Rise and Fall of Ethno-Religious Minorities
A week ago, I wrote about how trying to cancel Kanye West ends up validating his worldview. In it, I pointed out that Kanye seems to have a problem with executives and owners in entertainment corporations rather than Jewish people as a group. It is also important to note that he is not the only artist to have a less than stellar opinion about these corporations- as many others from Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock to almost every single musical artist I can think of, have echoed similar sentiments about that sector, though most did not specifically blame Jews for the shitty behavior of corporations. Having said that, it is hard to ignore that Jewish people are heavily represented in the entertainment sector of this country, including the corporations which profit from the work of countless artists and workers.
And this brings us to an interesting question- Are there other examples throughout history where ethno-religious minorities dominated certain sectors of the economy of the empires and political systems of those eras. As it turns out, there are numerous well documented examples of such domination by minority groups of large sectors of the economy for decades and centuries. However, in every single case it ended poorly for the minority in question- though their domination often lasted for centuries. In the rest of this post, I will present a couple examples of ethno-religious minorities who were able to dominate certain sectors of the economy for a long time. We will also go into the conditions which enabled their rise, allowed them to coast along for decades and centuries and the changes which finally led to their decline.
Let us start by talking about Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. While most people today immediately think about the Armenian Genocide when talking about the Armenians and the Ottoman Empire, it wasn’t always like that. In fact, for the vast majority of Ottoman rule, their relationship was actually rather good and mutually beneficial. Most people today do not realize how much of the trade and commerce in Ottoman Empire was conducted by Armenians and Greek Christians. To be clear, I am not suggesting that every Armenian and Greek Christian, from that era, was a rich merchant - but most merchants were either Armenians or Greek Christians. After the start of westernization of that empire in 1850s, Armenians also started to dominate white-collar professions which required education. To put it a bluntly, Armenians were the Jews of the Ottoman Empire.
So what factors enabled their rise in that empire, and what caused their fall? Well.. there are many mutually interacting reasons for their rise. As some of you might know, the social and legal prohibition against usury for Muslims in that empire was pretty strong. It also helped that Armenians, being an ethnic minority themselves, were far more willing and eager to deal with people from outside the Empire- who were usually non-Muslims. That is why Armenian merchants from the Ottoman Empire could be found trading with people from India and Sri Lanka to Hungary and Austria. They also seemed to have higher levels of literacy than the Turkic majority around them and displayed better social networking skills within their community.
For its part, the empire did not care too much about Armenians being Christians. Sure, they were subject to some religious taxes etc- but the plusses of Armenians running their commercial sector and make the Empire richer were too important to ignore. After all, the rulers of all successful empires worship money and power more than their supposed gods. This state of affairs went on until the end of 19th century when European ideas of nationalism started to affect both Turks and Armenians. This occurred alongside slow decline of that empire and resulted in the first major clashes between the two groups during final decade of that century. From then on, things went downhill pretty quickly for Armenians living there, culminating in the infamous Armenian genocide during WW1.
Another group with a similar trajectory would be ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia. Like the Armenians during Ottoman Empire, people of Chinese descent in Indonesia and Malaysia dominated commerce in that part of the world for centuries. While we do not have an extensive written history about their origins, it is known that Chinese traders were living in Malaysia and Indonesia since at least that 10th century AD. Once again, we have a minority group that is ethno-religiously different from the majority population and ends up dominating commerce. It is worth noting that ethnic Chinese domination over commerce in that part of the world survived multiple local kingdoms and European colonialism.
Then independence came along with a rise of nationalism during the 1950s-1960s, and things got rather unpleasant for the ethnic Chinese minority in that part of the world. While they were not subject to a full-scale genocide like Armenians and Jews, a good percentage ended up leaving for other places- especially neighboring countries and the West. It should also be noted that anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia was a much bigger issue than in Malaysia, where it was more gradual. Also, the percentage of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia was larger than in Indonesia. The ones who stayed behind are still doing quite well, but no longer have the outsize influence in commerce which their ancestors enjoyed for many centuries.
As you can see, from both examples in this post, ethno-religious minorities which end up dominating the commercial sectors of kingdoms, empires and nations for fairly long periods of time are not uncommon in history. Curiously, such occurrences are more likely to occur in kingdoms, empires and colonies rather than nation states. In the vast majority of cases, the rise of ethnic nationalism leads to the demise of the arrangement which allowed these minorities to dominate commerce etc. While the affected minority community will often do keep doing well in a new environment (Armenians in USA, Malaysian Chinese in Singapore and Western countries etc) they almost never end up reaching the same levels of domination.
What do you think? Comments?