The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade / from The English Historical Review, October 1915

VI. THE INFLUENCE OF THE RISE OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS UPON THE ROUTES OF ORIENTAL TRADE. By ALBERT H. LYBYER, Professor in the University of Illinois.
WITHIN a period of a little more than two hundred years, from the close of the thirteenth century to the second decade of the sixteenth, the rising power of the Ottoman Turks extended the area of its political control until its holdings stretched north and south across the Levant from the Russian steppes to the Sudanese desert. The Turkish lands thus came to intercept all the great routes which in ancient and medieval times had borne the trade between East and West. Near the time when the Turkish control became complete, a new way was discovered, passing around Africa; and within a few years the larger part of the through trade between Europe and Asia had deserted the Levantine routes and begun to follow that round the Cape of Good Hope. The causes of this diversion of trade have not been fully agreed upon. No specific investigation of the subject appears to have been made. A glance through works which, being mainly concerned with other subjects, have alluded to the shifting of the routes of oriental trade about the year 1500, shows that two incompatible views are prevalent. One of these holds in general that the advance of the Ottoman power gradually blocked the ancient trade-routes and forced a series of attempts to discover new routes; after these attempts had succeeded, the Turks continued to obstruct the old routes and compelled the use of the new. The other view finds little or no connexion between the growth of the Turkish power and the causes of the great discoveries: a set of motives quite independent of the rise of the Turks led men like Henry of Portugal and Christopher Columbus to explore the unknown world; and when the new route to India had been established it was found to possess an essential superiority for trade, which gave it pre-eminence until in the nineteenth century the balance was again turned by the introduction of steam navigation and the opening of the Suez Canal. The evidence appears to be overwhelmingly in favour of the second of these views. In the present article, however, without arguing the question directly, it is proposed to survey the course of oriental trade from the close of the great Crusades until the eighteenth century, so as to show the influence of the Ottoman Turks as it emerged historically.