Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society)

by Jared Rubin

  The history of interest restrictions in Christianity and Islam helps focus attention on numerous aspects of economic development in Western Europe and the Middle East. In many ways, these histories parallel the more general “reversal of fortunes” between the economies of the Middle East and Western Europe that occurred over the thousand years following the advent of Islam. Religious reinterpretation in favor of commerce was much more vibrant in the Middle East than in Western Europe until the tenth century or so, much as Middle Eastern economies were more vibrant than Western European economies. Yet, also like the broader economic trends, Western Europe caught up with the Middle East in relaxing interest restrictions sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and was ahead of the Middle East by 1600.

  Interest restrictions form a microcosm of the economic trajectories that evolved in Western Europe and the Middle East in the medieval period. Although focusing on interest restrictions shades our eyes from many other important historical events affecting the economies of both regions, it brings to light the consequences of one of the primary features dictating medieval political life: the use of religious authority in legitimizing political rule. The rest of this book suggests that interactions between political and religious authorities explain quite a bit more than just the history of interest restrictions, and that these interactions are at the heart of economic success and stagnation.

  5

  Restrictions on the Printing Press

  Around the year 2000, a number of Western entertainment outlets published lists of the “most important people of the millennium.” These lists were embarrassingly Western-centric – according to A&E’s list, Steven Spielberg was more important than any Muslim and all but one person from China (Mao Zedong) – but almost all of them had one thing in common: Johannes Gutenberg was either the most important person (according to A&E, Life, and the Bio Channel) or among a handful of the most important people. This places Gutenberg ahead of the most influential thinkers (Newton, Darwin, Marx, Einstein), rulers (Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Gandhi), and cultural figures (Shakespeare, da Vinci, Michelangelo) of the last thousand years. Gutenberg was none of these. He was a capitalist inventor known for only one invention: the movable-type printing press.1

  The consensus on Gutenberg’s importance is reflective of the consequences that printing had on European history. Gutenberg invented the movable-type press around 1450 in the German city of Mainz, setting off an information revolution. Much like the Internet in the early twenty-first century, the press was the most important information technology of its day, allowing for an unprecedented rise in the flow of information. Prior to the press, literacy rates were low, books and pamphlets were extraordinarily expensive, and information took weeks or months to reach distant locations. The primary bottleneck was the time it took to produce multiple copies of documents. Small groups of intellectuals in monasteries and universities reproduced longer treatises by a painstaking, labor-intensive process, while hand-copiers reproduced shorter documents such as price listings and short pamphlets. This meant that Europeans did not have a number of things now taken for granted: few had access to books, and new information was often old by the time it reached its recipients. The press helped mitigate these problems, opening up access to ideas to a much larger swath of the population. The economic benefits of the press were obvious, and it consequently spread rapidly throughout Western Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century, most large cities in Europe had at least one press.

  The direct economic effects of the spread of the printing press were far from trivial. Jeremiah Dittmar (2011) analyzed hundreds of European cities and found that those that were early print adopters grew much faster than the laggards, all else being equal. Since city growth is a primary indicator of economic growth in the preindustrial world, this indicates that the spread of printing had a positive impact on economic development. But how did printing promote economic growth? For one, it facilitated a much more rapid and widespread publication of price and exchange rate information via news-sheets containing financial information. This resulted in financial integration throughout many of the important economic centers of Western Europe, which in turn facilitated the establishment of new trade routes2 and the more effective use of financial instruments such as bills of exchange (see Chapter 4). Another link between the spread of the press and economic growth was a rapid increase in the number of books produced. Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2009) estimate that around 12.6 million books were printed between 1454 and 1500, compared to around 10.9 million manuscripts produced in the millennium prior to the press.3 In the century before the press, there was less than one book consumed per 1,000 persons; by the end of the sixteenth century, 29 books were consumed per 1,000 persons. As the numbers grew – by the end of the fifteenth century, the biggest publishers regularly made print runs of around 1,500 copies4 – their price fell in tandem. On top of the large outward supply shift following the diffusion of the press, technological changes in the paper production process and the use of ink based on oil decreased the price of books around 85 percent.5 This gave access to books to a much larger part of the population and undoubtedly contributed to the immense increase in European literacy between 1500 and 1800. No nation in Western Europe had a literacy rate above 10 percent in 1500, but by 1800 it was above 50 percent in Great Britain and the Netherlands, and between 20 percent to 40 percent in most other parts of Western Europe.6

  The story of the spread of printing is interesting in the context of the arguments made in this book due to one fact: despite knowing about the press as early as the 1480s, the Ottomans did not permit printing in the Arabic script until 1727. On the surface, it is not obvious why the Ottoman sultan feared the press. Not only was there a potentially important industry in books that was artificially suppressed, but printing could help integrate markets through the spread of price information, spread news of important events to the far-flung reaches of the empire, or spread propaganda favoring the sultan’s campaigns. Of course, rebels could have also used the press for propaganda against the sultan, but as long as he had control over the military, this was unlikely. These events raise the questions: Why did the Ottomans forbid printing for so long? What, if anything, were the consequences of the delayed acceptance of the press?

  The framework espoused in this book can address both of these questions. To gain insight into why the Ottomans forbade the press, the framework indicates that the following questions need addressing: Who benefited from the suppression of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire? Did they propagate the sultan’s rule? Were they important enough pieces of the propagating regime to have their voices heard in the bargain over laws and policies? The “dog that didn’t bark” also requires an explanation: if the Ottomans blocked the spread of the press for three centuries, why did European rulers not prevent the spread of printing? Were European rulers hapless to prevent the spread of printing? Or were there deeply rooted differences in means of propagation that incentivized European rulers to permit the press while disincentivizing Ottoman rulers from doing the same? This chapter proposes that such deeply rooted differences were precisely why the two regions reacted differently to the printing press.

  Early Printing in Europe

  Within five years of Gutenberg introducing his invention, the first major work employing the new technology, the Gutenberg bible, was available for sale. By the end of the fifteenth century, 60 of the 100 largest European cities had a press, and 30 percent of cities with population of at least 1,000 had a press. The press was hardly concentrated in Gutenberg’s Germany: nearly every nation had at least one press by the end of the century (see Table 5.1). Perhaps more astoundingly, printers produced more than 27,000 works in this period that are still in existence, and the actual number of works produced is likely quite higher.

  Table 5.1 Number of Cities with Presses and Works Produced by 1500, by Country

  Current Country Cities with a Press by 1500 Percentage of Cities with a
Press Works by 1500

  Austria 1 11% 84

  Belgium 8 20% 808

  Czech Republic 6 33% 63

  Denmark 2 50% 6

  Finland 0 0% 0

  France 46 35% 5,766

  Germany 51 32% 7,662

  Ireland 0 0% 0

  Italy 75 37% 9,881

  Netherlands 13 34% 1,165

  Poland 5 21% 27

  Portugal 5 17% 29

  Spain 28 30% 938

  Switzerland 10 50% 877

  United Kingdom 4 6% 398

  Total 254 30% 27,704

  Sources: Population: Bairoch et al. (1988); Press: Febvre and Martin (1958), Clair (1976), British Library (2011); only cities with population ≥ 1,000 considered.

  Gutenberg and his assistants established the first print workshops in Mainz and the surrounding area. They held a printing monopoly for about a decade, before rivals printed a bible in Strasbourg in 1459.7 The early printers were either apprentices or business partners of Gutenberg in Mainz. Due to the proprietary nature of the technology, there were significant barriers to entry, the largest of which was the acquisition of metal type. The process used to cast movable metal type required a specific combination of alloys that remained a secret among a small group of printers.8 This meant that the printing “industry” was hardly competitive in its first few decades. The few individuals with the training and knowledge to start a press dominated early printing, and they had their choice of where to establish a press. For these reasons, printing remained almost exclusively German in its first few decades. By the 1470s, a small group of “printer-scholars” – educated laymen who ran printing presses and edited manuscripts – controlled the industry. The printer-scholars were often former priests or university professors. At heart they were capitalists. Most of the early printers readily moved to places where demand for books was the highest: first to major commercial centers and then to university towns.9 Printing expanded rapidly in the 1470s, particularly in Germany and Italy. Demand was likely the highest in northern Italy, which was Europe’s wealthiest region at the time. By the end of the century the press was in nearly universal use throughout Western Europe (see Figure 5.1).

  Figure 5.1 Print Cities by 1500 in Western and Central Europe

  Table 5.1 revealed just how rapidly the press spread throughout Europe in the fifty years after Gutenberg. By 1500, 254 European towns had presses, accounting for about 30 percent of Western and Central European towns with populations of at least 1,000. Presses were most abundant in the wealthiest regions of Western Europe – Italy, France (Paris was the largest city in Europe at the time), and the Low Countries – as well as in Germany, which had an ingrained print culture due to its early roots in Mainz and the surrounding area. Even Spain, which had been the wealthiest region in Western Europe while under Muslim rule until being superseded by the northern Italian city-states during the Commercial Revolution, had presses in 30 percent of its cities by the end of the century. Thirteen of the fifteen largest print cities were either big cities by the standards of the day (i.e., had populations of at least 20,000) or university towns (see Table 5.2). These fifteen cities accounted for 71 percent of books that have survived to the present day. Evidently, while printers did spread throughout Western Europe, many of them also concentrated in a few select cities.

  Table 5.2 Biggest Print Cities before 1500

  City Number of Works by 1500 Population in 1500 University by 1500

  Venice 3,485 100,000 No

  Paris 2,701 225,000 Yes

  Rome 1,886 55,000 Yes

  Cologne 1,488 45,000 Yes

  Leipzig 1,324 10,000 Yes

  Lyons 1,320 50,000 Yes

  Augsburg 1,195 30,000 No

  Strasbourg 1,115 20,000 No

  Milan 1,065 100,000 No

  Nuremberg 1,017 38,000 No

  Florence 765 55,000 Yes

  Basel 746 10,000 No

  Deventer 598 7,000 No

  Bologna 530 50,000 Yes

  Antwerp 423 30,000 No

  Total 19,658

  % of Total 71.0%

  Source: British Library (2011).

  Latin was the language of most books printed before 1500 (77 percent), although many were printed in local vernaculars, including Italian (7 percent), German (4–6 percent), and French (4–5 percent). Religious works were the most popular, making up about 45 percent of all early books published, with the bible by far the biggest seller.10 This should not be surprising, as most literates of the time were churchmen. The Church was one of the biggest early customers of printing. It used the press to print ordinances, works of popular piety, bulls, propaganda for its anti-Turkish crusade, and indulgences. Local churches also demanded books for church services.11 Numerous monasteries welcomed printers to their quarters, and printers found a large market for religious works in small Italian cities.

  Another important source of demand came from merchants, who desired books of mathematics. The first known printed book of mathematics in the West, the Treviso Arithmetic, was printed in 1478, and the works of Euclid first appeared in Venice in 1482.12 Northern Italians printed most of the early mathematical treatises, as this is where merchant activity was greatest and thus demand for such works the highest. The book dedication of a 1519 Portuguese edition of Euclid reflects the importance of printed works to merchants: “I am printing this arithmetic because it is a thing so necessary in Portugal for transactions with the merchants of India, Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia, and other places discovered by us.”13

  There were some attempts by authorities to slow the spread of printing or control what was printed. In particular, the Church attempted to control the spread of books that challenged its interests. In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV permitted the University of Cologne to censure printers of what they deemed heretical books. This presaged Church policy over the next century: the papacy issued bulls authorizing excommunication and universal censorship in 1487 and 1501, and Pope Leo X issued a bull that forbade the publication of any book without the Church’s permission.14 The Church repressed a number of heretical books during the Spanish Inquisition of the 1490s, and it published the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”) in 1559. It also had French publishers of Protestant literature executed. Monarchs likewise prohibited certain types of books. Henry VIII published a list of banned books as he tried to install the Reformation in England in the 1530s, and in 1538, England prohibited the importation of books written in English. Special interests such as the Stationers in England, to whom the king granted a monopoly on printing throughout the kingdom, were also able to block some aspects of printing, sometimes violently.15 Yet, printers were easily able to evade most censorship by assuming pseudonyms, falsifying the place of publication, or publishing “pocket books” that were easily concealed from censors. In the end, censorship was rather impotent in Europe, and printers printed books with little fear of retribution.

  Printing Regulations in the Ottoman Empire

  In 2012, I published two papers with economists Metin Coşgel and Thomas Miceli,16 which addressed the puzzle posed at the beginning of this chapter: Why did the Ottomans suppress the printing press for nearly 250 years despite knowing about it as early as the 1480s? To understand our answer to this puzzle, some historical context is necessary.

  The Ottomans first knew of the printing press during the reign of Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512). According to a widely known, yet debated, version of events, Bayezid II issued an edict in 1485 banning printing in Ottoman Turkish.17 His son, Sultan Selim I, renewed this edict in 1515. The decree stated that “occupying oneself with the science of printing was punishable by death.”18 The effect of this edict was clear well over a century after its enactment: in the seventeenth century, the Hungarian Ottoman chronicler Ibrahim of Pec explicitly wondered why books in the Arabic and Ottoman Turkish languages were not available.19

  By all accounts, the ban on printing applied only to Muslim subjects printing in the Arabic script, which was both the offici
al script of all Islamic doctrine as well as the script of the Ottoman Turkish language. Religious minorities were free to set up presses, so long as they printed works on non-Islamic topics and in a non-Arabic script. Thus, the Ottomans allowed Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal to establish a press in Istanbul in 1493, and they soon published the Torah and other religious and secular texts in Hebrew characters. Armenians established a press in the 1560s, printing books in the Armenian alphabet with fonts brought from abroad, while a Greek Orthodox monk brought the first Greek printing press to Istanbul in 1627.20 In 1610, Tunisian Christians in the city of Quzahiya printed the Psalms of the Old Testament in Arabic (using the Syriac type).21

  It was not until 1727 that an Ottoman sultan gave explicit permission to a subject to establish a press capable of printing in the Arabic script. A Hungarian Muslim convert named Ibrahim Müteferrika went into business with his partner Sa’id Efendi, and they received an edict giving them explicit permission to print in Arabic as long as religious works were not printed. Their first works were practical in nature, including maps, grammar books, and dictionaries.22 But their press only printed seventeen works in twenty-three volumes, and it closed by 1745, after which printing virtually ceased in the Empire until the nineteenth century. But it is possible to glean some insight from the language used in the edict permitting Ibrahim Müteferrika and Sa’id Efendi’s press. It was clear that the sultan was lifting a major restriction. The edict stated that the new technology would be “unveiled like a bride and will not again be hidden.”23 This suggests that the original edicts played some role in suppressing printing in the Arabic script in the intervening two and a half centuries between their original imposition and the explicit permission to establish a press granted in the early eighteenth century.