Ottomans control trade routes between Europe and the

East

Turkish empire-building reached its height in the fifteenth century, when another

Islamic Turkish clan, the Ottoman Turks, assembled a humongous collection of lands

into the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman power lasted until the twentieth century. In its

heyday, the empire made significant inroads into Eastern Europe. (Animosity between

modern Islamic Bosnians and Christian Serbs is rooted in long-ago Ottoman incursions

west.)

European traders who lusted after eastern riches had to take the Ottomans into

account because these Turks blocked land trade routes east. Coupled with Venice’s

and Genoa’s dominance in the Mediterranean, the Turkish presence made other

Europeans wonder if they could find their own Silk Roads, perhaps by sea. One sailing

ship could carry more cargo than camels could, anyway. The problem was that no one

knew how to get from Europe to East Asia by sea.

Necessity, as the saying goes, became the mother of invention. Or maybe it was greed

more than necessity. Either way, this hunger to find a new way to get the treasure of

the East gave birth to a new age of European empires.

The Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and English wanted a piece of the Asian market and

began exploring as never before. The first to risk a bold western course toward Asia,

Christopher Columbus, didn’t find what he was looking for, but he did bump into the

Americas, which were soon a lucrative market for slaves used to raise valuable

commodities such as tobacco and sugar. (For more about Columbus, skip ahead to the

section “Seeking a Way East and Finding Things to the West.”)

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