Why didn't the Ottomans Colonise the Americas? (Short Animated Documentary)

at the turn of the sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire was exceptionally powerful it had expanded deep into southeastern Europe dominated the eastern Mediterranean and had tremendous influence in the Indian Ocean but one of the questions that isn't asked too often about the Ottoman Empire is why after the discovery of the Americas did the Ottomans make no attempt to colonize it there are ultimately several reasons for this and the first is simple geography whilst the Ottomans dominated in their local neighborhood breaking free of the Mediterranean wasn't so easy the reason was that they had to go through waters controlled by the Arakanese Castilian and Portuguese crowns who wouldn't have been too happy at the idea of a Muslim power competing with them in the new world the ottomans did have access to the Indian Ocean - and so could easily have just gone around Africa right well yes but the journey would have been considerably longer and why do that when you could just say at least and trade with Asia which brings us to another reason the Ottomans didn't need to sail across the Atlantic remember that the European powers sailed west in order to avoid trading with and through the Ottoman Empire thereby enriching it the Ottomans could simply trade with whomever they wanted because they sat at the crossroads of three continents furthermore the value of the new world wasn't really known at this point perhaps then the most that the Ottomans could have gained would have been to deny places like Spain or Portugal colonies in the first place the thing is the Ottomans had problems much closer to home they had to contend with the Habsburg monarchy to the north as well as enemies to the south and the East such as the Safavid Empire the idea was floated that the Ottomans could conquer all the way to Morocco and get themselves an Atlantic coast from here they would capture some of the west coast of Africa before moving across the Atlantic in depriving the Europeans of future territories the discovery in later colonization of the Americas presented a problem for the Ottomans they had recently sought to emulate China and become a strictly law-based hierarchical empire whose subjects would own oil tea to an emperor the problem now was the places like Spain and Portugal had revolutionized what the world was these states were proving that sheer tenacity in a disregard for established knowledge had its benefits - in fact fear of failing to capitalize on this new style of thinking was present at the Ottoman corpus Alton's like Suleiman the Magnificent were frankly completely uninterested to him in his successes these new developments weren't seen as threatening the Ottoman position to be fair the Mediterranean had always been one of the most important trade routes in world history the fact that this would stop being the case because of these new discoveries wasn't exactly obvious at the time to summarize the Ottoman Empire understood that the discovery of the new world was a big deal but didn't really see how it affected them whilst the idea of the Ottomans taking some of the new world was floated they ultimately had their own problems these problems were the Safavids the Arabians the Hapsburgs are now the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean the sultan's of the Empire even the great ones like Suleiman did not see how these lands could endanger their position and honestly how were they to know that the discovery of the new world would shift the center of power to the west I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching and a special thanks to all of these patrons you see on screen for their generosity in supporting the show and a particularly special thanks to James Bissonnette party-boy Co Ozark a flash Rob Waterhouse Chris wicker Michael Reynolds Thomas McGill Gustav Swan Winston Haywood Skye Chappell the amusement park Ives Adam Harvey and lastly rafail

Channel: History Matters

Views: 2,437,598

Keywords: History, Matters, Short, Animated, Documentary, Ottoman, Empire, Ottomans, Americas, Columbus, Discovery, Colonise, Colony, Colonies, Suleyman, Suleiman, Atlantic

Id: 0W1b_TFKCHs

Length: 3min 6sec (186 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2019