Preliminary thoughts upon the policies of the Ottoman State in the 16th century Indian Ocean (original) (raw)

The Ottoman Expansion and the Portuguese Response in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1560

The Ottomans, who had already expanded into the maritime space of the Mediterranean in the fifteenth century, attempted to control the traditional trade routes connecting Asia with Europe by occupying the key strategic trade centers lying on the maritime rim of Indian Ocean. The Portuguese efforts to monopolize the eastern trade by making the commodities flow to Europe through the Cape route had started at the cost of the Ottomans and reducing the flow of wealth to the treasury of the Ottomans. This process in turn invited the latter to come out from the role of being the controller of inland caravan trade to be the key factors deciding the course of commodity movements through maritime channels. Though the Ottomans did not make any substantial impact on India by being on this soil, their frequent attempts to enter into the maritime space of Indian Ocean and particularly into the diverse maritime exchange centers of India as well as their unbroken commercial linkages with the Marakkar traders of Kerala, created multifaceted challenges to the Portuguese, who, while responding to them, developed a set of politico-military arrangements including the devices of fortresses and patrolling, which eventually had greater impact on the politico-economic history of India. The central purpose of this paper is to see the processes and mechanisms by which the Ottomans expanded into the Indian Ocean for the purpose of controlling its trade and also the ways as well as the means by which the Portuguese managed to contain the Ottoman expansion and retain their predominant position in conducting the Indian trade. This is done chiefly by locating the Ottomans in the context of Portuguese commercial expansion in the Indian waters. I hope that this paper will provide a glimpse into the parallel stream-developments of the sixteenth century in this maritime space.

Ties that Bind: An Ottoman Maritime Patron from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean

Following a brief commentary on the framing of "The Age of Exploration" in U.S. Western Civilization textbooks, and a summary of the International Relations lineup in the early 16th century, I look at one particular Ottoman maritime patron who appears to have played a noticeable role in the Ottoman "pivot" from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean just after the turn of the 16th century. This paper, based largely on a dissertation chapter, was first presented in 2012 at the First International Congress of Eurasian Maritime History (IAMS) conference in Istanbul, Turkey.