Having said a few words about society, let's make a brief statement about the economy of the Middle East, at the beginning of the 19th century. First of all, we have to recognize that we don't have reliable statistics for the population of the Middle East, for example, at that period. But we do know that it is estimated that the Middle Eastern population at that time was about 30 million. 6 million in Iran. 24 million in the various Ottoman territories. And 3 and a half million in Egypt. Counted separately because of the separate way Egypt took in the 19th century. And we'll talk a bit more about that later on. That figure, 3 and a half million in Egypt, is an interesting point to note at present. Since then, the beginning of the 19th century coming to the beginning of the 21st century today. Egypt's population has increased 25 times over. If we can say that the Middle East and, in the early 19th century, was relatively under populated. The great problem of the middle-east today and which we can see as a major reason for the outbreak of the Arab Spring as it is called. Is that the Middle East today is over populated. But, in the early 19th century, things were very different. This was a relatively under populated part of the world. Population was kept low because of the wars that broke out continuously between the Ottomans and the Persians, between the Ottomans and various European powers. Famine was frequent, disease, was very common. And there was also birth control, mainly through abortion which kept the population very low. There were very dramatic losses of life due to famine in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which were completely dependent on the flow of the great rivers. The Nile in Egypt and the Tigress and the Euphrates in Iraq. And when rain fall was low, populations suffered from famine. And causing huge losses of life. Plague was another cause of very, very dramatic tragic losses of life. One sixth of the population of Egypt died in 1785 because of the plague. Over 300,000 people died in Istanbul because of the plague in 1812. During the 19th century, there was a revolution of population size. Because of Western medicine, public health measures, better communications and transportation, increased security, reduced internal violence. All these led to an ever increasing population, in the 19th century, which increased at a much faster rate, for the same reasons, in the 20th century. There were also changes in the composition of the population. The fact that the Ottoman empire was gradually losing its European provinces also meant that the Ottoman Empire was gradually losing much of its Christian population. Provenances that were lost to Christian powers led to the immigration of Muslims from the east places into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire became ever more Muslim and ever less Christian during the 19th century. In the period between 1912 and 1923, that is, the first quarter of the 20th century. It was a demographic disaster in the Middle East. 20% of the population of Anatolia, which is the major land mass of Turkey, died in that period. Due to wars and other inflictions. 10% of them immigrated. During the 19th century and the emergence of the nationalist idea, there was a trend of what we can call the territorialization of identity. It was not enough for indigenous communities to live in their particular locations. Under the impact of European ideas, these religious minorities sought a territorial identity. In the form of a state. And the creation of these territorial identities led to clashes. And bloody clashes, between different religious, national groups. The most tragic of all and the most well known of all is the terrible tragedy of the Armenians in Turkey of the first World War. Territorialization of identity, therefore, had some very nasty, unintended consequences. But because the population of the Middle East grew in the 19th century, on the eve of World War One, the Middle East was no longer self-sufficient in food. And this is a problem that was only aggravated as time went by. This has become even more of a problem, in the Middle East of today. Overpopulated and inca, incapable of providing its own needs, in terms of food. In terms of the economic relations between the Middle East and the West, during the 19th century. Britain surpassed France as the leading commercial super power in the Middle East. At the end of the 19th century, most of the Middle East's commerce was with Europe. Middle East exports of raw materials and food items went to Europe, while the Europeans, as a result of their Industrial Revolution, exported finished goods, from Europe to the Middle East. There was a massive flow of capital, from Europe to the Middle East, and the creation of a huge debt, both in the Ottoman Empire and of Egypt, to European countries and banks. All of the above was much slower. This connection with Europe, these economic changes, were much slower in Iran, much further away from Europe, far less in direct contact with Europe, than in the Ottoman empire and Egypt.
