(^402) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
press, which was seen as a potential instrument of sacrilege and heresy.
Nothing did more to cut Muslims off from the mainstream of knowl
edge.
As a result of this intellectual segregation, technical lag, and indus
trial dependency, the balance of economic forces tilted steadily against
the Ottomans, while a series of military defeats undermined their as
sumptions of superiority and paralyzed their ability to respond. A few
farsighted observers tried to warn the ruling elite and pushed for re
form, but to litde effect. The evil was constitutional, founded in reli
gious dogma and inculcated by habit. A byzantine bureaucracy made
everything harder with thorny regulations in incomprehensible offi
cialese. Corruption—the only way to get something done—just fed on
itself.
This self-imposed archaism dissolved the loins of empire. "The Ot
toman state was a plunder machine which needed booty or land to fuel
itself, to pay its way, to reward its officer class."^10 The Ottomans had
originally filled a power vacuum—had taken over a region once strong,
now enfeebled—looting as they went. Now they could no longer take
from outside. They had to generate wealth from within, to promote
productive investment. Instead, they resorted to habit and tried to pil
lage the interior, to squeeze their own subjects. Nothing, not even the
wealth of high officials, was secure. Nothing could be more self-
destructive. The only thing that saved the empire from disintegration
was its inefficiency, the venality of its officials, and the protective in
terests of stronger powers.
In these circumstances, the continued advance of European tech
nology, in particular the Industrial Revolution, nailed shut the coffin
of Ottoman industry. Except for some local specialties, nothing could
stand up to cheap factory-made cottons and silks. The nineteenth cen
tury saw Britain protect the Ottoman empire from the territorial am
bitions of its adversaries, while blithely killing off its manufactures. But
from the British point of view, that was as it should be: British goods
were cheaper, and the Ottomans could not possibly compete. They did
not know enough; they did not have the capital; they could not count
on political stability.
Across the Mediterranean, however, a piece of the Ottoman empire
had other ideas. This was Egypt, long dozing under Mameluke mis
rule, to the point of forgetting the wheel—this, in the land of the
Pharaohs, where archers in chariots had once driven black Nubians
nora
(Nora)
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