It's an oblique reference, but David Graeber in Debt: The First 5,000 Years corroborate on this: the cultural supremacy and influence of the Far East, and the Muslim civilisation; the Muslim practice to separate trade and war (whereas Europeans invariably mingled the two; he state that before the European expansion the Indian ocean was a war free trade zone); also in Debt Graeber develop the thesis that the European expansion, and the savagery it entailed, was driven not because the Muslin conquests had cut the trade with the Far East, but for the reasons of extreme and violent commercialisation of European societies which resulted many were hopelessly in debt, and as consequence capable of absolutely anything.