The First Shot
The 7th October 1571 is a date that ought to be engraved on the hearts of free-marketeers everywhere. The naval Battle of Lepanto, between the Ottoman Empire and the Western Holy Alliance, marks the first occasion on which a military battle was won not by weight of arms or tactical cunning but by investment banking.
Arguably the eventual triumph of capitalism was inevitable anyway, but history doesn’t run on tramlines. Had the nascent capitalist powers of the West lost that battle there may never have been the full flourishing of the Enlightenment. An all-powerful and mighty empire took on a fragmented and vaguely farcical alliance of emerging semi-states and lost, because the other side had the best financiers.
The 7th October 1571 is a date that ought to be engraved on the hearts of free-marketeers everywhere. The naval Battle of Lepanto, between the Ottoman Empire and the Western Holy Alliance, marks the first occasion on which a military battle was won not by weight of arms or tactical cunning but by investment banking.
Arguably the eventual triumph of capitalism was inevitable anyway, but history doesn’t run on tramlines. Had the nascent capitalist powers of the West lost that battle there may never have been the full flourishing of the Enlightenment. An all-powerful and mighty empire took on a fragmented and vaguely farcical alliance of emerging semi-states and lost, because the other side had the best financiers.
