http://4jndbnscrvmljnl3vynggebzvi5saz5gllk3iksdskgkmoq5oaqtxrqd.onion/sci/thread/346.html
Internal markets
In most agrarian societies, commerce, tax farming, moneylending, and many skilled trades were the province of particular ethnic minorities—whether that be Greeks and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe, Fujianese in Southeast Asia or any number of castes in different parts of India (see Chapter 1 of Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century for more examples).
By contrast, northwestern Europe was comparatively ethnically homogeneous, with...