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As usual, due to not having a television, I spent most of last night staring at a dusty corner of the room where one would be if we had one. This is about as intellectually stimulating as your average early-evening TV and so not only do I save money but also it gives me time to think. Mostly about how I should do some hoovering, admittedly, but also about other stuff. Last night, in between theorising about how I'd adapt if I fell into a timewarp back to the C16 (Answer: Badly), and whether Denis Leary's "Shut the f*** up!" school of therapy might have something in it after all, I started wondering about the rise of Western Civilisation and why, after the Middle Eastern and Arab states had the monopoly in technology, medicine, art, science, culture and general civilisation for more than a thousand years after the Roman Empire went pear shaped, it was mostly Northern Europe ended up running the show thereafter. I've heard many theories about this; the Middle Ages was a time rich in social and economic germination, the Printing Press, Constant warfare pushing forward the rate of technological progress, and other ideas too. However, one idea that I've never heard expounded is economic, and so I'm going to outline it now and throw it to the floor for comment.
It is hardly like the Middle Eastern States started from a bad point relative to Europe; they were aggressively warlike, monotheistic, technologically advanced, cultured & civilised. there were of course obvious cultural difference, but why was it that post-renaissance Europe, after reaching effective equivalence to Arabia, suddenly leapt ahead when Arabia stayed fairly static?
Of course, there is no one answer, but I suggest that Sharia (Islamic) law was a contributing factor; specifically, the part that forbids the payment of interest on loans. According to Sharia, money is a medium of exchange and nothing more, and those who use capital to generate more capital without indulging in 'proper' work are not contributing to society - as such the charging of interest is banned. In Europe, this situation was almost entirely opposite, especially amongst the Jewish Community who are actively banned from many forms of work resulting in moneylending being pretty much the only profession they could take up.
In turn this led to Banking, which in turn led to capital speculation in the great merchant cities like London and Amsterdam.
The theory here is that by lending money to uncertain ventures at interest in the hope of turning a profit on that money - venture capital, if you will - Western European expansion was funded in a way that Arabian expansion could not be. Whilst buying and selling at a profit was the core of trade, the uses that profit could be legally put to was different in both cultures - in one, restrictive, in the other not so. Thus once a certain critical mass of capital was available in society, a society that allowed banking and capital speculation would quickly increase the number of funded ventures whereas one which did not allow such freedom of use would not see an equivalent growth.
Thus in short; a culture which forbade the lending of money at interest would have a lesser amount of capital speculation and in turn would have fewer funded ventures, which restricted the economic growth of that culture, allowing people who were only a few hundred years before mud-hut dwelling peasants to seize the initiative and grab the spoils that could well have gone to someone else.
I'm not sure I'm right. It's certainly a persuasive argument, but I'm aware that it's impossible to chart cultural change and expansion on the basis of one factor. Some people will see me as trying to say that history and cultures were 'right' and 'wrong', which I'm also not. I'm just curious as to why a civilisation which seemed, on the face of it, to have everything going for it might have been leapfrogged so comprehensively in such a short period of time by people who were their inferiors - and this seems to be to have potentially been a contributing factor.
Comments welcomed.
It is hardly like the Middle Eastern States started from a bad point relative to Europe; they were aggressively warlike, monotheistic, technologically advanced, cultured & civilised. there were of course obvious cultural difference, but why was it that post-renaissance Europe, after reaching effective equivalence to Arabia, suddenly leapt ahead when Arabia stayed fairly static?
Of course, there is no one answer, but I suggest that Sharia (Islamic) law was a contributing factor; specifically, the part that forbids the payment of interest on loans. According to Sharia, money is a medium of exchange and nothing more, and those who use capital to generate more capital without indulging in 'proper' work are not contributing to society - as such the charging of interest is banned. In Europe, this situation was almost entirely opposite, especially amongst the Jewish Community who are actively banned from many forms of work resulting in moneylending being pretty much the only profession they could take up.
In turn this led to Banking, which in turn led to capital speculation in the great merchant cities like London and Amsterdam.
The theory here is that by lending money to uncertain ventures at interest in the hope of turning a profit on that money - venture capital, if you will - Western European expansion was funded in a way that Arabian expansion could not be. Whilst buying and selling at a profit was the core of trade, the uses that profit could be legally put to was different in both cultures - in one, restrictive, in the other not so. Thus once a certain critical mass of capital was available in society, a society that allowed banking and capital speculation would quickly increase the number of funded ventures whereas one which did not allow such freedom of use would not see an equivalent growth.
Thus in short; a culture which forbade the lending of money at interest would have a lesser amount of capital speculation and in turn would have fewer funded ventures, which restricted the economic growth of that culture, allowing people who were only a few hundred years before mud-hut dwelling peasants to seize the initiative and grab the spoils that could well have gone to someone else.
I'm not sure I'm right. It's certainly a persuasive argument, but I'm aware that it's impossible to chart cultural change and expansion on the basis of one factor. Some people will see me as trying to say that history and cultures were 'right' and 'wrong', which I'm also not. I'm just curious as to why a civilisation which seemed, on the face of it, to have everything going for it might have been leapfrogged so comprehensively in such a short period of time by people who were their inferiors - and this seems to be to have potentially been a contributing factor.
Comments welcomed.
