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

  22 See Drelichman (2005a).

  23 See Irigoin and Grafe (2008, 2013) and Grafe and Irigoin (2012). The fiscal apparatus was weak and decentralized. The central government had almost no control over which taxes their tax farmers levied.

  24 For more on the long-run effects of such extractive institutions, see Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2005) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2012).

  25 Spanish policies regarding the wool industry were yet another cause of Spanish economic decline. The Mesta (sheep-owners’ guild) was favored by the Crown, and the Crown therefore refrained from enclosing common lands and providing security of property rights for non-Mesta agriculturalists. See Hamilton (1938), Elliott (1961), North (1981), and Lynch (1991, ch. 4). Kamen (1978) argues that there is simply no plausible evidence to suggest that the Crown’s favoring of the Mesta inhibited agriculture. I do not wish to enter into this argument here. I simply note that the arguments made in this book are consistent with the Crown’s favoring of the Mesta at the expense of economic development, to the extent that this was historically the case.

  26 Even where local finance and law and order were not under the control of the Crown, it was in the hands of the growing aristocracy and the Church, neither of whom were interested in commercial endeavors. See Kamen (1988, ch. 1).

  27 See Lynch (1991, ch. 4).

  28 See Lynch (1991, ch. 4) and Kamen (2003, chs. 2, 7).

  29 See Lynch (1991, ch. 4).

  30 See Lynch (1991, ch. 4).

  31 See Elliott (1961) and Lynch (1991, pp. 172–3).

  32 See Lynch (1991, pp. 198–9).

  33 See Elliott (1961).

  34 See Elliott (1961) and Lynch (1991, ch. 2).

  35 Also see Álvarez-Nogal and de la Escosura (2007).

  36 For more on the arbitristas, see Baeck (1988).

  37 There is a long history of academic treatises trying to explain the “decline of Spain.” For some of the relevant literature, see Hamilton (1938), Elliott (1961), and Kamen (1978). Kamen views the decline of Spain as a myth, arguing that Spain never really “rose” in the first place.

  38 See Álvarez-Nogal and de la Escosura (2007). They show there was significant variation within Spain, but the general pattern over time appears robust.

  39 See Hamilton (1938) and Álvarez-Nogal and de la Escosura (2007, 2013).

  40 See Álvarez-Nogal and de la Escosura (2007, 2013).

  41 For more on the varying sources of legitimacy employed by the Ottomans, see Coşgel, Miceli, and Rubin (2012a, 2012b).

  42 For more, see İnalcık (1973, ch. 13), Hourani (1991, ch. 13), Pamuk (2004b), Coşgel and Miceli (2005), and Karaman and Pamuk (2010).

  43 See İnalcık (1973).

  44 See Karaman (2009).

  45 For more on Ebu’s-su’ud – his career, life, and place within the Ottoman hierarchy – see Imber (1997).

  46 See van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker (2012).

  47 The Ottomans did face a threat in the early fifteenth century when Tamerlane overthrew them. Sultan Mehmed I (r. 1413–1421) won back the throne by ceding to the demands of the elite. However, this was prior to their expansion outside of the Anatolian and Balkan peninsulas. See Karaman (2009).

  48 See Kuran (2005b, 2011).

  49 See Pamuk (2004a) and Balla and Johnson (2009).

  50 See Pamuk (2004a) and Karaman and Pamuk (2010).

  51 See Pamuk (2004b).

  52 See Pamuk (2004a, 2004b).

  53 See Karaman and Pamuk (2010).

  54 See Karaman and Pamuk (2010).

  55 See Balla and Johnson (2009).

  56 See Karaman (2009) for an analysis of the Ottoman tradeoffs between tax collection and stifling revolt.

  57 The Ottomans did occasionally modify commercial law. For instance, in the nineteenth century, after external pressures made it obvious that economic stagnation was harming the Ottomans’ position vis-à-vis Europe, they imposed a series of economic reforms. Moreover, the Qur’an is hardly wholly antithetical to commerce; scores of verses sanctify private property and encourage enrichment. The point is simply that the costs of modifying commercial law frequently, but not always, outweighed its benefits.

  58 See İnalcık (1973, ch. 10) and Karaman (2009).

  59 For example, one of Ebu’s-su’ud’s great accomplishments was that he harmonized secular administration with religious law by allowing rulers wide discretion in setting tax rates. See Imber (1997).

  60 See Kuran (2011).

  61 See Pamuk (2000).

  62 See Özmucur and Pamuk (2002).

  63 For overviews of the Great Debasement, see Challis (1967) and Munro (2011). For more on the inflationary effect of the Great Debasement, see Brenner (1961).

  64 Metin Coşgel and Bogac Ergene (2014) find similar patterns in their analysis of courts in eighteenth-century Kastamonu, an Ottoman town in north-central Turkey. They show that members from elite families did much better than those from poorer families, although they suggest that it is possible that this was not the result of judicial bias, but resulted from the fact that members of the elite would only risk going to court if they were confident they would win.

  65 On the merchant guild, see Greif, Milgrom, and Weingast (1994) and Greif (2006b). On the community responsibility system, see Greif (2002, 2004, 2006b).

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