I've recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.

  • Dolores [love/loves]
    ·
    10 months ago

    the Ottomans conquered it while european capitalism was in vitro. they'd made a classic centralized empire, which was much better than the europeans & southern medd at the time (though the Mamluks were fairly sophisticated, they just lost the wars).

    i'd argue that a centralized imperial system was more sensible, stable, and successful (until the 1700s-1800s) than the increasing role of burghers and capital in the european systems, unless you had the foresight to know the outrageous failures of the business cycle have a progressive motion of accumulation beneath them that would eventually grow to heights that surpassed an efficient pre-capitalist tax assessment system.