Amit's Blog

From Osman’s Vision to the Republic’s Dawn: The Ottoman Empire’s Grand Saga of Power, Culture, and Transformation The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922 CE), founded by Osman I’s Turkic tribe in Anatolia, grew from a small beylik into a 5.2 million square kilometer empire under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566). Spanning modern Turkey, the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa, its ~30 million population thrived on agriculture (60–75%), trade/services (20–30%), and manufacturing (5–15%). Urbanization peaked at 15–20%, with Istanbul as a global hub. The devshirme system and slavery (5–15%) fueled military and households, while sarrafs and waqfs managed finances, later overtaken by European banks. Cultural achievements—mosques, poetry, miniatures—flourished alongside caravanserais and aqueducts. Initially pragmatic, the Sunni-majority empire grew conservative, facing decline from the 17th century due to debt, territorial losses, and failure to modernize. World War I alliances with Germany l...

From Rome’s Eternal Splendor to Byzantium’s Final Stand: Economics, Society, Culture, Technology, and Global Connections   The Roman and Byzantine Empires (27 BCE–1453 CE) were vibrant civilizations defined by agriculture (70–80% of the economy), trade/services (15–25%), and manufacturing (5–15%). During the Pax Romana (27 BCE–180 CE), 20–30% of the 50–70 million population were slaves, with urbanization at 10–15%, centered in Rome. Constantine’s era (306–337 CE) introduced the gold solidus, Christian dominance, and Constantinople’s rise, with slaves at 15–25%. The Byzantine Empire peaked under the Macedonians (867–1056 CE), excelling in trade, silk production, and iconic art, but fell to the Ottomans in 1453 due to military, economic, and technological weaknesses. Urban professions evolved from artisans to clergy, while banking shifted from argentarii to churches and Italian merchants. Debt, driven by debasement, tribute, and loans, strained both empires. Cultural achievements...

The Forge of Industry: Capitalism’s Industrial and Imperial Ascendancy (c. 1750–1914) Part 2 of 4 From the smoky mid-18th century to the dawn of the 20th, capitalism didn’t just evolve—it exploded, with all the grace of a runaway steam engine. Between 1750 and 1914, the Industrial Revolution and imperial ambition conspired to transform sleepy agrarian societies into roaring industrial beasts, while empires stretched their greedy fingers across the globe. Britain, with its knack for inventing things and subjugating people, stood at the helm, wielding steam engines and stock markets like a sorcerer with a particularly lucrative spellbook. This era, as Eric Hobsbawm so aptly put it, was when “the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution together created the modern world, shattering tradition and unleashing capitalism’s relentless dynamism” (Hobsbawm 1962, 45). But for every gleaming railway or bustling factory, there was a darker tale—of workers ground down by machines, colon...