Growth and Its Limits

Sam White

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511844058.006

2 - Growth and Its Limits

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012

Sam White

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Sam White: Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Ohio

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Summary

By the late sixteenth century, the Ottoman imperial ecology had begun to fall victim to its own success. After working for generations to settle a land ravaged by centuries of war and plague and to build up its military and capital city, the empire started to face problems of population pressure and resource scarcities. Ottoman numbers soared in the classical age, and agriculture in the core Mediterranean provinces expanded to the limits of arable land. As environmental, social, and technological barriers left the peasantry unable to keep up with rising demand, food production ran up against diminishing marginal returns. While the empire as a whole did not yet face a Malthusian crisis, some regions were approaching the limits of subsistence by the 1580s, and the margin of surplus for provisioning began to dwindle. In the meantime, landlessness, inflation, and unemployment were breeding a new class of desperate and potentially dangerous men.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire , pp. 52 - 77

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511844058.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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