Why didn't The Ottoman Empire colonize the Americas

[inohotep]

I mean the general area of Indonesia
But since they were trading with China and India, they might need a harbor for protection and repairs from the infamous typhoons and hurricanes that occur in the area( just my thoughts)

 

[Midnight-Blue766]

They didn't care?

 

[innonimatu]

I'd love to see serious evidence for the former claim - and not: this is what we'd like to arrive at in the interderminable future. In any case, about all that the Portugese could hope to realistically attain was a monopoly on the European side of the spice - excluding pepper - trade. That didn't even eventuate.

Costs and consequences of the Portugese model of piss everyone off for minimal gains. The failure of Melaka as an entrepot soon after it was taken is a point in case. The rapid rise of Johore and Atjeh just rubs salt in the wound [/QUOTE]

Well, the portuguese strategy recognized that the only way to attempt to control trade on such a wide space with few resources would be to take key points and use those as bases for controlling the trade. The idea wasn't to actually close the Persian Gulf and Red sea routes to Europe, only to tax the goods going through there, and if possible use those as bases for policing choke points on the sea trade. That was the attempt at monopoly. No way to do it without attacking and conquering those strategic seaports, and no way to do that without pissing off people. The dutch had it easier, they were fighting the ones who had pissed off the natives in the first place!

It kind of worked in the Persian Gulf (surprisingly - it should have been far harder to conquer the area), it didn't in the Red Sea/Aden and in Malaca, policing the sea trade turned out to be very difficult. It wasn't just the rival states, there was no lack of private entrepreneurs/pirates competing with the portuguese governors - including portuguese captains themselves. Well, everyone was a pirate anyway...
But that strategy still was the best bet for the newcomers, and afaik the dutch basically copied it on arrival, trying to capture the same cities.

That wasn't practical in any case. And that wasn't the source of Portugese problems, the Dutch for instance built most of their ships locally, recruited a significant portion of their crews locally (Chinese, Eurasians and Malays mostly) and made do with the limited resources they had at least in the early days. It worked for them, kinda.

I believe - and I can't offer any evidence now - that the main strategic advantage the dutch got early on was that their war with Spain effectively dried up the pool of mercenaries on which the portuguese crown had always been relying on for its asian ventures. Most gunners on the portuguese ships were foreign mercenaries, and the usual place of recruitment were the low countries. War with the dutch, and the spanish sack of Antwerp, both closed the most important distribution markets for the products brought to Europe by the portuguese, and closed the recruitment pool of those soldiers.

 

[Masada]

But since they were trading with China and India, they might need a harbor for protection and repairs from the infamous typhoons and hurricanes that occur in the area( just my thoughts)

There were lots of those already, most of them would have been friendly. Moreover, the Ottomans didn't actually handle, much, if any, of the trade themselves. Malays, Chinese and Gurajats handled it.

They didn't care?

Far from it, they did care lots.

Well, the portuguese strategy recognized that the only way to attempt to control trade on such a wide space with few resources would be to take key points and use those as bases for controlling the trade.

That's a fair approximation of the Portuguese strategy that actually evenutated. It wasn't the intial one, which was, quite literally, concerned with monopolosing spice. That they settled for being robber barons, owes more to an inability to carry out the former, than the attractiveness of the latter. And even then, it failed miserably.

No way to do it without attacking and conquering those strategic seaports, and no way to do that without pissing off people.

That's not the case, the attack of Melaka was motivated not by an intention to take one (of the dozen) strategic seaports on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatera, but to take control of the port and therefore control the trade passing through it. The optimal outcome would have been that the silly Muslims kept coming to Melaka, paying those taxes and handing over spice for Portuguese transhipment to Europe. It was an utter pipe-dream, the Portuguese were horrible bigots, and the Muslim traders saw little-to-no reason to deal with them. So they simply left, en-masse, and didn't return. The taxing the traders thang was another post-hoc justification when the intial strategy failed.

The dutch had it easier, they were fighting the ones who had pissed off the natives in the first place!

Nah, the VOC did a pretty good job of pissing people off itself. The biggest leg-up the Dutch got was in the Spice Islands, but that was transitory and didn't give them that much of an advantage, if any.

It kind of worked in the Persian Gulf (surprisingly - it should have been far harder to conquer the area), it didn't in the Red Sea/Aden and in Malaca, policing the sea trade turned out to be very difficult.

Mmm but the Persian Gulf episode was for the record temporally quite limited.

But that strategy still was the best bet for the newcomers, and afaik the dutch basically copied it on arrival, trying to capture the same cities.

Nah, they didn't. The VOC lacked the manpower. It concentrated on the Spice Islands (used broadly), reduced those, and tended to end up with other stuff more by accident than intention. It certainly never tried to tax trade, till rather later.

War with the dutch, and the spanish sack of Antwerp, both closed the most important distribution markets for the products brought to Europe by the portuguese, and closed the recruitment pool of those soldiers.

That's a fair point to make. The former is often bought up as an example of the difficulties of the company. But I think it goes deeper than that, the strain was simply too much for a small, relative, country to bear. Even the VOC was often insolvent and the Netherlands was much better placed in that respect you would think.

 

[innonimatu]

That's a fair approximation of the Portuguese strategy that actually evenutated. It wasn't the intial one, which was, quite literally, concerned with monopolosing spice. That they settled for being robber barons, owes more to an inability to carry out the former, than the attractiveness of the latter. And even then, it failed miserably.

Actually, there wasn't any initial strategy other that getting some trade partners and allies. It was not known whether there was any possibility of conquest or of even attempting to get some trade monopoly. The second fleet send to India was far better armed than the first, but even that one carried orders to try the diplomatic approach first - India was far too vast, and till too unknown, to plan something else. If that failed in the main port then known, Calicut, then try to find some other port open for trade. Diplomacy with Calicut failed, but the idea that the portuguese sought terms which would exclude other merchants (get a monopoly) even on that port alone is absurd. There was no ability to enforce such terms, were they asked, because only a small part of the fleet would be staying over in India. Whatever the reason - and in this as in many other past wars there are conflicting claims - war ensured with Calicut, something which the portuguese did not wish and could not handle. They had to flee and find instead allies among the small local kingdoms, inimical to each other. That course of action was a result of a contingency, not of some plan.
The initial bases weren't even proper fortresses, just trade posts. Francisco de Almeida was send there a few years later with orders to build forts, but those were in the context of an already existing war, to be built where local rulers were allies and allowed those. The continued war against Calicut was then not viewed as a commercially motivated option in an attempt to enforce a monopoly, but as a necessity because Calicut was a military threat to any portuguese presence at all. The first viceroy was busy with that "defensive" war and some exploration, he couldn't attempt to enforce a monopoly. However, successes in that war quickly led the portuguese to believe that they could indeed go for territorial conquest, but it was a few years before that was planned. The ottoman and venetian efforts - and eventual failures - against the portuguese in the Indian Ocean may have also been determinant in that decision. What happened first - the ottoman intervention or the portuguese decision to attempt to choke trade in the Red Seat and Persian Gulf routes - is hard to say, it all happened in a few years, and Portugal was working close with the genovese, who had good information on what went in in Venice and Constantinople.

Afonso de Albuquerque was the one who really got the task to attempt both monopoly and territorial conquest, sometimes against the better judgment even of his peers - he nearly got himself at war with his captains once for his keenness on conquest. Thus they were attempted as part of a single strategy - monopoly through control of key points. It wasn't one after the other. The king in Portugal demanded detailed reports (there are lots of correspondence in the national archives) but had little control over strategy in India - he lacked the information in "real time" to control it. However, the grand strategy of taking key points in order to attempt a monopoly was agreed upon before Albuquerque was sent over.

That's not the case, the attack of Melaka was motivated not by an intention to take one (of the dozen) strategic seaports on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatera, but to take control of the port and therefore control the trade passing through it. The optimal outcome would have been that the silly Muslims kept coming to Melaka, paying those taxes and handing over spice for Portuguese transhipment to Europe. It was an utter pipe-dream, the Portuguese were horrible bigots, and the Muslim traders saw little-to-no reason to deal with them. So they simply left, en-masse, and didn't return. The taxing the traders thang was another post-hoc justification when the intial strategy failed.

The portuguese were not that stupid. The nobles sent there had experience from the wars in North Africa. Those were also against muslims, attempts at capturing cities for their trade had been done there (Ceuta, etc) and failed miserably - Albuquerque was very aware of the potential problems. He, and the portuguese in general, was also very much willing to trade with whomever he had to, muslim or not (John II of Portugal a few years before had arranged for an european embargo against Morocco, with the catholic kings and France, only to have his secretary run a large smuggling operation to take advantage of that embargo).

So, why did he attack Malaca anyway? Imho, just for two reasons: information, booty, and pride. Whatever the outcome (the merchants staying or leaving), taking Malaca made the way to China far easier. And the booty was supposedly enormous - though most of it sank. Albuquerque was counting on using it to placate the king, because he was supposed to be busy in the Red Sea, not taking Malaca.
Finally, pride. Always pride. The nobles involved in those first years of portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean really wanted to become famous trough military exploits. And conquering a famous city would do nicely. Cervantes would, just some 50 years later, mock that pride using a broken fidalgo as his character, but even in Cervantes' time, and certainly before, the kind of character he mocked was very real and very strong among the nobility. With one big difference from D. Quixote - these nobles were extremely practical - a ruthless but effective kind of practicality - and quite successful.

Mmm but the Persian Gulf episode was for the record temporally quite limited.

Not quite that limited. It lasted a century or more in some areas or the Arabian Peninsula (until the 1650s). Albuquerques are still personna non grata in some places there - his strategy of terrorizing his targets into submission won him no popularity, but it worked.

Nah, they didn't. The VOC lacked the manpower. It concentrated on the Spice Islands (used broadly), reduced those, and tended to end up with other stuff more by accident than intention. It certainly never tried to tax trade, till rather later.

Wait, by taxing trade you mean the portuguese attempt at taxing sea trade by attacking all shipping which did not bought a "license" to sail in the Indian Ocean from portuguese governors? Yes, that was a failure. But it was perhaps just an excuse for the governors to engage in piracy, not a serious attempt at curtailing trade. I don't believe that anyone would be so deluded as to think it could really be done.

That's a fair point to make. The former is often bought up as an example of the difficulties of the company. But I think it goes deeper than that, the strain was simply too much for a small, relative, country to bear. Even the VOC was often insolvent and the Netherlands was much better placed in that respect you would think.

That was something I never understood about the VOC: as a purely private enterprise, how did it manage to avoid going bankrupt on any number of times? OR did the dutch state step in more that the commercial character of the VOC led me to believe?