V300 Economic History

Economic history is one of the lines of study that deals with past phenomenon of economies. This concept can be divided among various categories, like, geographical, cultural and institutional. There are various books and research articles, which are written, based on economic history of different civilisations. However, in this essay, two books are taken to explain the history of economics. These two books are “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” and “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East” written by Diamond and Kuran, respectively.  These two books are written from two different points of view. Hence, these books do not have any connection with each other. The first author wrote his book based on geographical aspect while the second one wrote his book based on institutional aspect. Diamond is one of the leading experts of economic geography and his book is based on various research strategies. On the other hand, Kuran has written his book based on the economic scenario of Middle East countries. In this essay, there will be a brief overview of these two books. This essay will try to capture the principle logic and the expression, which these two authors wanted to express throughout their books. At the end of this essay, the role of those books will be discussed from the academic point of view. In this context, various literature reviews related to these two books will also be discussed.

The main concept of Diamond’s book is to explain the reason that why people of Europe, Asia and North Africa outlasted and occupied other countries. He has mentioned the concept of geography, production of food, domestication of animals, immunity to germs and use of steel as some factors of society that helped one country to dominate other countries. The author mentioned that geographical factors had a great influence behind the growth of a civilisation. These geographical factors imply different types of flora and fauna, geographical orientation and the size of the landmass. It was also argued that cultural discrimination due to different geographical region had helped Europe and Asia to achieve some advantages from other countries with different cultures by trading.

In the book “Guns, Germs and Steel”, the author tried to find out the answer of a particular question. This question is why people of Europe captured the maximum parts of the world. According to some anthropologists, this action highlighted the racial differences among people all over the world. However, Diamond did not give much importance on this issue. Rather he tried to focus on environmental differences that surrounded different cultures. The author argued that the civilisation of Europe and Asia was not a product of innovation; rather it was the product of opportunity and necessity.  He analysed his research in four parts. These four parts were the rise of civilisations, exchange of germs through different cultural collisions, rise and distribute of food production and causes behind occupational differences between hunter-gather and food producers. These four parts have delivered some interesting factors of history of the past 13000 years. He did an unbiased judgement of this question. The discussion in this book touched some concepts of history by applying a scientific approach. He connected different causations in a scientific way and tried to describe the answer of his question. This book did not follow any detail criteria of a general history book. However, the author said that he tried to inform his readers that history does not have any special characteristics.

Jared Diamond mentioned some wonderful perceptions that why some cultures had dominated other countries. He explained this concept by constantly addressing some scientific factors, like, animal domestication, spreads of germs and productivity of a farm.

In the first step of this book, civilisation moved from the phase of hunter-gatherer to an agrarian economy. However, this move needed various conditions to happen. These conditions were vegetation of high-carbohydrate, a dry climate, and animal docile.

Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” also suggested that cities needed sufficient amount of food supply and hence, agriculture was an important economic factor. The author pointed out that geography can control human migration by creating difficulties in travel and by affecting domestic animals by changing climate and increasing cultivation of crops. In the latter part of his book, Diamond pointed out the tropical diseases, chiefly, malaria, which stopped the European keenness into Africa.

However, Diamond failed to point out the most important topic of history, that is, human thoughts and origins and did not deduct the human origins of almost 13000 years for scientific factors. These origins and thoughts of humans had greatly influenced this history throughout those 13000 years (Diamond 2005). Moreover, political, social and military framework can influence these scientific factors of an economy. These scientific factors are discussed by Diamond in his book.

This book has also tried to focus on the reason that why some civilisations achieved success. This book of history helped students to understand that there were some scientific factors, which played an important role in history. The writer has written another book, named, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”, where he focused on environmental factors and some other factors that caused to fail of some civilisation.

Coelho did a literature review of the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” in the journal of Economic History in 1998. He discussed the whole concept of this book and then pointed out some errors, which Diamond did in his book. Coelho indentified two types of errors. These are one group of people were so complete that they had striking characteristics. Another error made by Diamond is its complex nature. Diamond could not precede his arguments largely (Coelho 1998). According to Coelho, the author of the book could easily avoid these errors along with other errors.

According to Mokyr, Diamond could add two qualifications on the concept of natural difference according to their geographical areas. The fist qualification is that environments can be abandoned. Diamond analysed the prehistoric movement of civilisation in details. However, he did not realise that he described the regional story but ignored those people, who lived over there. People can move here and there and hence geographical affect did not have any important influence on them. Secondly, it can be said that, technology could sharply spread because the environmental condition is not ample (Mokyr 1998). Hence, it required hard work and originality.

There are some other reviews of this book of Diamond. Historian Tom Tomlinson has wrote that Diamond has chosen a large portion of history to do his research and it is very difficult to perform. Professor J.R McNeill approved this book (Andrade 2010). However, he believed that Diamond gave excessive importance on geography to explain history and ignored cultural autonomy. Another geographer and anthropologist, James Morris Blaut described Diamond as a historian of modern Eurocentric. Blaut further criticised the usage of two terms “Eurasia” and “innovative”. According to him, these two concepts had misled the reader to assume that Western Europe improved the technological inventions, which spread in the Asia and Middle East. Stephen Walt, an International Relations scholar of Harvard, commanded the book as an excellent book and suggested this book among the ten books that every student of International Relations should read. Another economist, Brad Delong explained the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” as a genius work of the writer.

The second book is “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East”, written by Taimur Kuran. He is a well-known author in the context of Islamic economy. He took several attempts to rectify some developmental actions in the economy of Middle East. This book of Kuran is based on the Middle East region, which was captured by the Ottoman Empire. In the middle of the 16^th century, the field of economy, politics, technology and science of Middle East was superior to Europe. However, after that, Europe started increasing and the Ottomans started to decline. The gap between these two civilisations became wider. Hence, an investigation was required to indentify the reason behind this gap. Timur Kuran has presented the concept of fortune reversal as a ‘grand puzzle’ in his book. Later, he tried to solve the reason behind this mystery (Kuran 2011).

There is a brief concept of the Long Divergence in his book. This concept has described the situation of that time, when the Western region gradually transformed themselves from the medieval economic institutions to modern economic environment, like, building banks, corporations, and large trading companies and so on. These modern institutions could assemble large amount of capital and played an important role in economic development. Since, certain allocation of Islamic Law resulted division of assets and restricted the accumulation of capital and making of corporations. Hence, Kuran has chiefly focused on finance and commerce of Middle East that failed due to Islamic Law. The Middle East civilisation could not cover these two fields and blamed the Islamic Law for this failure.

This book is a compact volume, which is divided into four parts and fourteen chapters. These four parts are introduction, organisational stagnation, the making of underdevelopment and conclusion. In this first part of the book, the author has introduced the puzzle, that is, the reason of underdevelopment in the Middle East that he wanted to solve. Hence, to solve this puzzle, Kuran has analysed the economic role of Islam in the second chapter of his book. The Middle East region was dominated by this Islamic Law at that time.

The second part of the book deals with various legal institutions. These institutions were responsible for the economic drawbacks and stagnant organisation system in the Middle East. These legal concepts were inheriting system of Islam, polygamy, prohibition of interest in case of lending and borrowing of funds. Some other legal customs were certain rules of partnership, fixed provision of waqf, absence of legal person. According to the author, hajj was also a constraint.

In this second part of his book, Taimur pointed out that the main reason behind the stagnant economic prosperity of Middle East was the absence of financial and commercial institutions. The Middle East region at that time was dominated by this Islamic Law. Hence, in his third chapter, he has discussed the commercial life of the Middle East under the rule of Islam, based on the life of Muhammad. The author has stated the simple persistent of Islamic partnership in the fourth chapter of the book. This partnership was based on the personal basis. The investor invested when he knew the merchant as trustworthy. The drawback of inheriting system of Islam is stated in chapter five. In Islamic Law, it is mentioned that one third property of a person will be reserved for his or her children, parents, spouses and siblings. In the sixth chapter, the absence of corporation is mentioned. The first joint-stock company, which was owned by Muslim Ottoman Empire, was established in 1851. In chapter seven, the constraints related to the exposure of the business corporation of Middle East are described. The European business enterprises were started to organise as corporations in the late of sixteenth century. They started to discover the other parts of the world and captured the market. This process helped the European countries to develop. However, the countries of the Middle East region did not capture those business processes. In the last chapter of part one, the author has described the credit market system in the Middle East without the banking system. In 1850s, the first two banks were founded successfully. These banks were The Bank of Egypt and the Ottoman Bank.  At the end of this part, Kuran has concluded his arguments. According to him, the inheriting system of Islam helped to distribute the law of a successful business. Under the system of polygamy, the wealth was distributed among various claimants.

The third part of this book is based on the reasons that what made the Middle East as underdeveloped. It also pointed out that how Christians helped those Middle East regions economically under the control of Islamic Law. The first chapter under part three stated the economic life of non-Muslim under the rule of Islam. Until the end of eighteenth century, there was no major community, which could upstage others in the field of either commerce or finance. In chapter ten, the author has described the rise of the religious communities in the Middle East part. In eleventh chapter, Kuran described the fiscal impacts of the treaty, which is known as Capitulations (Stein 2014). The Ottoman Empire contracted with European powers, especially with France. This treaty provided excessive advantage to foreign merchants for conducting their business in Middle East under the Islamic Law. There are other two chapters, which describe about the various concepts of the Middle East. These are foreign facilities of impersonal exchange and the absence of Consuls in Middle East.

In the last part of the book, the author has summarised his arguments and presented his solution to solve the puzzle, that is, the principle reason behind this long divergence of economic achievement between the West and Middle East. However, the author has ended his discussion by giving good news. The good news is that the Middle East region is adopting the modern economic institutions of capitalism.

There are various researchers, who reviewed the book. Jack Goldstone is one of them. He wrote a review essay, named, “Is Islam Bad for Business?” According to him, Kuran has written a beautiful book, which has ample analysis of how Islamic Law affected economic progress in North Africa and Middle East. Goldstone argued that Kuran did not want to say that the Islamic Law was bad for those regions. Jack nicely reviewed the whole book of Timur. However, at the end of the essay, he pointed out some questions. These questions were whether Kuran properly explained the rise of the Western region and the reason of lagging of those Islamic Societies behind other countries (Goldstone 2011). According to him, to meet Kuran’s explanation, two conditions are required. These are development of corporate organisation and corporate law.

The other review of this book was done by Anne McCants in 2011. The researcher also tried to find out the puzzle. She tried to find out the reason behind the different economic conditions of different countries. Finally, she tried to find out the reason that what made Africa and the Middle East as a poor nation. Hence to find out all of her answers, she reviewed the book of Timur Kuran (Anne 2011).

There were also some other researchers, who nicely reviewed the book “The Long Divergence” of Kuran. Meting Cosgel, Nelly Hanna and Mark Koyama are among them. According to Cosgel, if someone wants to find out the question that why the countries of Middle East did not attain modern economy while European courtiers do, then the book of Timur will help them (Cosgel 2011).

In conclusion, it can be said that these two books have tried to find out different economic phenomenon, based on two different aspects. While, Diamond has focused on the geographical differences, Timur has focused on the institutional differences. These two different factors helped some countries to develop. Europe and Asia have developed due to natural abundance and Middle East was underdeveloped due to institutional practice under the Islamic Law. However, according to various critics, both the writers have missed out some other important factors, which are important to discuss under the economic history of those countries. Instead of those shortfalls, these two books are very important for students to understand various economic factors that can greatly affect a civilisation.

Reference:

Andrade, Tonio.2010. "Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400-1750." Journal of Early Modern History 14, no. 1: 165-186.

Coelho, Philip R.P. 1998. “A review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.” The Journal of Economic History 587 (4) : 1179- 1181

Cosgel, Metin. 2011. ’A review of The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.’ Journal of Economic History 71 (4): 1114-1116

Diamond, Jared. 2005. “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” London: Vintage books

Goldstone, Jack. 2012. “Is Islam bad for business?” Perspectives on Politics 10 (1”):97-102

Kuran, Timur. 2011."The Puzzle of the Middle East’s Economic Underdevelopment." In The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, 3-24. Princeton University Press

McCants, Anne. 2011. “Did Law Hinder Economic Development in the Middle East?” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantities and Interdisciplinary History 44(4): 177-180

Mokyr, Joel. “Secrets of Success.” Reason 30 (7): 70-74

Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. 2014. "Citizens of a Fictional Nation: Ottoman-born Jews in France during the First World War." Past & Present 226, no. 1: 227-254.