Why did the Renaissance begin in Northern Italy, which had previously been a relative backwater?

True even on a relative backwater like Earth, whose history he'd been reading up on last evening, again courtesy of the Teff-Langer Conglomerate.

Wendel Dietterlin's book Architectura of 1593-4, produced in the relative backwater of Strasbourg, was the most extreme application of the style to architectural ornament.

State law enforcement officials say they were initially baffled by the discovery that an international drug cartel had put up stakes in such a relative backwater of criminal activity.

One might consider such a project to be hardly worthwhile, because available evidence suggested that this region was a relative backwater even in Indian terms.

But Tatham Mound was in a relative backwater and related to an obscure culture; it lacked the interest of more dramatic discoveries.

The city of Jerusalem, at the start of Jawhariyyeh's writing in 1904, was described as, "a relative backwater of the Ottoman Empire.

Despite these gains, small-company international funds remain a relative backwater in a rushing tide of cash toward stock mutual funds.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the village drifted gently on, a relative backwater.

It became a relative backwater of the Ottoman Empire only to rise to prominence again following union with Greece.