The Real Reason the Ottomans Never Colonized America

The Ottoman Empire had Columbus's map by 1513 and the strongest fleet in the Mediterranean. Why did it never plant a colony in the New World? The usual answer is that Spain held the Strait of Gibraltar and the Ottomans were a land empire of horsemen who never cared about the sea. There is some truth in that, but it leaves out almost everything that decided the matter. The Ottomans built fleets, drew world maps, and fought the Portuguese across the Indian Ocean. Their choice not to sail west was made in Istanbul over several decades, and it helped decide where the wealth of the next three centuries would flow. The story begins in 1529, when Hayreddin Barbarossa took the Spanish fort in the harbor of Algiers. It runs through the victory at Preveza in 1538 and the winter the Ottoman fleet spent at Toulon. From there it follows the timar system that tied the sultan's cavalry to the land, and the Spanish and Portuguese fortresses at the mouth of the Mediterranean. Morocco, under the Saadians and Ahmad al-Mansur, kept its Atlantic coast out of Ottoman hands. The galley navy could rebuild itself after Lepanto in 1571 but could not cross an ocean. Wars with Safavid Persia and the Habsburgs drained the treasury. Then the story turns east to the Red Sea route, the siege of Diu, the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and his canal plans at Suez and on the Don and Volga, Ottoman gunners sent to Aceh, and the pepper trade through Cairo and Alexandria that brought American silver into Ottoman markets. It ends with the Ottoman and Spanish truce negotiated by Giovanni Margliani, Philip the Second's conquest of Portugal in 1580, and the last voyage of Piri Reis to Hormuz. The video also covers documented harms on every side. These include the sack of Constantinople in 1453, the devshirme levy of Christian boys, the corsair raids from Algiers that carried many thousands of people into slavery, the forced labor of Indigenous workers at Potosí, and the human cost of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. Subscribe for more history that looks past the familiar explanation to the choices behind the turning points. Was Sokollu Mehmed Pasha right to look east to Suez and the Indian Ocean, or should Istanbul have gambled on the Atlantic? Sources: Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, 2010 Gábor Ágoston, The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe, 2021 John F. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, 1974 Thomas D. Goodrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World: A Study of Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi, 1990 Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517 to 1798, 1962 Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, 2000 Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Pîrî Reis Encyclopaedia Britannica, Battle of Lepanto, Battle of Preveza, Ahmad al-Mansur, Süleyman the Magnificent AramcoWorld, A Muslim History of the New World, 1992 #OttomanEmpire #PiriReis #AgeOfExploration #SuleimanTheMagnificent #Barbarossa #BattleOfLepanto #SpiceTrade #HistoryDocumentary