Why the Ottomans Empire Never Colonized America ? Ottomans Empire

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Why the Ottomans Empire Never Colonized America ?

Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries,most of the European powers colonized and conquered the American continent, establishingnumerous colonies and settlements. Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands,but also lesser-known colonizers such as Sweden, Denmark and Scotland, managed to set up coloniesthat would evolve into the modern nations of the region. But one of the major powers of the time, whichhad both the resources and the naval capabilities to venture into the New World did not partakein these endeavors.

 In this article , 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 your self is essential part of being a human. In our fast-paced world it is often difficultto find enough time, though, as our work and social lives and hobbies take most of our time. It is natural to think that you don’t haveenough time to read a book, 

ght the know ledge ofthe 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 throughthe Red Sea. 

They imposed heavy taxes on all the exports to wards Europe, and only the merchants of the Republic of Venice were allowed to tradewith them, making a fortune by reselling the goods in the rest of Europe as a monopoly. Many European states were frustrated withthis 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 expandingand exploring overseas, initially incited by a desire to spread the Christian faithand continue the Reconquista that had taken place in the Iberian peninsula in the Late Middle Ages. In 1415, King João had occupied the Moroccancity of Ceuta, obtaining a foothold on the North African coast at the southern mouthof 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 Eanesde Azurara wrote in 1453 that the Prince was fueled by the zeal of God, by the desire foran 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 mentionedin 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 beenexaggerated by chronicles, and has been questioned by modern historians, as after his death in1460, 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 sugarwas 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, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Congo river. In 1488, the explorer Bartolomeu Dia roundedthe Cape of Good Hope, confirming that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected. 

At the same time, two agents sent by kingJoão the Second, Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, entered the Indian Ocean throughthe Mamluk Sultanate and reached India and Ethiopia. These travels made Pêro advise the king togo via the maritime route around Africa, as it seemed the most secure of the options. The return of Dias was followed by the newsthat the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, who was hired by the Kings of Castile andAragon in the hopes of finding access to the Indian markets, had encountered land to thewest. 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 Calicutin India, known for its spice market, connecting the Indian spices to the newly establishedtrade 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, variouscon flicts between Muslim states, most powerful of them all the Mamluks, and the Portuguesenavy, saw the latter partly blockading the Red Sea, starving the Egyptian state of spices. This caused the finances of the Mamluks tocrash and started a crisis that facilitated the Ottoman Empire conquest of Egypt and Syria in1516-1517, which was followed by their expansion into Arabia and the Red Sea. This brought the Ottoman Empire to the coastof the Indian Ocean, unfamiliar waters for the expanding Turk state. In 1555, the  would consolidate theirposition 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 Ottoman empire   to becomethe new power in the Indian Ocean.

 With access to both the Mediterranean Seaand 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 producedby 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 administrativeunit in the Ottoman Empire, so it’s apparent that the Ottoman empire had some interests in America. In his diary, Piri Reis writes that a Spanishprisoner and Columbus’s map were taken from seven Spanish ships, seizure of which hasbeen dated to 1501 by historians. 

This Spanish captive revealed that he hadbeen to the New Continent three times, the same number of voyages Columbus had partakenin up to that year. This is also confirmed by the names on themap, which are the same Turkified names that Columbus used, such as Wadluk for Guadeloupeand Undizi Vergine for the Virgin Islands. Other pieces of information could have comefrom the many Iberian Muslims who were expelled during those years, and it’s very possiblethat there was a network of Muslim informants in Spain and Portugal who kept the Islamicworld updated on the exploration of the two kingdoms.

 This would confirm that the Ottoman empire  Sultans were interested in the developments in the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes it is said that the Ottomans empire  didnot have the naval technology to compete on the high seas with Portugal and Spain. This is, however, a myth, as we have alreadyseen the Ottoman empire 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 protectingthe Sultanate of Aceh in modern-day Indonesia from the Portuguese in 1564. In 1627 Barbary corsairs managed to reachIceland and raid it, taking hundreds of slaves with them. 

It has to be remem bered in fact that someof the technologies used by the Portuguese, such as the caravel and the compass, tookinspiration from Arab and Muslim crafts and discoveries. One glaring problem, however,

 was the geographicsituation the Ottoman empire found themselves in. On the other side of the African continent,and blocked from to exit the Mediterranean Sea by Spain, the Ottoman empire found themselveshaving to circumnavigate the entire continent to reach the Americas. This was certainly not impossible, but itwas still more expensive to do than for the rest of the European colonial powers. Also, they would have had to compete withthe Portuguese navies replenished by their numerous bases. One way to overcome this problem was expandingthrough North Africa. It’s not unlikely that one of the reasonsfor the Ottoman Empire  expansion in the Maghreb was to reach the Moroccan Atlantic coast, andfrom there compete with the Iberian powers. In the beginning, the Ottomans were quitesuccessful, first in 1517 by taking under their wing the rulers of Algiers, most prominentof whom was Hayreddin Barbarossa, expanding at the expense of Spain into modern-day Algeriaand Libya, and taking Tunis in 1560. The main roadblock was the staunchly independent Moroccan sultanate. 

Morocco had been ruled from 1472 by the Wattasiddynasty. The Wattasids never managed to establish full control over the country: ruling from the northern city of Fez, they lost various citiesto both Portugal and Spain, while in 1524 they lost the city of Marrakesh to the rulersof the southern part of Morocco, the Saadi dynasty. The Saadi would continue to expand from thesouth, until in 1549 the city of Fez was occupied by their leader, Mohammed Al-Sheikh, and heoverthrew the Wattasid dynasty. Seeing an opportunity,

 the Ottomans Empire attemptedto reinstate a surviving Wattasid prince in 1554, but they were expelled and the princekilled in the battle of Tadla the same year. They also tried to leverage their diplomaticresources 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 empire sultan Suleiman the Magnificent would have Mohammed Al-Sheikh assassinated in 1557, and have hishead brought to Istanbul, but the Saadi allied the mselves with the European powers and blocked access to the Atlantic from North Africa to the Ottoman empire.  In the end, though, the main reason for whythe Ottoman empire did not make a bigger effort to challenge the territories in the New Worldis quite simply that the true profitability of the new continent was still greatly unknownto both Europeans and the Ottomans, unlike us who can attest to this in hindsight. 

Conversely, trade in the Indian Ocean wasa well established and rich business from before the times of the Roman Empire, andafter the end of the Pax Mongolica, Indian trade had become even richer, funneling thegoods 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 simplymuch greater in Istanbul. Silks were imported from the Chinese Empires,while spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger were harvested and bought in Indiaand in the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Attesting to the wealth that the spice tradebrought is today's majestic city of Venice. The Ottoman empire focused instead on securingits 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 gun powder weapons and ships,together with their titles of Caliph and Protectors of the Holy Cities inherited from the Mamluks,put the Ottomans Empire 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 haltedas 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 appearedduring his reign worsened with his successors. Corruption, factionalism, and infighting paralyzedthe Ottoman Empire government machine, halting the states ability to expand and partake in overseasventures. The influx of precious metals into Europe from the new world increased inflation also in the Ottoman Empire 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 dentinto the Ottoman empire  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 Empire still managed to rebuild their fleet in ayear, 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 presencein 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, Ottoman empire

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