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Notes -
Do you think the Muslim world’s proximity to Africa and use of Slavic slaves gave them a big advantage in warring against Europeans? They had a constant supply of slaves in their economy. I wonder how they would have done in war if they had no slaves supplying them constant boosts in productivity.
Slaves are not a productivity boost(they usually perform worse than free labor), not really, and labor generally isn’t the limiting factor on premodern economics anyways.
It’s possible that the use of military slaves gave Muslim armies a greater degree of flexibility in comparison to European armies where, pre-line infantry, soldiers performed tasks in battle dictated by their civilian social standing rather than the needs of the army. But I don’t think ready supply of Eastern European slave girls did much for the Ottoman Empire.
Slavery gives the center of an empire a quick economic boost from conquered territories though. Which otherwise would be very hard to extract without letting them develop economies and tax infrastructure that the empire might lose control of to local elites.
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