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Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery
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Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (S U N Y Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East) |
The title here is perhaps just a bit of an overstatement. The "Age of Discovery" is variously defined, but it generally covers a rather broader span of time than this work is concerned with. The main focus here is the first decades of the 16th century, charting the complex political and economic interrelationships between the dominant Ottoman state, the badly declined Mamelukes, the rising Safavids in Persia and Venice, as they all jockeyed uneasily with each other and reacted to Portuguese expansionism in the Indian Ocean. But despite this narrow time frame, this is a very interesting study than attempts to address a broader theme. Brummett's primary thesis is that the Ottoman sultanate, contrary to the older view of a state interested primarily in land revenue and hence pure territorial aggrandizement, was a far more sophisticated player in the international trade market than it is usually given credit for. In her view control and participation in the Red Sea and Persian trade routes threatened by Portugal and the rise of Safavid Shi'ism, as well as economic investment in the Mediterranean grain trade, formed a major impetus to Ottoman diplomacy.
Although Portugal's own maneuverings unfortunately get slighted a bit in this study, the position of Venice in particular is fascinating. However threatened she may have been on her territorial periphery in the Aegean by Ottoman expansion, Venice's utter dependency on the Levantine grain and the Red Sea luxury trade for her economic well-being ultimately trumped those concerns. Ironically Venice probably had as much or more to fear from fellow Christian states like economic rival Portugal and the predatory Knights of St. John of Rhodes, a far more consistent purveyor of state-sanctioned piracy than the Ottomans. One curious offshoot of this is the unusual distance-muted view of Shah Isma'il that arose in the west. His positioning as a distant "heretical" enemy of the orthodox Ottomans and Mamelukes and a poor understanding of Islamic sects caused him to be regarded admiringly as "more Christian than Muslim" and a potential new Prester John.
Posted by Tamerlane at August 10, 2006 08:23 PM
Filed Under: Economics
, Ottoman Empire
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