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The Ottoman Age of Exploration, by Giancarlo Casale
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In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" conquered Egypt and brought his empire for the first time in history into direct contact with the trading world of the Indian Ocean. During the decades that followed, the Ottomans became progressively more engaged in the affairs of this vast and previously unfamiliar region, eventually to the point of launching a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia.
The Ottoman Age of Exploration is the first comprehensive historical account of this century-long struggle for global dominance, a struggle that raged from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and from the interior of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia.
Based on extensive research in the archives of Turkey and Portugal, as well as materials written on three continents and in a half dozen languages, it presents an unprecedented picture of the global reach of the Ottoman state during the 16th century. It does so through a dramatic recounting of the lives of sultans and viziers, spies, corsairs, soldiers-of-fortune, and women from the imperial harem. Challenging traditional narratives of Western dominance, it argues that the Ottomans were not only active participants in the Age of Exploration, but ultimately bested the Portuguese in the game of global politics by using sea power, dynastic prestige, and commercial savoir faire to create their own imperial dominion throughout the Indian Ocean.
- Sales Rank: #92042 in Audible
- Published on: 2011-02-24
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 665 minutes
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting and Useful
By R. Albin
This interesting and clearly written book is an effort to provide a more balanced view of the Ottoman Empire. Casale is concerned with rebutting or modifying the view that the Ottoman Empire was an inward looking, land based polity that failed to exhibit the dynamism of European states in exploring new territories and pursuing commercial opportunities. To dispell this view of the Ottoman Empire, Casale provides a fairly detailed narrative of Ottoman involvement in the Indian Ocean, particularly their rivalry with the Portugese. Casale argues well that this was a major effort by the Ottomans, that this was a novel effort, that the Ottoman court exhibited considerable interest in new geographic knowledge, and that commercial interests, particularly managing the spice trade from Southeast Asia, were of considerable importance. Casale's narrative, which is interesting in its own right, largely substantiates these points and is consistent with Casale's general argument. Viewed through the lens of Ottoman activities in the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Empire does look quite a bit like several of the agressively expansionist and mercantilist European states.
Casale's arguments, however, have some defects. His European comparator is Portugal, the major Indian Ocean rival for the Ottomans. But, Casale is comparing a relatively weak European state with arguably the most powerful state in the European state system. To really make a strong case, Casale would have to compare the Ottoman Empire in detail with a comparable European state, which would mean a detailed comparison with Hapsburg Spain, not Portugal. Casale makes much of the Ottoman court's interest in new geographic knowledge but adduces little evidence that there was anything comparable to the print culture of Europe or that Ottoman intellectuals were generating new approaches like the more important European cartographers. Casale's criticism of prior views of the Ottomans as "land-based" is a bit of a straw man argument. Ottoman naval power in the Mediterrenean has long been recognized.
There may be an alternate and more productive way to look at this issue. Casale is appropriately critical of "Orientalist" views of the Ottomans which contrast European dynamism with Eastern conservatism. Casale himself, however, has written this book as sustained comparison between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, an explicit acceptance of the Ottomans as the proverbial "Other." What much of his narrative shows is that the Ottoman Empire was an integral part of the early modern European state system. Rather than seeing Ottoman activities in the Indian Ocean as a parallel to aggressively expansionist European states, it makes at least as much sense to view these activities as just another example of how the European state system promoted expansionism.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A vivid account of the 16th Century imperial competition between the Ottomans and Portuguese in the Indian Ocean
By jeffergray
I thoroughly enjoyed this volume, finishing it in a little over a week (aided, admittedly, by the fact that I spent half of that time on a long weekend at a seaside resort where the weather was unseasonably chilly and wet). It is well-written and was handsomely produced by the Oxford University Press, with more than twenty carefully selected illustrations that help the reader to correctly envision the warships of the Turks and Portuguese and the trading ports and fortresses of the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century. There are also four useful but cartographically basic maps that help the reader to place the location of the ports and battles discussed.
To the extent that most western readers know anything substantial about the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, we tend to think of it as a Mediterranean and Balkan power, gradually gobbling up the remaining Christian fortresses along the coasts of Greece and Cyprus while also pushing north up the Danube Valley. But Casale's book reminds us that the Empire's growth in western Asia and north Africa during the first four decades of the sixteenth century was even more explosive.
In 1517, the Empire's eastern frontier ran across Asia Minor from roughly the Taursus Mountains in the south to Trebizond in the north. In that year, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" went to war against the Mamluk Sultanate, another Islamic power that had dominated the eastern Mediterranean since the final defeat and expulsion of the crusaders two centuries earlier. Selim's army made short work of the Mamluks, incorporating their possessions in Syria, Palestine and Egypt into his empire and thereby more than doubling its size in less than a year. In 1534, the Ottomans seized Iraq from the Safavid rulers of Persia, acquiring a foothold on the Persian Gulf at Basra, and four years later they extended their conquests to Yemen, thereby securing the northern gate to the Red Sea.
These moves brought the Ottomans into contact and then conflict with the Portuguese, who first reached India in their carracks and caravels at the very end of the fifteenth century. Within a decade, the Portuguese began to establish a string of fortresses along its western coast and went to war with the Mamluk Empire. Casale suggests that their dual objective was to enrich themselves and impoverish the Mamluks by seizing control of the East Indian spice trade. They believed that accomplishing these objectives would make possible a renewed crusade that would recover the Holy Land and secure the shorter trade route from the Mediterranean across the isthmus of Suez, down the Red Sea, and then across the Indian Ocean.
As Casale makes clear, the Ottomans likewise coveted the riches produced by the spice trade - pepper from India and Ceylon, cinnamon, cloves and camphor from the East Indies. They also had a religious-ideological objective of their own: that of ensuring the safe passage of Moslem pilgrims from India and the Indies to the Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and of protecting the holy cities themselves against possible attack by Portuguese forces sailing up the Red Sea. This great power competition between the Ottomans and the Portuguese for control of the Indian Ocean trade routes lasted from 1525-1589.
Casale's account of this long-running conflict is dramatic and vividly presented. As he summarizes an early phase of the Ottoman-Portuguese wars:
"[The years] from 1538 to 1546[] had been a period of bitter and almost continuous warfare between Istanbul and Lisbon, conducted across an enormous area spanning the full breadth of the Indian Ocean. On the high seas, Ottoman corsairs and their Muslim allies had faced off against the Portuguese fleet, staging coordinated attacks in theaters of operations from south India to the Arabian coast. In the Horn of Africa and in Southeast Asia, elite units of Ottoman and Portuguese musketeers - the sixteenth-century equivalent of commandos - had locked horns in guerrilla wars to prop up friendly local regimes and to destabilize their rivals. And from their main bases of supply in Suez and Goa, both sides had launched massive armadas, consisting of thousands of men and dozens of ships, against each other's most important maritime redoubts in Egypt and India."
Casale ably recounts the major strokes and counterstrokes launched by each side - the Ottoman expedition against Diu in India in 1538, the retaliatory Portuguese attack on Suez in 1541, the Ottoman attempts to reduce the Portuguese fortress of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in the 1550's, and the effort by the Ottoman corsair Mir Ali in 1589 to develop the island city of Mombasa as an advanced base from which to extend Ottoman power far south along the Swahili coast of east Africa. The latter expedition went disastrously awry when a marauding (and allegedly cannibalistic) army of 20,000 Zimba warriors suddenly appeared from out of the continent's interior at exactly the wrong moment.
My only quibbles with Casale's book are that it would have been helpful if he had provided a little more detail on the origins and growth of Portugal's Indian Ocean Empire by way of background. And (perhaps understandably in light of the book's focus, as evidenced by its title) the opposing Portuguese leaders remain shadowy, in contrast to the colorful succession of Ottoman corsairs and grand viziers who dominate his account. Also, to the extent the book's title may lead you to expect accounts of Ottoman explorations of lands previously unknown to Europeans comparable to those of the Spanish, French, and British in the New World, you won't find that here. Portuguese seafarers and Moslem merchants had already trailblazed the path to India and the Indies; this book is about the commercial, military and diplomatic competition between the Portuguese and the Ottomans that resulted.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A refreshing take on the Global Age of Exploration
By Andy
Casale offers a refreshing view of an otherwise neglected period of exploration. While historians often focus on the accomplishments of Europeans starting in the 16th century, Casale focuses on the Ottoman Age of Exploration (as the title suggests). This is definitely worth a read for those interested in World History.
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