The Ottoman economy lagged not from state overreach but from weak central mobilization

Evidence

But there is another aspect of the Ottoman decline that suggests a different present-day parallel. The economic weakness of the Middle East, unlike that of the Soviet Union, was not due to an excess of central control, which on the contrary was almost entirely lacking. There was some economic regulation, mainly at the level of the craft guild and the country market, but in the mo­ bilization and deployment of economic power, the Ottoman world was falling far behind Western Europe. It had also become a predominantly consumeroriented society. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1743

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts the conventional over-centralization thesis of Middle Eastern economic decline and might corroborate revisionist economic histories of the Ottoman Empire.