|
Product Description
In the year 1000, the economy of the Middle East was at least as advanced as that of Europe. But by 1800, the region had fallen dramatically behind--in living standards, technology, and economic institutions. In short, the Middle East had failed to modernize economically as the West surged ahead. What caused this long divergence? And why does the Middle East remain drastically underdeveloped compared to the West? In The Long Divergence, one of the world's leading experts on Islamic economic institutions and the economy of the Middle East provides a new answer to these long-debated questions.
Timur Kuran argues that what slowed the economic development of the Middle East was not colonialism or geography, still less Muslim attitudes or some incompatibility between Islam and capitalism. Rather, starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on development by slowing or blocking the emergence of central features of modern economic life--including private capital accumulation, corporations, large-scale production, and impersonal exchange. By the nineteenth century, modern economic institutions began to be transplanted to the Middle East, but its economy has not caught up. And there is no quick fix today. Low trust, rampant corruption, and weak civil societies--all characteristic of the region's economies today and all legacies of its economic history--will take generations to overcome.
The Long Divergence opens up a frank and honest debate on a crucial issue that even some of the most ardent secularists in the Muslim world have hesitated to discuss.
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
- The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (New Approaches to Economic and Social History)
- Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
- The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.
- Islamic Political Thought: An Introduction
- A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
- Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society)
- Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today
- Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society)
- The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress
*If this is not the "The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Dec 17, 2024 05:09 +08.