The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East

Product Description

Iraq and Syria bring to mind bombs, terrorism, and human suffering. Still, every time violence ceases in Mosul or Aleppo, bazaars and daily life spring back to life. No wonder. In the Middle East, the first enterprises and early banks evolved already 4 000 years ago. While politics come and go, traditions die hard. In this historical tour de force, Iranian-Kurdish author Dr. Nima Sanandaji tells the long history of free markets in the Middle East, where free market economics and emerged millenials ago. It is a history rich in imagery and learning, and yet, maybe it’s most important feature is the lessons it provided for today’s world. Could it be that it is to ancient Middle East we must turn in order to recapture the attitudes and social fabric that once made us successful? The Birthplace of Capitalism – the Middle East shows that the road towards peace and freedom in the Middle East is to again embrace free enterprise and international exchange. In the past lies the future.

Review

The Middle East boasts a proud legacy of capitalist innovation, notes author Nima Sanandaji in his important new book, The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East. He traces the world s first capital markets, banks, artisanal industries and long-distance traders to this region, including in the first great cosmopolitan cities. In classical times, Greek and Roman aristocrats held their noses about trade while Syrian and Jewish traders played dominant roles in imperial commerce. They continued this role even after the empire fell and well into the Middle Ages. Iranians, Arabs, Turks, Jews, Kurds, Armenians and the myriad of people who inhabit the Middle East have widely different cultures, Sanandaji notes. Yet they are all dealers and hagglers, with market exchange almost encoded into their cultural DNA. Islam, the region s dominant religion, he adds, was forged by Mohammed, a man from the merchant classes. It does not share a theological ambivalence about trade so common in other faiths. –Joel Kotkin, The Orange County Register, 2 June 2018

This is a fascinating book packed with interesting information, especially if you have a limited knowledge of non-western history but three things immediately leapt out to me and more or less blew my mind. First, Adam Smith was a plagiarist. Second, medieval Syrians used carbon nanotubes to make the best swords ever. And third, ancient Persian irrigation networks built and maintained by private landowners thousands of years ago still provide water to about 3/4s of Iran. –Cato Chronicles interview by Anthony Comegna, 26 June 2018

About the Author

Dr. Nima Sanandaji is an author, with a doctorate degree in engineering, known for a stream of comprehensive policy reports and books on enterprise and public administration. Dr. Sanandaji has written over 20 books and 70 public policy reports, on policy issues ranging from women s career opportunities to technological transformation, taxes, education, and welfare.