為甚麼奧斯曼從未對美國進行殖民統治？【K&G動畫歷史檔案館】

在十六世紀和十八世紀之間,大多數的歐洲權威都在殖民和攻略美國島嶼,建立了許多的殖民地和住所。 西班牙,波特,法國,英國,荷蘭,但也有較少人知道的殖民地,例如瑞士,丹麥和加拿大, 成功建立了殖民地將會進化為現代國家的地區,但當時的其中一個主要的權威, 它們的資源和航空技術,並沒有參與這些行動。 在這段視頻中,我們將學習為何歐洲帝國從未與其他歐洲國家競爭殖民美國島嶼。 為了了解為何歐洲帝國從未延伸到新世界,我們首先要分析由於歐洲航空技術引起的原因, 導致了美國人的發現,並帶來了地球的知識到舊世界。 1453年在共產黨的倒塌時期,埃及的孟祿帝國掌握了從亞洲通過紅海而來的辣椒貿易, 他們強行向歐洲提供所有的貨幣,僅僅是維尼斯共和國的貨幣可以與它們交易, 使得歐洲剩餘的貨品再次賣出,成為了一個脫鉤。 許多歐洲國家對此處境感到沮喪,因為他們只能通過意大利城市,而其中一個國家是波茲公國。 波茲公國早已有著廣泛和探索歐洲的傳統, 最初是由於想要廣泛地傳承基督教信仰,並繼續在遙遠的中世紀以來 在伊伯利亞島上發生的復興。1415年,孟祿帝國佔領了塞爾塔的摩洛克市, 獲得了北非沿岸的南口的駐紮,他的兒子 Henry the Navigator would continue financing various expeditions to Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. His contemporary and biographer Gomesianes Jesuara wrote in 1453 that the prince was fueled by the zeal of God, by the desire for an alliance with the Christian kingdoms in the east, to know how powerful the Muslim countries were, to spread the Christian faith and to fight the Moors of North Africa. While gold, ivory and slaves are not mentioned in Azurara's chronicles, it's quite certain that the Portuguese were eager for those, and were looking for the sources of the caravans that traveled through the Sahara desert and enriched the markets of the Maghreb. Also, the input of the prince might have been exaggerated by chronicles, and has been questioned by modern historians, as after his death in 1460, Portuguese explorers continued to push south. The efforts of the deeply Christian Prince Henry, however, still resulted in the colonization of the Azores and Madeira Islands, where sugar was cultivated, and the exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa, where outposts called feitorias and forts were established to trade with the local Africans and to attract Arab merchants. In the second half of the 15th century, the Portuguese explored the Gulf of Guinea, Sao Tomé and Príncipe, and the Congo River. In 1488, the explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, confirming that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected. At the same time, two agents sent by King Joao II, Pero de Covilin and Afonso de Paiva, entered the Indian Ocean through the Mamluk Sultanate and reached India and Ethiopia. These travels made Pero advise the king to go via the maritime route around Africa, as it seemed the most secure of the options. The return of Dias was followed by the news that the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, who was hired by the kings of Castile and Aragon in the hopes of finding access to the Indian markets, had encountered land to the west. As Columbus had not brought back any spices, and it became quickly clear that this was a different landmass from Asia, the Portuguese returned their focus to their newly discovered African route, as the Treaty of Tordesillas, which we have already covered, attests to. In 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Guma circumnavigated the southern tip of Africa and sailed all the way to Calicut in India, known for its spice market, connecting the Indian spices to the newly established trade routes. Bases were set up along the way, and it would not take long for Portugal to enter into conflict with the Arab merchants that populated the Indian Sea. At the start of the 1500s, various conflicts between Muslim states, most powerful of them all the Mamluks, and the Portuguese navy, saw the latter partly blockading the Red Sea, starving the Egyptian state of spices. This caused the finances of the Mamluks to crash, and started a crisis that facilitated the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and Syria in 1516-1517, which was followed by their expansion into Arabia and the Red Sea. This brought the Ottoman Empire to the coast of the Indian Ocean, unfamiliar waters for the expanding Turk state. In 1555, the Ottomans would consolidate their position by expanding into Mesopotamia at the expense of the Safavids, and by taking Basra, which meant that they now had access to the Persian Gulf. All this propelled the Ottomans to become the new power in the Indian Ocean. With access to both the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Empire could have started to venture into the new world, and we have some clues that they had intentions of doing so. In 1517, the Turkish captain Ahmet Mehdi Piri, known as Piri Reis, presented his world map to Sultan Selim, which he had produced by using as sources 20 other maps, including one from Columbus. On this map, the new world is marked as Vilayet Antilia. The term Vilayet usually applied to an administrative unit in the Ottoman Empire, so it's apparent that the Ottomans had some interests in America. In his diary, Piri Reis writes that a Spanish prisoner and Columbus' map were taken from seven Spanish ships, seizure of which has been dated to 1501 by historians. This Spanish captive revealed that he had been to the new continent three times, the same number of voyages Columbus had partaken in up to that year. This is also confirmed by the names on the map, which are the same Turkified names that Columbus used, such as Wadluk for Guadeloupe, and Ndizi Vergene for the Virgin Islands. Other pieces of information could have come from the many Iberian Muslims who were expelled during those years, and it's very possible that there was a network of Muslim informants in Spain and Portugal who kept the Islamic world updated on the exploration of the two kingdoms. This would confirm that the Ottoman sultans were interested in the developments in the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes it is said that the Ottomans did not have the naval technology to compete on the high seas with Portugal and Spain. This is, however, a myth, as we have already seen the Ottomans could hold their own against the Christian kingdoms in the Mediterranean Sea, and the maritime conflict continued against Portugal with a similar cause in the Indian Ocean, keeping trade free in the Indian states for Muslim merchants, and protecting the Sultanate of Aceh in modern-day Indonesia from the Portuguese in 1564. In 1627, Barbary corsairs managed to reach Iceland and raid it, taking hundreds of slaves with them. It has to be remembered, in fact, that some of the technologies used by the Portuguese, such as the caravel and the compass, took inspiration from Arab and Muslim crafts and discoveries. One glaring problem, however, was the geographic situation the Ottomans found themselves in. On the other side of the African continent, and blocked from the exit to the Mediterranean Sea by Spain, the Ottomans found themselves having to circumnavigate the entire continent to reach the Americas. This was certainly not impossible, but it was still more expensive to do than for the rest of the European colonial powers. Also, they would have had to compete with the Portuguese navies replenished by their numerous bases. One way to overcome this problem was expanding through North Africa. It's not unlikely that one of the reasons for the Ottoman expansion in the Maghreb was to reach the Moroccan Atlantic coast and from there compete with the Iberian powers. In the beginning, the Ottomans were quite successful, first in 1517 by taking under their wing the rulers of Algiers, most prominent of whom was Hayreddin Barbarossa, expanding at the expense of Spain into modern-day Algeria and Libya, and taking Tunis in 1560. The main roadblock was the staunchly independent Moroccan sultanate. Morocco had been ruled from 1472 by the Wattasid dynasty. The Wattasids never managed to establish full control over the country. Ruling from the northern city of Fez, they lost various cities to both Portugal and Spain, while in 1524 they lost the city of Marrakech to the rulers of the southern part of Morocco, the Saadi dynasty. The Saadi would continue to expand from the south until in 1549 the city of Fez was occupied by their leader Muhammad al-Sheikh, and he overthrew the Wattasid dynasty. Seeing an opportunity, the Ottomans attempted to reinstate a surviving Wattasid prince in 1554, but they were expelled, and the prince killed in the battle of Tadla the same year. They also tried to leverage their diplomatic resources to make the Saadi recognise them as their overlords, but to no avail, and instead, the Saadi helped Spain defend the city of Aran in Algeria. In the end, the frustrated Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent would have Muhammad al-Sheikh assassinated in 1557 and have his head brought to Istanbul, but the Saadi allied themselves with the European powers and blocked access to the Atlantic from North Africa to the Ottomans. In the end though, the main reason for why the Ottomans did not make a bigger effort to challenge the territories in the new world is quite simply that the true profitability of the new continent was still greatly unknown to both Europeans and the Ottomans, unlike us who can attest to this in hindsight. Conversely, trade in the Indian Ocean was a well-established and rich business from before the times of the Roman Empire, and after the end of the Pax Mongolica, Indian trade had become even richer, funnelling the goods that before travelled inland on the Silk Road. Columbus had sailed east to reach the Indies, and Brazil was accidentally discovered on a voyage to the Indian Ocean. Interest in the Indian Ocean was quite simply much greater in Istanbul. Silks were imported from the Chinese Empires, while spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger were harvested and bought in India and in the islands of the Mele Archipelago. Attesting to the wealth that the spice trade brought is today's majestic city of Venice. The Ottoman Empire focused instead on securing its control of the entrance to the Red Sea by expanding into modern-day Yemen and Eritrea and establishing relationships with various Muslim princes in the Indian Ocean. More advanced gunpowder weapons and ships, together with their titles of caliph and protectors of the holy cities inherited from the Mamluks, put the Ottomans at the forefront of the other Muslim powers, and they would for years battle against the Portuguese for control of the trade routes in the region. At the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was not as powerful as at the start of the century, and their expansion halted as they entered a period of transformation that would continue into the 17th century. Suleiman the Magnificent supervised the Ottoman Empire at its height, and after his death in 1566, cracks that had already appeared during his reign worsened with his successors. Corruption, factionalism and infighting paralyzed the Ottoman government machine, halting the state's ability to expand and partake in overseas ventures. The influx of precious metals into Europe from the New World increased inflation also in the Ottoman Sultanate, which led to poverty, economic crises and revolts. This is not to say that the Ottoman Empire inexorably declined, as it continued to survive for three centuries, but it did put a dent into the Ottomans' ability to project their power. Externally, the many foes of the House of Osman put a halt on their expansion. Following the annihilation of the Turkish navy after the Battle of Lepanto, the Ottomans still managed to rebuild their fleet in a year, but had lost many experienced sailors that could not be easily replaced. It showed that they could not just force the Straits of Gibraltar, and that open sea competition against the Iberians would be hard and costly. The defence of the Habsburgian border and the constant skirmishes against the Persians also kept the resources of the Ottoman Empire in use. To conclude, the lack of a Turkish presence in the New World can be explained by their geographic limits, their competitors on the borders, and most importantly, the richness of the trade in the Indian Ocean.