Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries,
most of the European powers colonized and conquered the American continent, establishing
numerous colonies and settlements. Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands,
but also lesser-known colonizers such as Sweden, Denmark and Scotland, managed to set up colonies
that would evolve into the modern nations of the region. But one of the major powers of the time, which
had both the resources and the naval capabilities to venture into the New World, did not partake
in these endeavors. In this video, we will learn why the Ottoman
Empire never competed with the other European states in the colonization of the Americas. In our opinion learning new stuff and developing
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era and the Ottomans, you will love Age of Discovery, by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna,
as it draws useful parallels between 16th century and our era and The Silk Roads by
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full membership! To understand why the Ottoman Empire did not
expand into the New World, we first have to analyze the causes that drove the European
expeditions that led to the discovery of the Americas, and that brought the knowledge of
the continent to the Old World. At the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the
Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt held a monopoly over the Spice trade coming from Asia through
the Red Sea. They imposed heavy taxes on all the exports
towards Europe, and only the merchants of the Republic of Venice were allowed to trade
with them, making a fortune by reselling the goods in the rest of Europe as a monopoly. Many European states were frustrated with
this situation, as they could only go through the Italian city, and one of those states
was the Kingdom of Portugal. Portugal already had a tradition of expanding
and exploring overseas, initially incited by a desire to spread the Christian faith
and continue the Reconquista that had taken place in the Iberian peninsula in the Late
Middle Ages. In 1415, King JoĂŁo had occupied the Moroccan
city of Ceuta, obtaining a foothold on the North African coast at the southern mouth
of the Strait of Gibraltar. His son, Henry the Navigator, would continue
financing various expeditions to Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. His contemporary and biographer Gomez Eanes
de Azurara wrote in 1453 that the Prince was fueled by the zeal of God, by the desire for
an alliance with the Christian Kingdoms in the east, to know how powerful the Muslim
countries were, to spread the Chrisitan faith, and to fight the Moors of North Africa. While gold, ivory, and slaves are not mentioned
in Azurara’s chronicles, it’s quite certain that the Portuguese were eager for those,
and were looking for the sources of the caravans that traveled through the Sahara desert and
enriched the markets of the Maghreb. Also, the input of the Prince might have been
exaggerated by chronicles, and has been questioned by modern historians, as after his death in
1460, Portuguese explorers continued to push south. The efforts of the deeply Christian Prince
Henry, however, still resulted in the colonization of the Azores and Madeira islands, where sugar
was cultivated, and the exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa, where outposts,
called feitorias, and forts were established to trade with the locals Africans and to attract
Arab merchants. In the second half of the fifteenth century,
the Portuguese explored the Gulf of Guinea, SĂŁo TomĂ© and PrĂncipe, and the Congo river. In 1488, the explorer Bartolomeu Dia rounded
the Cape of Good Hope, confirming that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected. At the same time, two agents sent by king
JoĂŁo the Second, PĂŞro da CovilhĂŁ and Afonso de Paiva, entered the Indian Ocean through
the Mamluk Sultanate and reached India and Ethiopia. These travels made PĂŞro advise the king to
go via the maritime route around Africa, as it seemed the most secure of the options. The return of Dias was followed by the news
that the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, who was hired by the Kings of Castile and
Aragon in the hopes of finding access to the Indian markets, had encountered land to the
west. As Columbus had not brought back any spices,
and it became quickly clear that this was a different landmass from Asia, the Portuguese
returned their focus to their newly discovered African route, as the Treaty of Tordesillas,
which we have already covered, attests to. In 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da
Gama circumnavigated again the southern tip of Africa, and sailed all the way to Calicut
in India, known for its spice market, connecting the Indian spices to the newly established
trade routes. Bases were set up along the way, and it would
not take long for Portugal to enter in conflict with the Arab merchants that populated the
Indian Sea. At the start of the fifteen hundreds, various
conflicts between Muslim states, most powerful of them all the Mamluks, and the Portuguese
navy, saw the latter partly blockading the Red Sea, starving the Egyptian state of spices. This caused the finances of the Mamluks to
crash and started a crisis that facilitated the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and Syria in
1516-1517, which was followed by their expansion into Arabia and the Red Sea. This brought the Ottoman Empire to the coast
of the Indian Ocean, unfamiliar waters for the expanding Turk state. In 1555, the Ottomans would consolidate their
position by expanding into Mesopotamia at the expense of the Safavids, and by taking
Basra, which meant that they now had access to the Persian Gulf. All this propelled the Ottomans to become
the new power in the Indian Ocean. With access to both the Mediterranean Sea
and the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Empire could have started to venture into the New World,
and we have some clues that they had intentions of doing so. In 1517, the Turkish captain Ahmed Muhiddin
Piri, known as Piri Reis presented his world map to Sultan Selim, which he had produced
by using as sources twenty other maps, including one from Columbus. On this map the New World is marked as “Vilayet
Antilia”. The term Vilayet usually applied to an administrative
unit in the Ottoman Empire, so it’s apparent that the Ottomans had some interests in America. In his diary, Piri Reis writes that a Spanish
prisoner and Columbus’s map were taken from seven Spanish ships, seizure of which has
been dated to 1501 by historians. This Spanish captive revealed that he had
been to the New Continent three times, the same number of voyages Columbus had partaken
in up to that year. This is also confirmed by the names on the
map, which are the same Turkified names that Columbus used, such as Wadluk for Guadeloupe
and Undizi Vergine for the Virgin Islands. Other pieces of information could have come
from the many Iberian Muslims who were expelled during those years, and it’s very possible
that there was a network of Muslim informants in Spain and Portugal who kept the Islamic
world updated on the exploration of the two kingdoms. This would confirm that the Ottoman Sultans
were interested in the developments in the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes it is said that the Ottomans did
not have the naval technology to compete on the high seas with Portugal and Spain. This is, however, a myth, as we have already
seen the Ottomans could hold their own against the Christian kingdoms in the Mediterranean
Sea, and the maritime conflict continued against Portugal with a similar course in the Indian
Ocean, keeping trade free with the Indian states for Muslim merchants, and protecting
the Sultanate of Aceh in modern-day Indonesia from the Portuguese in 1564. In 1627 Barbary corsairs managed to reach
Iceland and raid it, taking hundreds of slaves with them. It has to be remembered in fact that some
of the technologies used by the Portuguese, such as the caravel and the compass, took
inspiration from Arab and Muslim crafts and discoveries. One glaring problem, however, was the geographic
situation the Ottomans found themselves in. On the other side of the African continent,
and blocked from to exit the Mediterranean Sea by Spain, the Ottomans found themselves
having to circumnavigate the entire continent to reach the Americas. This was certainly not impossible, but it
was still more expensive to do than for the rest of the European colonial powers. Also, they would have had to compete with
the Portuguese navies replenished by their numerous bases. One way to overcome this problem was expanding
through North Africa. It’s not unlikely that one of the reasons
for the Ottoman expansion in the Maghreb was to reach the Moroccan Atlantic coast, and
from there compete with the Iberian powers. In the beginning, the Ottomans were quite
successful, first in 1517 by taking under their wing the rulers of Algiers, most prominent
of whom was Hayreddin Barbarossa, expanding at the expense of Spain into modern-day Algeria
and Libya, and taking Tunis in 1560. The main roadblock was the staunchly independent
Moroccan sultanate. Morocco had been ruled from 1472 by the Wattasid
dynasty. The Wattasids never managed to establish full
control over the country: ruling from the northern city of Fez, they lost various cities
to both Portugal and Spain, while in 1524 they lost the city of Marrakesh to the rulers
of the southern part of Morocco, the Saadi dynasty. The Saadi would continue to expand from the
south, until in 1549 the city of Fez was occupied by their leader, Mohammed Al-Sheikh, and he
overthrew the Wattasid dynasty. Seeing an opportunity, the Ottomans attempted
to reinstate a surviving Wattasid prince in 1554, but they were expelled and the prince
killed in the battle of Tadla the same year. They also tried to leverage their diplomatic
resources to make the Saadi recognize them as their overlords, but to no avail, and instead,
the Saadi helped Spain defend the city of Oran in Algeria. In the end, the frustrated Ottoman sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent would have Mohammed Al-Sheikh assassinated in 1557, and have his
head brought to Istanbul, but the Saadi allied themselves with the European powers and blocked
access to the Atlantic from North Africa to the Ottomans. In the end, though, the main reason for why
the Ottomans did not make a bigger effort to challenge the territories in the New World
is quite simply that the true profitability of the new continent was still greatly unknown
to both Europeans and the Ottomans, unlike us who can attest to this in hindsight. Conversely, trade in the Indian Ocean was
a well established and rich business from before the times of the Roman Empire, and
after the end of the Pax Mongolica, Indian trade had become even richer, funneling the
goods that before travelled inland on the Silk Road. Columbus had sailed east to reach the Indies,
and Brazil was accidentally discovered on a voyage to the Indian Ocean. Interest in the Indian Ocean was quite simply
much greater in Istanbul. Silks were imported from the Chinese Empires,
while spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger were harvested and bought in India
and in the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Attesting to the wealth that the spice trade
brought is today's majestic city of Venice. The Ottoman empire focused instead on securing
its control of the entrance to the Red Sea by expanding into modern-day Yemen and Eritrea,
and establishing relationships with various Muslim princes in the Indian Ocean. More advanced gunpowder weapons and ships,
together with their titles of Caliph and Protectors of the Holy Cities inherited from the Mamluks,
put the Ottomans at the forefront of other Muslim powers, and they would for years battle
against the Portuguese for the control of the trade routes in the region. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman
empire was not as powerful as at the start of the century, and their expansion halted
as they entered a period of transformation that would continue into the seventeenth century. Suleiman the Magnificent supervised the Ottoman
Empire at its height, and after his death in 1566, cracks that had already appeared
during his reign worsened with his successors. Corruption, factionalism, and infighting paralyzed
the Ottoman government machine, halting the states ability to expand and partake in overseas
ventures. The influx of precious metals into Europe
from the new world increased inflation also in the Ottoman Sultanate, which led to poverty,
economic crises, and revolts. This is not to say that the Ottoman Empire
inexorably declined, as it continued to survive for three centuries, but it did put a dent
into the Ottoman’s ability to project their power. Externally, the many foes of the House of
Osman put a halt on their expansion. Following the annihilation of the Turkish
navy after the Battle of Lepanto, the Ottomans still managed to rebuild their fleet in a
year, but had lost many experienced sailors that could not easily be replaced. It showed that they could not just force the
Straits of Gibraltar, and that open sea competition against the Iberians would be hard and costly. The defence of the Habsburgian border, and
constant skirmishes against the Persians, also kept the resources of the Ottoman empire
in use. To conclude, the lack of a Turkish presence
in the new world can be explained by their geographic limits, their competitors on the
borders, and most importantly, the richness of the trade in the Indian Ocean. We always have more stories to tell, so make
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Actualy they did for fountain of youth.But after destroy fountain of youth.Ottoman leaved.Learn some history...
Russian mathematician Anatoly Fomenko has used statistical methods as well as historical ones to determine that, actually, the Ottomans did colonize the Americas in the 1400s. This is reflected in the use of turbans (as depicted in sculptures), their religions, their language, and much more.