Price History and the Bursa Silk Industry: A Study in Ottoman Industrial Decline, 1550–1650

The Ottoman Empire did not escape the “price revolution†of the “long†sixteenth century. As far as the Bursa silk industry was concerned, however, the rate of increase of relative prices was such as to result in a price “scissors.†This situation led to declining profits in the production of cloth, while profits in the production of the raw material were substantial. A transformation of Bursa's economy from cloth production to raw material production followed. It appears that this transformation conformed to a cyclical pattern in the following centuries, a pattern that was chiefly dictated by European economic might.