this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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don't they have good agricultural land?
I mean compared to some places, sure. But agricultural products aren't gonna buy you a fancy ivory cane from a merchant who sailed here from Istanbul with exotic wares. They want something they can get valuable goods with, not grain. The Arab traders in Istanbul can get grain from the next village. You need something they want, or precious metals if you don't have anything else.
Which isn't to say you can't build a good population off of good land, it's just that "a nice place to live" isn't necessarily "a rich place in international trade".
true, but wouldn't good agricultural land mean more people can live in urban centers?
It can help, but I would argue that cities don't cause this sort of change on their own. After all, many of the largest most dense cities in the world were in India, China and Central Asia/North Africa for a lot of the time that Europe took off.