• solstice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That was my first thought too, maybe the ottoman empire was so big at the time it was essentially synonymous with islam, to a man like Paine in the West. I just looked it up though and it was already in decline by the late 18th century, far from its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries. But it last another ~100-150 years or so after Paine’s death so who knows.

    • Badass_panda@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It was already the “sick man of Europe” by the start of the 19th century, but when Paine died it had lost only a couple of slivers of territory to Russia… it wouldn’t lose northwest Africa or Greece for another generation