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Why doesn't this effect hit Alsace-Lorraine/Rhineland then or the Benelux region? How many empires have run Flanders? That was a chokepoint that the great powers sought to control or invade and yet also a great centre of wealth and industry even before coal was ever discovered there. The Spanish were spending all the silver from the New World buying German cannons and German mercs to fight in Flanders.
If we were going post-colonial, we could easily create a narrative that Belgium's been very hard done by - centuries of imperial rule, getting tossed around and partitioned between the French, Spanish and Dutch, constant warfare, along with the bloodiest fighting of WW1 and getting wrecked in WW2.
In antiquity, Egypt, Greece, Southern Italy, North Africa and Turkey were all well-developed regions despite no shortage of armies passing through and conquering them. Now they're largely a backwater. I find it highly suspicious that all these areas were overrun by the forces of Islam to some extent. Meanwhile, all the areas overrun by Franks, Saxons and men from the North turned out advanced and highly developed.
Ireland had absentee landlords, plenty of them. I have no doubt that absentee landlords are harmful to development. But Ireland popped right back up after centuries of fairly tough colonial rule. Same with Poland for that matter.
Could be a certain Y-chromosome got spread really fast with polygamous Islam (do slave concubines even count against the 4 wife limit?), and the aggressive warlike genetics persisted even after the area was retaken by Christians. In that sense, the predominant genetics of the area got polluted. At least the reconquering Christian leaders would probably think the people were "polluted", and treat the population as expendable labor. So the poor economics of the area is in a way a self-fulfilling prophecy, whether their genetics were polluted or not, the apperance of pollution was enough to doom the area.
Of course not, what are you talking about!?
There's no genetic evidence of this happening. Northern and Southern Italians differ genetically quite significantly, but that difference goes back much longer - bronze age and copper age. Southerners are most similar to Greeks, while northerners are most similar to French.
Also, that span of genetic difference isn't really that uncommon. North and South Germans have similar genetic differences, for example.
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The spanish golden age happens after islamic conquest.
Because in 1492 Columbus and the Spanish found a more primitive people to exploit, enslave, and take their gold and silver. All those resources made their way into art and science patronage.
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Just going strictly by this description, that sounds a lot more like northern Italy (massively entrenched systems of medieval and early modern fortresses protecting mercantile interests from encroachment by numerous outside hostile powers, frequently fought over by Napoleonic armies, then the scene of ridiculously bloody WWI battles [e.g. the literal dozen battles of the Isonzo]) than southern (backwater latifundia)
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