If you looked at Europe in the mid-1600s, you would probably think something along the lines of “Wow, these guys are not going to make it.” Even t

Why I'm long-term bullish on the Middle East

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2025-01-18 19:00:08

If you looked at Europe in the mid-1600s, you would probably think something along the lines of “Wow, these guys are not going to make it.” Even though the region was already seeing economic growth from colonialism and the expansion of global trade, much of it had also just been devastated by the Thirty Years War, which killed around a fifth of Germany’s population alone. That war, which involved most of the region’s major powers opportunistically sending in mercenary armies who committed untold atrocities on regular people, came on the heels of a century and a half of brutal religious wars and schisms. Politically, Europe was hopelessly fragmented among a vast number of polities, principalities, feudal possessions, proto-states, and so on. And the whole region was menaced externally by the Ottoman Empire, whose proxy pirates were known to enslave Europeans and seize coastal European towns.

We all know how the story goes after that. Just two centuries later, Europe was on top of the world, having invented industrial technology and modern science, consolidated under a few powerful empires, conquered most of the world, and seen growth in living standards unrivaled since the dawn of history.