Sheikhdom of Kuwait (provincial sub-governors) of the Ottoman government. The independence of Kuwait was also highlighted by the statement made by Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah to the German team who requested an audience with him over the extension of the Berlin-Baghdad railway to Kuwait in which Mubarak said that he would not sell or rent any piece of his land to a foreigner, and that he did not acknowledge the authority of the Ottomans over Kuwait. The convention ruled that Shaikh Mubarak had independent authority over an area extending out to a radius of 80 km, from the capital. This region was marked by
Historiography of the fall of the Ottoman Empire the first writers in the 1960s to summarise the works on Ottoman socio-economic history. He suggested one of the reasons for Ottoman economic decline was the inability of the ruling class to make a clear choice between war and the more conventional types of capital formation. Berkes' work however focused on the confrontation of the Ottomans and the Europeans, and though important, had little detail on the commercial activities of the state. The Ottomans saw military expansion and fiscalism as the primary source of wealth, with agriculture seen as more important than manufacture and commerce. Berkes described the Ottoman economy