Kuran on Maxime Rodinson:
On Maxime Rodinson's "Islam and Capitalism"
by The Long Divergence by Timur Kuran on Tuesday, September 7,
2010 at 8:48pm
I was asked this morning what single book influenced me
most in writing this book. The French historian Maxime Rodinson’s
now unfortunately out-of-print 1966 book, Islam et Capitalisme
(published in English under the title Islam and Capitalism by
Pantheon in 1973) first set me thinking about the issue on which
The Long Divergence focuses: does the present underdevelopment of
the Middle East have anything to do with its dominant religion, Islam?
Rodinson’s answer is simple. The Koran contains
regulations that are harmful to economic development, he says; the
ban on interest is a prime example. However, the ban was not
observed! Hence, he says, Islam could not have harmed economic
development. Just as the Christian ban on interest did not prevent
Europe from becoming a global economic powerhouse, reasons
Rodinson, the Islamic ban on interest could not have held back the
Middle East. We need to look elsewhere, to colonialism, for the
culprit.
When I read this argument for the first time in 1982, I
was convinced. As I read more, I started having doubts. Now I
think that Rodinson was way off track. It is true that Islam never
made it impossible to borrow or lend at interest. Nevertheless,
certain Islamic laws kept the financial sector from modernizing.
These laws include Islam’s inheritance and marriage laws. They
kept the financial sector atomistic and blocked the emergence of
banks. They did so by fragmenting private capital and keeping
capital owners from pooling capital credibly for long periods.
The argument is developed in chapter 8 of The Long
Divergence, which also explains why all the early banks in the
region, including the Ottoman Bank and Bank Misr, were founded by
foreigners, using foreign capital.
---
I will have more to say about this later on but I think the real
explanation for decline in the Arab world was not the Koran but
the decline of the Silk Road. I dealt with this briefly in an
article on the Kurds:
The Kurds are ethnically related to the ancient Medes, but only
came into their own with the rise of Islamic power. A Kurd by the
name Salah-ud-Din reconquered Jerusalem from Richard the
Lionhearted in the 12th century. Better known as Saladin, he
established the Ayyubid dynasty which ruled over much of the
Middle East until the rise of the Ottomans.
Columbus's "discovery" of the New World had an enormous impact on
commerce in the Middle East, which would no longer serve as a
lucrative link between Europe and East Asia. Among the casualties
were Kurdish merchants and toll-collectors. So devastating was the
decline after 1492 that brigandage became one of the chief
economic activities of the Kurds.
In addition to being economically marginalized, the Kurds were
isolated geographically as well. Preferring to dwell in the
mountains or rocky hills, they subsisted on sheep-herding and
small-scale farming. In the strict Marxist sense, class formation
of modern capitalist society never took place until late in the
20th century.
After the Ottomans created a new regional economic system based on
trade between North Africa and Central Asia, they were not sure
how the Kurds fit into the big picture. They finally decided to
co-opt them into the Hamidiye, a warrior caste functioning more or
less like the Janissaries -- slaves of Christian origin enjoying
privilege and political power in spite of their subject status.
Despite the high ideals of their nationalist leaders, Kurdish
soldiers joined with the Turks in slaughtering other subject
peoples like the Armenians.
full: http://www.swans.com/library/art10/iraq/proyect.html
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