terms).  There is richer material for comparative analysis.

[grumbler]

I'd agree that this was not a development that simply arises out of Islam, though I do think that the inability of the Islamic world to develop a satisfactory method of dealing with political leadership has something to do with it - the notion of a universal Caliphate having more detrimental effect seemingly than the parallel notion of Christendom unified under a Roman Empire/Pope combo. More significant IMO was the ability of the barbarians to penetrate right to the centre of Islam as its military slaves & rulers - as if the Vikings took over all of Europe & retained the shield-wall as the primary method of waging war. The parallel here may be the Normans attempting that trick with heavy horse; of course eventually the Turks replaced steppe archers with musket armed Janessaries, but essentially never developed any more sophisticated method of leadership than blood tanistry and military slavery ... a legacy of the steppe, not Islam.

I agree with this approach, but would note that Islam was a religion designed by and for Bedouin, and the social/political/economic differences between the desert and steppe were not all that great.

[Malthus]

I don't think it is a question of the Islamic world per se losing out, as opposed to a relatively small core western group pulling ahead of everyone - including the Islamic world, the South Asian world, China, Japan, southeast Asia, and even other parts of Europe.  The Islamic world's apparent failings are not unique in this respect.  The problem of figuring out the causes of the "rise of the west" remain, but that is a different question.

That's why I think it may be more fruitful to focus on the post WW2 era, in which certain formerly developing nations have made major strides, others have made incremental improvements, others have stagnated, and others fallen back (at least in relative terms).  There is richer material for comparative analysis.

I still believe there is merit in the original question.

To my mind, the problems in the other centres of civilization - Russia, China, and India - are not dis-similar to those of the Islamic world: all border the barbarian steppe and are more or less absorbed in the (to us) alien problem of resisting barbarian incursions or dealing with foreign barbarian military overlords.

Japan is a special case - they self-conciously chose isolation in response to Western influence. SE Asia was never really a contender.

As you point out progress is relative. It may not be so much that the West was gifted with some sort of unique spirit or cause of its "rise", but simply that it did not suffer the same massive forces holding it back - it isn't so much the "rise of the West" but the "failure to rise of China, Russia and India". 

My point is that simply examining Islam as the source of the difference isn't sufficient, the issue has to be looked at on a world-wide basis.

[Malthus]

I agree with this approach, but would note that Islam was a religion designed by and for Bedouin, and the social/political/economic differences between the desert and steppe were not all that great.

This may be a trifle overstated. The image of the Islamic warrior bedoiun springing from the desert has some merit, but it should not be overlooked that Mohammad and his immediate followers were not barbarians, but relatively sophisticated city types - he came from an aristocratic family of long range merchants and traders based in Mecca, he wasn't an unlettered bedouin patriarch (Genghis and company were much more ... primeval). He wasn't nearly as alien to the civilizations his followers invaded as the Mongols or Turks, and his followers very quickly acculturated to the higher civilizations they took over.

But you are correct in that there may be an affinity to the desert/steppe barbarian lifestyle built in to Islam that made penetration by Turkic converts and the like easier.

[The Minsky Moment]

To my mind, the problems in the other centres of civilization - Russia, China, and India - are not dis-similar to those of the Islamic world: all border the barbarian steppe and are more or less absorbed in the (to us) alien problem of resisting barbarian incursions or dealing with foreign barbarian military overlords.

But that wasn't as big a problem for the gunpowder empires of the Ottomans, Manchus, Mughals, Romanovs, etc. as it had been in the past.

As you point out progress is relative. It may not be so much that the West was gifted with some sort of unique spirit or cause of its "rise", but simply that it did not suffer the same massive forces holding it back - it isn't so much the "rise of the West" but the "failure to rise of China, Russia and India".   

I am not so sure.  The "failure to rise" was a worldwide phenomenon for centuries, arguably even millennia.  I do think it is a matter of something odd and different happening in the west as opposed to something happening everywhere else to prevent what otherwise would be a natural (yet historically entirely unprecedented) rise in material capabilities.  As to what that odd and different thing(s) was or were and when exactly it (they) started, I've yet to be wholly and fully convinced by any of the many explanations offered.  But I do think that is the question.

My point is that simply examining Islam as the source of the difference isn't sufficient, the issue has to be looked at on a world-wide basis.

Oh yes - on the same track with you there.

[Malthus]

But that wasn't as big a problem for the gunpowder empires of the Ottomans, Manchus, Mughals, Romanovs, etc. as it had been in the past.

Not sure I understand this - of the four dynasties you cite, three had steppe nomad origins. The Ottomans, Manchus and Mughals were foreign military overlords, and as such it was less possible for them to adopt & adapt modernity.

I am not so sure.  The "failure to rise" was a worldwide phenomenon for centuries, arguably even millennia.

Don't agree at all. Sung China was much, much more notably "modern" than the Han (and moreso than Europe) - there was progress, all right.

Certainly there was a certain 'take off point' beyond which the ball of science, industrialism and progress got rolling - but I'd say that China was 'almost there' (think paper money, printing and blast furnaces, among many other things) when they got crushed by a massive invasion of particularly nasty Mongols.

I highly recommend Needham's huge series of tomes on science in China.

I do think it is a matter of something odd and different happening in the west as opposed to something happening everywhere else to prevent what otherwise would be a natural (yet historically entirely unprecedented) rise in material capabilities.  As to what that odd and different thing(s) was or were and when exactly it (they) started, I've yet to be wholly and fully convinced by any of the many explanations offered.  But I do think that is the question.

I would disagree - to my mind the progress was more or less inevitable and the only question was where the conditions would be right. At the beginning of the 1200s an impartial observer would have picked out three possibilities: China, Europe and the Islamic ME, with three secondary possibilities - Russia, N. India and Japan. I would think the overwhelming smart money would have been on China.

The "conditions" as I see them are:

- already have a high material culture;

- not locked into some ultra-conservative form of government (such as a "gunpowder empire" ruled precariously by a foreign military elite); and

- at least the possibility of political pluralism, either formally or more likely informally (such as city-states within a titular empire, or guilds or estates weilding a certain amount of power under a monarch).

The problem with a steppe barbarian invasion is not solely that it destroys material culture, but rather that it eliminates the internal possibilities for progress - either the barbarians win and become a military aristocracy, or they lose and inspire their former victims to become much more centralized and absolutist than they had been before (the Ming, following the Yuan Mongols, was much more absolutist that the Sung had ever been; likewise the Muscovite empire following the Kevian 'Rus). In either case the possibility for a civilization reaching the inflection point of modernity becomes impaired.

To my mind, the great historical question is not just "why the West", but rather "why not China, and earlier?". The Islamic world was never as likely as China to be the place where modernity happened, but what happened to prevent China from being that place more or less happened to the Islamic world also - only more so, since the Islamic world had been penetrated by Turkic types long before the devestating Mongol invasion.

[Habbaku]

The other major ME countries - Syria, Lebanon, Turkey - were lagging signigicantly.

I'm not questioning the rest of your post, as I happen to agree with the majority of it, but I did note that you placed Lebanon in with the other group.  Were they really lagging in the 70s?  I've always been taught that, until their civil wars started in the mid-70s, they were rather exceptionally prosperous in comparison to their contemporaries.  Indeed, to the point where Beirut was known for a good amount of time as the "Las Vegas of the Middle East" or somesuch.  Not true?

[garbon]

I heard that Ulugh Beg's Observatory was pretty horrible.

[The Minsky Moment]

Not sure I understand this - of the four dynasties you cite, three had steppe nomad origins.

Your earlier point was that China, Islamic world etc was constrained b/c they had to face the danger of the steppe hordes - my point was the gunpowder empires no longer had to face that threat.  It is true that they themselves had steppe origins - but then again, the origins of the western European monarchies was no less "barbaric" - even the vaunted English Parliament had its origin in a cabal of turbulent and conspiratorial feudal barons.

Certainly there was a certain 'take off point' beyond which the ball of science, industrialism and progress got rolling - but I'd say that China was 'almost there' (think paper money, printing and blast furnaces, among many other things) when they got crushed by a massive invasion of particularly nasty Mongols.

I don't agree.  The industrial takeoff was not about access to scientific knowledge or technology as it was about ways of organizing production and social life.  The ancient Greeks had the scientific knowledge and techology to be "almost there" - but in reality they were never close.  Scientific knowledge was a gentleman's pursuit of truth and technological applications were used to produce toys and parlor amusements (with occasional military applications).   

The Sung and the Abbassids had impressive civilizations - highly urbanized, an educated elite, tolerant, developing scientific knowledge, technologically innovative (optics, gunpowder, medicine, printing etc).  But like other similar pre-19th century societies, this was a thin elite veneer on what at essence was a mass subsistence agrarian society similar in essential nature to other urbanized agrarian socities dating back to the heydey of Sumer.  The fundamental basis of these societies was a river valley and irrigation system that was capable of producing high relative yields with relatively low tech inputs (human and animal hard labor and basic implements).  The agricultural surplus allowed an decently sized non-productive elite population to exist and an even larger population of craftsmen, builders, artists, entertainers, merchants and soliders to serve that elite.  But these societies were not oriented around exanding economic growth (the very concept did not exist) - they were oriented around reaching a stable state and satisfying the aesthetic imagination of the elite.

To take one example, paper money under the Sung was adopted for administrative convenience and in response to specie shortages.  It ceased to be used due in part to abuse, but more likely because the flow of specie into China from long-distance trade made it uncessary.  Actually a more significant innovation then government issued paper money was the adoption of private negotiable instruments (bills of exchange) by late medieval Italian banking houses.

I would disagree - to my mind the progress was more or less inevitable and the only question was where the conditions would be right. At the beginning of the 1200s an impartial observer would have picked out three possibilities: China, Europe and the Islamic ME, with three secondary possibilities - Russia, N. India and Japan. I would think the overwhelming smart money would have been on China.

An impartial observer in the early 1200s would have done no such thing, because an impartial observer of that time would have no understanding of the concept of "progress" as we understand it.  The only understanding of social evolution at the time centered around one of two theories - cyclical time (eternal cycles of rise and fall - e.g. ibn Khaldun's schema) or millenarian time (a fall from a golden or prelapsarian age to present decadence to be followed by a future return to a just order).  The idea of steady material and political progress would have been totally alien.  This is not merely an academic point - it explains the the fundamental reality of human existence starting from the urban revolutions some 5000+ years ago to the extraordinary revolution in productivity of the last 200 years.

Of course it is true that technological innovation occurred within this period, and that at times such innovation tended could outpace the loss of knowledge through forgetfulness and dark ages.  Practically, this meant that a privileged elite could have a more sophisticated standard of living than prior elites.  In special cases -- ancient Greece and Rome, the Ummayyad and Abbasid peaks, Song and Yuan China -- where a technological base was yoked to an effective extractive system of military tribute or conquest -- relatively high standards of living could be spread to a fairly broad urban strata.  But these were fragile achievements subject to collapse - and more importantly - they were not perceived as an intermediate stage in a trajectory of continuous progress.  On the contrary, these societies sought and idealized the achievement of a stable state to preserve themselves, and feared too much innovation or change as a danger to that stability.

[Queequeg]

That's why I think it may be more fruitful to focus on the post WW2 era, in which certain formerly developing nations have made major strides, others have made incremental improvements, others have stagnated, and others fallen back (at least in relative terms).  There is richer material for comparative analysis.

I would agree with you for the most part, but as Malthus said there is the question as to why the Islamic world couldn't keep up with the West in the first place, seeing as how it was frankly far more innovative than the West or even China for a crucial period.

And I don't think the that the recent failures are unrelated to the failure that started a millennium ago.  Arab Socialism drew upon the humiliation of Turko-Mongol rule and defeat by the West and the resulting superiority-inferiority complex.   

I'm guessing you've read Bernard Lewis?

[The Minsky Moment]

The other major ME countries - Syria, Lebanon, Turkey - were lagging signigicantly.

I'm not questioning the rest of your post, as I happen to agree with the majority of it, but I did note that you placed Lebanon in with the other group.  Were they really lagging in the 70s?  I've always been taught that, until their civil wars started in the mid-70s, they were rather exceptionally prosperous in comparison to their contemporaries.  Indeed, to the point where Beirut was known for a good amount of time as the "Las Vegas of the Middle East" or somesuch.  Not true?

I had thought as you, but the per capita GDP numbers don't support the hypothesis.

The numbers for Lebanon in 1990 dollars were $2429 in 1950, $2393 in 1960, and $2917 in 1970.  A peak of $3700 is reached in 1978(!) which then fell back to below $2000 by the mid-1980s.  I found the numbers surprising at well, but assuming they are correct, it would appear that the success of Beirut's finance and tourism sector did not have deep positive effects on the Lebanese economy as a whole, at least not until the early stages of the Civil War were already underway.

[Queequeg]

That would make a certain amount of sense, though, as the gains in the well educated, Christian/Native Lebanese economy might be offset by the apeshit, dirt poor Palestinians coming in throughout the period and helping to set off the Civil War.

[crazy canuck]

That's why I think it may be more fruitful to focus on the post WW2 era, in which certain formerly developing nations have made major strides, others have made incremental improvements, others have stagnated, and others fallen back (at least in relative terms).  There is richer material for comparative analysis.

I would agree with you for the most part, but as Malthus said there is the question as to why the Islamic world couldn't keep up with the West in the first place, seeing as how it was frankly far more innovative than the West or even China for a crucial period.

And I don't think the that the recent failures are unrelated to the failure that started a millennium ago.  Arab Socialism drew upon the humiliation of Turko-Mongol rule and defeat by the West and the resulting superiority-inferiority complex.   

I'm guessing you've read Bernard Lewis?

It has been a few years since I read What Went Wrong but as I recall it my difficulty with Lewis' analysis is that he pits "Europe" as a whole against the whole of the Muslim World and tries to draw broad themes from that analysis.  But obviously within both groups there have been great successes and even greater failures.  If we were to compare age old enemies Austria-Hungary and The Ottoman Empire we would probably conclude that they both had a good run, both declining in power as WWI approached and both empires ending at the end of WWI as their component ethnic groups gained independence.

I dont think it is so much a question of why the Muslims didnt keep up (the question Lewis sets for himself) as a question of why some (underline some) of the European nations did so well.  It is a story of nations who were best able to take advantage of new technologies which allowed world wide exploitation of wealth and resources.   But that analysis doesnt take us into the modern world.  I agree with JR, a more interesting question is why those nations that were intially successful were able to hold onto their gains and improve on them. 

[Malthus]

Your earlier point was that China, Islamic world etc was constrained b/c they had to face the danger of the steppe hordes - my point was the gunpowder empires no longer had to face that threat.  It is true that they themselves had steppe origins - but then again, the origins of the western European monarchies was no less "barbaric" - even the vaunted English Parliament had its origin in a cabal of turbulent and conspiratorial feudal barons.

I thing my point, as expanded, has a trifle more to it that 'the risk of the barbarian hordes'. Certainly that risk, or threat, played its part, but more significant in the long run was the effect of invasion & resistance on the gov't and society - whether successfully invaded or not.

I don't agree.  The industrial takeoff was not about access to scientific knowledge or technology as it was about ways of organizing production and social life.  The ancient Greeks had the scientific knowledge and techology to be "almost there" - but in reality they were never close.  Scientific knowledge was a gentleman's pursuit of truth and technological applications were used to produce toys and parlor amusements (with occasional military applications).

I agree that a simplistic "the Greeks had steam engines, why not industrialism?" analysis misses the point - the Greeks indeed had steam engines (and impressive automatons), but as you say, they were mostly toys.

Again, I'd point out that my analysis is somewhat more sophisticated than that. Impressive technological acheivements are necessary but not sufficient - what is needed is a receptive sort of society.   

The Sung and the Abbassids had impressive civilizations - highly urbanized, an educated elite, tolerant, developing scientific knowledge, technologically innovative (optics, gunpowder, medicine, printing etc).  But like other similar pre-19th century societies, this was a thin elite veneer on what at essence was a mass subsistence agrarian society similar in essential nature to other urbanized agrarian socities dating back to the heydey of Sumer.  The fundamental basis of these societies was a river valley and irrigation system that was capable of producing high relative yields with relatively low tech inputs (human and animal hard labor and basic implements).  The agricultural surplus allowed an decently sized non-productive elite population to exist and an even larger population of craftsmen, builders, artists, entertainers, merchants and soliders to serve that elite.  But these societies were not oriented around exanding economic growth (the very concept did not exist) - they were oriented around reaching a stable state and satisfying the aesthetic imagination of the elite.

I'd agree that no state prior to the 19th century was "modern', but that begs the question - I reject as overly deterministic the notion that there was any fundamental "orientation" to these societies that determined their destiny.

Moreover, the fact that no such "concept" as "economic growth" existed makes zero difference - the existence of growth does not depend on there being a recognized concept of growth.

To take one example, paper money under the Sung was adopted for administrative convenience and in response to specie shortages.  It ceased to be used due in part to abuse, but more likely because the flow of specie into China from long-distance trade made it uncessary.  Actually a more significant innovation then government issued paper money was the adoption of private negotiable instruments (bills of exchange) by late medieval Italian banking houses.

It is not my understanding that paper money was used *solely* in response to specie shortages.

An impartial observer in the early 1200s would have done no such thing, because an impartial observer of that time would have no understanding of the concept of "progress" as we understand it.  The only understanding of social evolution at the time centered around one of two theories - cyclical time (eternal cycles of rise and fall - e.g. ibn Khaldun's schema) or millenarian time (a fall from a golden or prelapsarian age to present decadence to be followed by a future return to a just order).  The idea of steady material and political progress would have been totally alien.  This is not merely an academic point - it explains the the fundamental reality of human existence starting from the urban revolutions some 5000+ years ago to the extraordinary revolution in productivity of the last 200 years.

Again, the existence of a *concept* isn't determinative of the existence or not of progress - that happens whether people at the time believe it is happening or not. The intellectual conceptualizations of historians may have some tangental effect on progress, but they do not dictate it, and it is certainly untrue by any measure that China under the Sung resembled in any significant ways Neolithic China (despite the odd fact that the Chinese written language may uniquely be that old).

Of course it is true that technological innovation occurred within this period, and that at times such innovation tended could outpace the loss of knowledge through forgetfulness and dark ages.  Practically, this meant that a privileged elite could have a more sophisticated standard of living than prior elites.  In special cases -- ancient Greece and Rome, the Ummayyad and Abbasid peaks, Song and Yuan China -- where a technological base was yoked to an effective extractive system of military tribute or conquest -- relatively high standards of living could be spread to a fairly broad urban strata.  But these were fragile achievements subject to collapse - and more importantly - they were not perceived as an intermediate stage in a trajectory of continuous progress.  On the contrary, these societies sought and idealized the achievement of a stable state to preserve themselves, and feared too much innovation or change as a danger to that stability.

Again your focus appears to be on perception. For the purpose of this exercise, I'm not so concerned with what historians at the time believe to be true, but what is actually true in hindsight.

I think that the romantic legend of an unchanging pesantry is just that - a romanic legend. It is certainly one in which the Chinese themselves (for example) believed - that there were ancient sage-kings who presided over golden past era(s) - but there is no reason to think this is actually true; acrhaeology tends to confirm that, in pont of fact, Shang Dynasty types to have been rather barbaric and brutal. Ritual cannibalism by ferocious war-chiefs does not really resemble the golden age Chinese historians believed in (even if they *did* make fabulous bronzes).

In my opinion it is absurd to believe that Sung Dynasty China was more akin to the Shang than to modernity