How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
Upvote:1
The discovery of the Americas and the large imports of Gold and Silver to Europe had some influence on the devaluation of the Akçe, the Ottoman Currency.
Upvote:4
This is not a direct answer to your question, but . . .
There's the argument by the historian Cipolla that at the time, no Muslim power had a (merchant or military) navy suitable to the Atlantic, while at the same time, they had plenty of trade opportunity with each other and India. So for them, the Americas were not that interesting at first.
But Cipolla is writing about how technology affects history, so I'm sure there's more angles here.
Upvote:7
I do not think that Muslim "policy makers" were much concerned. They had more immediate things to be concerned about. In the 16th century the Portuguese empire was expanding more to the East than to the West. In the East it was in the immediate contact with the Muslim traders, and the Portuguese defeated Muslim forces several times.
This shows by the way, that European dominance was NOT due to colonization of America: Portuguese dominance in the East came before this colonization. Then the Muslim "policy makers" had a lot of problems in Europe, and not only with Spain. In the 17th century their main problems were with Eastern Europe (Austria and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, later with Russia, the countries having no overseas empires).
So, on my opinion, colonization of America was of little concern to the Muslim rulers.
Upvote:15
During the time period from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until its dissolution in 1918, the Ottoman Empire was pre-occupied with the Balkans, Middle East, and North-East Africa. During the height of the Age of Exploration, the Ottoman Empire was very successfully expanding into the Balkans, besieging Vienna in 1529 under Suleiman the Magnificent and being repulsed in 1683 at the Battle of Vienna when attempting to do so again.
The Lower Danube valley and Anatolia were the powerbase of the Ottomans; and until after the battle of Vienna in 1683, their army was respected, even occasionally feared, by the Christian states of Western and Central Europe. Remember that one of the motivations for finding alternate routes to the Indies was the fearsome power of the Ottoman Empire that dominated the lands around Eastern Mediterranean even after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
As for the Barbary States, they were independent slave-trading city states much more akin to the Hanseatic League than to any of the new nation-states that emerged in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Their interests and profits simply did not extend beyond the coastal waters of the Southern Mediterranean and South-Eastern North Atlantic, which they dominated for several hundred years.
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