First, let's look at England. In the 1540s it had been a technological and commercial backwater, facing crises of every kind - social, political, economic. But by 1600 it was beginning to emerge as a new centre of trade and innovation.
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Foreign observers were starting to note England's "most swift ships" and its feats of navigation. Matthew Baker had revolutionised ship design, and Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe, harassing the mighty Spanish Empire's coastlines wherever he pleased.
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Although the country's main trades were still in raw materials - tin, lead, wool - its woollen cloth industry was growing. London was beginning to attract merchants from across Europe. Yet it was far from being Europe's technological hub.
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Instead, foreign observers were most impressed by the Low Countries. It had “invented the art of printing, restored music, framed the chariot, devised the laying of colours in oil." (Tradition in Haarlem holds that it was one of their own, not Gutenberg, who invented printing)
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The region had its own raw materials -lead, coal, stone, madder, flax- yet what impressed people was its manufacturing: its glassware, tapestries, and cloth-making. It was famed for making the most advanced machinery: "all sorts of clocks and dials, and the mariner’s compass”
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And Antwerp was still very much Europe's commercial capital, even if London was on the up: a place so full of merchants that its inhabitants were famed for speaking up to five languages. The Low Countries seemed to have every advantage: trade, industry, mechanics, even coal.
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Yet it eventually stagnated. Its northern half, the Dutch Republic, might be famous for its Golden Age, but it was one of many such occurrences throughout history: "efflorescences", or temporary bubblings up of innovation and economic growth, which ultimately fizzled out.
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The list of pre-industrial efflorescences isn't long: the famous ones include ancient Greece and Rome, Song Dynasty China, Renaissance Italy, Tokugawa Japan, and the Islamic world of the 7th-13thC. Yet in 1600 there was another apparent efflorescence that nobody ever mentions:
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According to foreign observers it was in Fez, Morocco, the chief city of the Saadi Empire, that commerce, industry, and learning also flourished. It was a city of marble and alabaster, adorned with great lamps of brass, with hundreds of schools, inns, and colleges.
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It had 400 vast, working watermills, and a complex system of water supply, serving almost the whole population via 600 conduits. Its inhabitants were known for their commerce and industry, manufacturing clothes of wool, silk, and cotton.
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And it was a centre of learning. Its rulers amassed one of the major surviving collections of Islamic manuscripts on literature and science (though it was captured in a war in the 17thC and is now in Spain). Here was a city that was wealthy, populous, commercial, and educated.
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So what went wrong? Just as with the Low Countries, it's still not fully clear. But if we're to understand why Britain's efflorescence didn't fizzle out, we need to also understand why the Saadi Empire's forgotten golden age did. More detail here:https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-the-forgotten-golden …
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