Great read. I've studied a fair amount of history (by the end of university, I realised I'd done at least one formal course in every time period from the sackin

Great read. I've studied a fair amount of history (by the end of university, I realised I'd done at least one formal course in every time period from the sacking of Rome in 410 to the sacking of Nixon in 1974), so I always enjoy these 'larger context' pieces. One thing this helped me understand better was the Dutch Tulip-mania. Tulips, as I learnt when they were blooming everywhere on a visit to Istanbul, are native to modern-day Turkey, historically the Ottoman Empire. The ongoing trade / power struggle between the Muslim / Arab world and the emerging European Powers would thus have restricted trade from one to the other, and driven up the scarcity of Tulip bulbs. I had wondered how something that grows so naturally on one side of a continent could be so valuable for as long as it was on the other side - this helped me piece more of the story together.