CCD   HISTORY 101 - History of Western Civilization 1

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Home Syllabus	Western Civilization  Class 7 Old Lecture Notes. Beware, the links below are to  rough notes from previous classes. They are not completely documented. Many pages are graphic intensive so they may load slowly over a dialup connection. Be patient. Some broken links.     Webster's Dictionary/Thesaurus        Encyclopedia Class 1 In the Beginning  Ancient Near East Class 2 The Greek Experience Class 3 The Glory of Roman Class 4 The Making of Europe and The Rise of Islam Class 5 Middle Ages Class 6 Renaissance Class 7 Early Modern Emergence of Global Empires
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Review

New Monarchies 

Renaissance

humanism 

Protestantism and the counter-reformation of the Catholic Church.

Europe on the Eve of Discovery

The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

Mehmet II and the fall of Constantinople

The Ottoman State

Suleyman the Lawgiver

Chinese Overseas Expansion: Ming Emperor Yong Le and his admiral Zheng He

Mercantilism

Iberian Expansion

Portugal

Prince Henry the Navigator

Suppression of the Knights Templars and the Order of Christ

West Africa

The Indian Ocean

Asia

Spain

The Americas

The Columbian Exchange

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The People

In a physical sense, medieval men and women were mostly young: forty-five percent of the population was under fifteen. Even the rich might be considered poor by our standards, and we would think the average man or woman to be desperately poor. 

Most Europeans went to sleep hungry most of the time, and most of them were sick. There were the weaknesses and ills caused by simple malnutrition. Many, especially adult women who had entered menstruation, given birth to babies and so lost considerable amounts of blood on a regular basis, were anemic. An unbalanced diet low in iodine led to goiter, thyroid malfunctions, and contributed to a high percentage of miscarriages and birth defects. Lack of vitamin-rich vegetables during much of the year led to bad teeth and crooked legs (rickets), as well as a host of skin diseases such as beri-beri and scurvy. A diet low in protein resulted in weak bones and muscles. 

We might feel that the pangs of hunger would have been the most distressing aspect of this situation, but we would be wrong. The Europeans made a virtue out of necessity, filled their religious year with fasts, and revered the holy hermits who reduced themselves to skin and bones in a mortification of the flesh that was intended to be an imitation of the passion of Jesus.

Few people lived to be what we call "senior citizens." There were endemic ills such as malaria and tuberculosis, and periodic waves of epidemic bubonic, typhoid, cholera, and other contagious diseases to kill off the weaker members of medieval society. Age brought weaknesses that caused a great deal of pain for the few who had lived to a ripe of age of fifty or sixty years. Such aches and pains did not last all that long, however, there were a number of diseases, particularly pneumonia, "the old folks' friend," that carried away the elderly.

The men and women of fifteenth-century Europe seem to have been able to endure great privations, but these things took their toll. One of their favorite images of life was the "Wheel of Fortune," which swept people up to the heights but inevitably dashed them down. Europeans were thus ready to snatch fortune when it came their way. They were quite ready to gamble their lives since they were accustomed to the death of friends, neighbors and family. If they held their own life so cheaply, they did the same with others. Emotionally, Europeans were contemptuous of the death of themselves or others, ready to gamble on anything, intolerant of the beliefs of others, and prone to violent swings of emotion.

The Economy

Their economy was still overwhelmingly agricultural, and land was still the basis of wealth, but their agricultural technology was no longer able to feed the population as well as produce sufficient raw materials for manufacture. The general result was that population reached a high level, but more or less stabilized. This meant that European markets, which had been expanding for hundreds of years began to stagnate. The ability of the Europeans to restimulate economic growth was impeded, at least in part, but the fact that their money exchange was based on actual gold and silver and the amount of these metals available to fuel the European economy was decreasing as Europeans traded their gold and silver for Eastern goods, particularly spices and sugar.

This lack of liquid capital and a stagnation of the internal consumer market led to a general recession, although many districts that were able to compete in the mode- demanding markets of the time, flourished. The old corporate approach to business exemplified by the gilds was now being replaced by the individualism of merchants with enough capital to control local production. Charity was becoming less prominent a feature of European life and wealth was concentrating in the hands of a few.

Society

Society was stratified with a few wealthy and many poor. Despite the death tolls occasioned by wars, famines, and disease, Europe suffered from "over-population," in the form of a large permanently under-employed class.

There were almost constant wars, in which the kings were attempting to gain and solidify their power against a land-hungry and greedy nobility. Already split by proto-nationalism, the Europeans were beginning to split along religious lines.

Intellectual Life

The new ideas of the Renaissance had not reached most people. Life was still dominated by scholasticism, based upon realism, and ultimately upon the logical manipulation of categories. Scholasticism was still a powerful logical tool but, in many ways, it had already dealt with the most important questions which it was best suited to handle. 

European travelers and explorers were bringing back tales of things and creatures that strained the Europeans' credulity and challenged the scholars' ability to fit them into the neat categories required by scholastic thought. Europeans were charmed by tales of the distant and fantastic, and these tales could be proven or disproven only through direct observation. Logic was being relegated to a secondary position, at least for a time. Moral guidelines were also in disarray. The Church was not powerful enough, nor the immediate past relevant enough, to provide Europeans with an understanding of the new forces that were at work: capitalism, nationalism, mercantilism, science.

So, under these circumstances, how would the discovery of the "New World" affect Europeans?

The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans are one of the greatest and most powerful civilizations of the modern period. Their glory in the sixteenth century represents one of the heights of human creativity, optimism, and artistry. The empire they built was the largest and most influential of the Muslim empires of the modern period, and their culture and military expansion crossed over into Europe. Not since the expansion of Islam into Spain in the eighth century had Islam seemed poised to establish a European presence as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like that earlier expansion, the Ottomans established empire over European territory and established Islamic traditions and culture that last to the current day (many of the Muslims in Eastern Europe -  Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Rumania, Macedonia are the last descendants of the Ottoman presence in Europe).

   The Ottoman empire lasted until the twentieth century. While historians like to talk about empires in terms of growth and decline, the Ottomans were a force to be reckoned with, militarily and culturally, right up until the break-up of the empire in the first decades of the 1900's. The real end to the Ottoman culture came with the secularization of Turkey after World War II along European models of government. The transition to a secular state was not an easy one and its repercussions are still being felt in Turkish society today; nevertheless, secularization represents the real break with the Ottoman tradition and heritage.

Mehmet II and the fall of Constantinople

 The Ottomans arose in Anatolia in the west of Turkey; these Western Turks were called the Oghuz. They had come primarily as settlers during the reign of the Seljuks in Turkey (1098-1308). 

   The Ottomans ruled a small military state in western Anatolia by 1300, about the time the Seljuk state was crumbling apart. This small state was in conflict with several other small Muslim states, each competing with each other for territory. By 1400, the Ottomans had managed to extend their influence over most of Anatolia and into Byzantine territory in eastern Europe: Macedonia and Bulgaria. In 1402, the Ottomans moved their capital to Edirne in Europe where they threatened the last great bastion of the Byzantine Empire, its capital, Constantinople. The city seemed to defy the great expansion of Islam. No matter how much territory fell to the Muslims, Constantinople resisted every siege and every invasion. Not only would the seizure of Constantinople represent a powerful symbol of Ottoman power, but it would make the Ottomans master of east-west trade. 

Why was Constantinople able to resist the Turks for so long?

the last Byzantine emperor was Constantine XI (r. 1449–53). To secure Western aid against the Turkish assault on what remained of the empire, he proclaimed (1452) the union of the Western and Eastern Churches. No help came, however, and in 1453 Constantine, with some 8,000 Greeks, Venetians, and Genoese, faced 150,000 Turkish besiegers under Sultan Muhammad II. 

The city was taken by Sultan Mehmet II (Muhammad the Conqueror), 1429–81, Ottoman sultan (1451–81). He completed the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by successfully storming (1453) Constantinople after a 50-day siege, for which he constructed the largest cannons the world had yet known to break down the triple walls. Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Constantine died fighting with the last of his men. 

To Greek and Armenian citizens of Constantinople Mehmet granted the privileges that they were to enjoy throughout Ottoman rule, including the freedom to practice Orthodox Eastern Christianity. Contrast that policy with the typical Christian practice which was to slaughter most of the population of a conquered town and, convert the remainder to Christianity and outlaw all other religions.

Mehmet moved his capital to Constantinople, renamed it Istanbul, which means "to the City". From that point onwards, the capital of the Ottoman Europe would remain fixed in Istanbul and, under the patronage of the Ottoman sultans, become one of the wealthiest and most cultured cities of the world. Mehmet restored the greatness of that city by settling there the populations of other conquered towns. Within Istanbul, the Church of Hagia Sophia became a mosque and  Mehmet undertook a vast rebuilding program.

Mehmet was a patron of learning and an accomplished linguist as well as a great commander. But he is remembered primarily for his early consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. His conquests extended into Asia and Mehmet then conquered the Balkan Peninsula, taking Greece, Bosnia, and several Venetian possessions in the Aegean islands. The khan of Crimea became his ally and vassal. However, his further advance was checked at Belgrade,  and in Rhodes by the Knights Hospitalers

The Ottoman Empire expanded greatly under Sultan Selim I (1512-1520), but his son, Sultan Suleyman (1520-1566), called "The Lawmaker" in Islamic history and "The Magnificent" in Europe, expanded the empire to its greatest extent over Asia and Europe.

 Siege of Vienna:

 

   The Ottoman State

The Ottomans inherited a rich mixture of political traditions from vastly disparate ethnic groups: Turks, Persians, Mongols,  Mesopotamian and, of course, Islam. 

The Ottoman state, like the Turkish, Mongol, and Mesopotamian states rested on a principle of absolute authority in the monarch. 

The nature of Ottoman autocracy, however, is greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted in the West, particularly in world history textbooks.

The central function of the ruler or Sultan in Ottoman political theory was to guarantee justice ('adala in Arabic) in the land. All authority hinges on the ruler's personal commitment to justice. This idea has both Turco-Persian and Islamic aspects. In Islamic political theory, the model of the just ruler was Solomon in the Hebrew histories (Suleyman is named after Solomon). The justice represented by the Solomonic ruler is a distributive justice; this is a justice of fairness and equity that comes closer to the Western notion of justice. 

In addition, however, 'adale has Turco-Persian influences, in the protection of the helpless from the rapacity of corrupt and predatory government. In this sense, justice involves protecting the lowest members of society, the peasantry, from unfair taxation, corrupt magistrates, and unfair courts. In Ottoman political theory, furthering this justice was the primary task of the Sultan. He personally protected his people from the excesses of government, predatory taxation and the corruption of local officials. 

For the Ottomans, the ruler could only guarantee this justice if he had absolute power. If he was not an absolute ruler, that meant that he would be dependent on others and so subject to corruption. Absolute authority, then, was at the service of building a just government and laws rather than elevating the ruler above the law as Europeans have interpreted the Sultanate.

In order to ensure 'adala , the Ottomans set up a number of practices and institutions in the central government surrounding the Sultan. The first was the establishment of a bureaucracy drawn from the Sultan's inner circle. This bureaucracy in turn controlled local governments; this would become the model of European absolutism in the seventeenth century. Other institutions and political practices were:

Observance of government : The Sultan's job was primarily to keep a watch on all the officials. In some cases, this observance of government involved the personal involvement of the Sultan. He would sometimes observe in secret the proceedings of the Diwan, which was the central advisory group to the sultan, and sometimes observe proceedings of ulama courts. 

For instance, at about the same time that Martin Luther was condemned to death by the Diet of Worms, Sultan Suleyman secretly observed the trial of Molla Kabiz who asserted the spiritual superiority of Jesus Christ over Muhammad. After questioning by the ulama court and refusing to recant, Molla was sentenced to death. Suleyman, however, overturned the verdict because the arguments the courts made had not disproven Molla's arguments (eventually, Molla's arguments were overcome in a later trial). 

Periodically, the Sultan toured local governments in disguise to ensure that magistrates and justices were operating justly. If the Sultan believed that an injustice was being committed against the people, he would interfere directly and overturn the decision. 

Islamic historians argue that the Ottoman Empire declined primarily because later Sultans took less and less interest in maintaining justice in their Empire. 

For the most part, however, the Sultan monitored local officials through a vast, complex, and elaborate system of spies who would report back to the central bureaucracy. The intelligence gathering system in the Ottoman Empire was the best in the world until the twentieth century!

 Siyasa : Rooting out corruption meant nothing if nothing was done about it. Public agents and officials that abused their power and the peasantry were subjected to a special jurisdiction called the siyasa. The siyasa were a set of severe punishments imposed by the Sultan on corrupt officials; there was no way out, no cash compensation could take the place of the corporeal or, more often, capital punishments swiftly and severely meted out to corrupt officials. 

In the siyasa system, the most severe crimes involved illegal taxation or forced labor of the peasantry, officials staying in people's homes without permission or billeting troops there without permission, and requiring peasants against their will to provide food for officials or for soldiers. Such crimes almost certainly meant the death penalty.

Public declaration of laws and taxes : In order to prevent fraudulent taxes and arbitrary laws by public officials, the Sultanic "orders" (firman ) and taxes were declared and posted in public. There was, then, always direct dissemination of central government to the people directly.

Accessibility : Perhaps the most important aspect of Ottoman centralized government was universal access to centralized authority. The highest reaches of power—with the exception of the person of the Sultan—was available to each and every citizen of the Empire. Every single member of Ottoman society could approach the Imperial Council with grievances against government officials; these official petitions were called ard-i mahdar and were always treated with the utmost seriousness. If the Imperial Council ruled against the officials, they would often be subjected to the siyasa .

Public opinion : The most common misconception about Islamic rulers in general and Ottoman rulers in particular was that they were removed, aloof, and uninterested in their people. While this may be physically true, it was not ideologically true. In fact, in the Ottoman state, public opinion was regarded as the only true foundation on which state authority rested. If the people ceased to support their rulers, it was argued, then the rulers would soon fall from power. 

The Sultanic government, then, assiduously cultivated public opinion, for it was recognized that the enemies of the Sultan were also cultivating adverse public opinion. The government did this not only through propaganda, but through policy as well. In addition to prosecuting corrupt government officials and publicly declaring taxes and laws, the Ottoman government also cultivated public opinion in its wars of conquests. Soldiers were not allowed to mistreat peasants nor take anything from them without their permission or reimbursement. 

All the Ottoman wars of the conquest in the sixteenth century were assiduously planned years in advance. The government would lay up stores of supplies all along the campaign route so that the armies could feed themselves without taking anything from the general population. The Ottoman conquerors believed that no conquest could stand without the goodwill of the general population of the conquered, so military campaigns were remarkably fair and easy on the average person.

The Ottomans also paid attention to an early form of public opinion polling and were probably the first government to actively monitor public opinion through quantifiable means. The "opinion poll" that they used was the Friday prayers. In most Islamic states, one of the aspects of Friday prayer is to pray for the welfare and life of the ruler. This is an optional part of the Friday prayer, so its inclusion generally means that the members of the mosque think well of the ruler. Its omission frequently means the opposite. The Ottomans paid very strict attention to Friday prayers throughout the Empire in order to precisely gauge public sentiments.

The Structure of Government

Officially, the Sultan was the government. He enjoyed absolute power and, in theory at least, was personally involved in every governmental decision. In the Ottoman experience of government, everything representing the state government issued from the hands of the Sultan himself.

The Sultan also assumed the title of Caliph, or supreme temporal leader, of Islam. The Ottomans claimed this title for several reasons: the two major holy sites, Mecca and Medina, were part of the Empire, and the primary goal of the government was the security of Muslims around the world, particularly the security of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. As Caliph, the Sultan was responsible for Islamic orthodoxy. Almost all of the military conquests and annexations of other countries were done for one of two reasons: to guarantee the safe passage of Muslims to Mecca (the justification for invading non-Muslim territories) and the rooting out of heterodox or heretical Islamic practices and beliefs (the justification for invading or annexing Muslim territories).

Succession

Historians simply can't agree on how the Sultanate was passed from generation to generation among the Ottomans. In the early history of the Empire, the Sultanate clearly passes from father to eldest son; in 1603, at the death of Ahmed I (1603-1617), the Sultanate passed to the brother of the Sultan. Still, the Ottomans did not seem to have a hereditary system based on primogeniture (crown passes to the eldest son) or seniority (crown passes to the next oldest brother). 

In both Turkish and Mongol monarchical systems, the passing of the crown is a haphazard affair. Both the Turkish and Mongol peoples believed that the crown fell to the most worthy inheritor. Each individual in the hereditary line, brothers and sons, were equally entitled to the crown. This meant that successions were almost always major struggles among contending parties. 

The Ottomans seem to have operated in a similar system. When a Sultan passed away, the crown, it was believed, fell to the most worthy successor (almost always the eldest son). Selim I had to fight for the Sultanate, but Suleyman was the only son of Selim and so inherited the crown without a struggle. Once a Sultan had assumed the throne, all his brothers were executed as well as all their sons—had Selim I lost his bid for the crown, Suleyman would have been killed. These executions guaranteed that there would be no future wars or struggles between claimants to the throne since all the contenders but one were out of the picture.

In the seventeenth century, Ottoman Sultans began to revise this practice and simply imprisoned their brothers—this is what permitted Ahmed I to be succeeded by his brother. Western historians point to this practice as one of the central reasons why the Sultanic government failed. Since the crown was falling to individuals that had been imprisoned much if not most of their lives, the Ottoman state saw a succession of mad Sultans and the corresponding increase in power of a corrupt bureaucracy.

The fundamental qualification for the Sultanate was the individual's worthiness to fill the position. The Ottomans believed that simple succession proved that the Sultan was worthy of the crown; however, the Sultan may grow old, feeble, or corrupt and thus lose his worthiness to serve as Sultan. Selim I came to the throne by deposing his old father, Bayezid II (1481-1512), who was too old to lead the army against external threats. When Suleyman had become an old man, his two sons, Bayezid and Mustafa, his favorite son, plotted to overthrow him. Faced with this treason, the old Suleyman had to execute them both and this seems to have broken his spirit completely.

The Ottomans followed the old Turkish and Mongol tradition of considering the Sultan's lands to be a joint possession of the Sultan's family. Accordingly, the Ottoman lands were parceled out to members of the royal family when each Sultan came to power. Conquered lands were considered the private property of the Sultan.

Although the Sultan was regarded as personally responsible for every government decision, in reality the government was run by a large bureaucracy. This bureaucracy was controlled by a rigid and complex set of rules, and the Sultan himself was constrained by these rules. At the top of the bureaucracy was the Diwan ("couch"), which served as a cabinet to the Sultan for making decisions. The most powerful member of the Sultan's government was the Grand Vizier who largely oversaw all the executive functions of the government. Appointments to these positions were not arbitrary but followed strict rules.

Suleyman the Lawgiver

  Suleyman in his time was regarded as the most significant ruler in the world, by both Muslims and Europeans. His military empire expanded greatly both to the east and west, and he threatened to overrun the heart of Europe itself. In Constantinople, he embarked on vast cultural and architectural projects. Istanbul in the middle of the sixteenth century was architecturally the most energetic and innovative city in the world. While he was a brilliant military strategist and canny politician, he was also a cultivator of the arts. Suleyman's poetry is among the best poetry in Islam, and he sponsored an army of artists, religious thinkers, and philosophers that outshone the most educated courts of Europe.

Suleyman the Just

   In Islamic history, Suleyman is regarded as the perfect Islamic ruler in history. He is asserted as embodying all the necessary characteristics of an Islamic ruler, the most important of which is justice ('adale ). The Qur'an itself points to King Solomon as embodying the perfect monarch because he so perfectly embodied 'adale ; Suleyman, named after Solomon, is regarded in Islamic history as the second Solomon. The reign of Suleyman in Ottoman and Islamic history is generally regarded as the period of greatest justice and harmony in any Islamic state.

Suleyman the Lawgiver

The Europeans called him "The Magnificent," but the Ottomans called him Kanuni, or "The Lawgiver." The Suleymanie Mosque, built for Suleyman, describes Suleyman in its inscription as Nashiru kawanin al-Sultaniyye, or "Propagator of the Sultanic Laws." The primacy of Suleyman as a law-giver is at the foundation of his place in Islamic history and world view. It is perhaps important to step back a moment and closely examine this title to fully understand Suleyman's place in history.

The word used for law here, kanun, has a very specific reference. In Islamic tradition, the Shari'ah, or laws originally derived from the Qur'an, are meant to be universally applied across all Islamic states. No Islamic ruler has the power to overturn or replace these laws. So what laws was Suleyman "giving" to the Islamic world? What precisely does kanun refer to since it doesn't refer to the main body of Islamic law, the Shari'ah?

   The kanun refer to situational decisions that are not covered by the Shari'ah. Even though the Shari'ah provides all necessary laws, it's recognized that some situations fall outside their parameters. In Islamic tradition, if a case fell outside the parameters of the Shari'ah , then a judgment or rule in the case could be arrived at through analogy with rules or cases that are covered by the Shari'ah . This method of juridical thinking was only accepted by the most liberal school of Shari'ah, Hanifism, so it is no surprise that Hanifism dominated Ottoman law.

 The Ottomans, however, elevated kanun into an entire code of laws independent of the Shari'ah. The first two centuries of Ottoman rule, from 1350 to 1550, saw an explosion of kanun rulings and laws, so that by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kanun were a complete and independent set of laws that by and large were more important than the Shari'ah . This unique situation was brought about in part because of the unique heritage of the Ottomans. In both Turkish and Mongol traditions, the imperial law, or law pronounced by the monarch, was considered sacred. They even had a special word for it: the Turks called it Türe and the Mongols called it Yasa . In the system of Türe and Yasa , imperial law was regarded as the essential and sacred foundation of the empire. When this tradition collided with the Islamic Shari'ah tradition, a compromised system combining both was formed.

 The Sultanic laws were first collected together by Mehmed the Conqueror. Mehmed divided the kanun into two separate sets or laws. The first set dealt with the organization of government and the military, and the second set dealt with the taxation and treatment of the peasantry. The latter group was added to after the death of Mehmed and the Ottoman kanun pretty much crystallized into its final form in 1501. Suleyman, for his part, revised the law code, but on the whole the Suleyman code of laws is pretty identical to the 1501 system of laws. However, it was under Suleyman that the laws took their final form; no more revisions were made after his reign. From this point onwards, this code of laws was called, kanun-i 'Osmani, or the "Ottoman laws."

Suleyman the Conqueror

Western historians know Suleyman primarily as a conqueror, for he made Europe know fear like it had never known of any other Islamic state. Conquest, like every other aspect of the Ottoman state and culture, was a multicultural heritage, with origins as far back as Mesopotamia and Persia, and as far afield as the original Mongol and Turkish peoples in eastern and central Asia.

   Suleyman had many titles; in inscriptions he calls himself:

Slave of God, powerful with the power of God, deputy of God on earth, obeying the commands of the Qur'an and enforcing them throughout the world, master of all lands, the shadow of God over all nations, Sultan of Sultans in all the lands of Persians and Arabs, the propagator of Sultanic laws (Nashiru kawanin al-Sultaniyye ), the tenth Sultan of the Ottoman Khans, Sultan, son of Sultan, Suleyman Khan.

Slave of God, master of the world, I am Suleyman and my name is read in all the prayers in all the cities of Islam. I am the Shah of Baghdad and Iraq, Caesar of all the lands of Rome, and the Sultan of Egypt. I seized the Hungarian crown and gave it to the least of my slaves.

He called himself the "master of the lands of Caesar and Alexander the Great," and later as simply, "Caesar." It's hard, of course, not to be slightly humbled by assertions of such greatness, and no ruler in the sixteenth century was more adept at diminishing the egos of all the other rulers surrounding him.

Suleyman believed, however, that the entire world was his possession as a gift of God. Even though he did not occupy Roman lands, he still claimed them as his own and almost launched an invasion of Rome (the city came within a few hairbreadths of Ottoman invasion in Suleyman's expedition against Corfu). In Europe, he conquered Rhodes, a large part of Greece, Hungary, and a major part of the Austrian Empire. His campaign against the Austrians took him right to the doorway of Vienna.

Besides invasions and campaigns, Suleyman was a major player in the politics of Europe. He pursued an aggressive policy of European destabilization; in particular, he wanted to destabilize both the Roman Catholic church and the Holy Roman Empire. When European Christianity split Europe into Catholic and Protestant states, Suleyman poured financial support into Protestant countries in order to guarantee that Europe remain religiously and politically destabilized and so ripe for an invasion. Several historians, in fact, have argued that Protestantism would never have succeeded except for the financial support of the Ottoman Empire.

Suleyman was responding to an aggressively expanding Europe. Like most other non-Europeans, Suleyman fully understood the consequences of European expansion and saw Europe as the principle threat to Islam. The Islamic world was beginning to shrink under this expansion. Portugal had invaded several Muslim cities in eastern Africa in order to dominate trade with India, and Russians, which the Ottomans regarded as European, were pushing central Asians south when the Russian expansion began in the sixteenth century. So in addition to invading and destabilizing Europe, Suleyman pursued a policy of helping any Muslim country threatened by European expansion. It was this role that gave Suleyman the right, in the eyes of the Ottomans, to declare himself as supreme Caliph of Islam. He was the only one successfully protecting Islam from the unbelievers and, as the protector of Islam, deserved to be the ruler of Islam.

While the expansion of European power helps explain Suleyman's conquest of European territories, it doesn't help us when it comes to the vast amount of Islamic territory that he invaded or simply annexed. How does conquering Islamic territory "protect" Islam? The Ottomans understood this as belonging to Suleyman's task as universal Caliph of Islam. This role demanded that Suleyman also see to the integrity of the faith itself and to root out heresy and heterodoxy. His annexation of Islamic territory, such as the annexation of Arabia, were justified by asserting that the ruling dynasties had abandoned orthodox belief or practice. Each of these invasions or annexations were preceded, however, by a religious judgment by Islamic scholars as to the orthodoxy of the ruling dynasty.

Suleyman the Builder

Suleyman sought to make Istanbul the center of Islamic civilization. With Sinan, one of the greatest architects in history, he began a series of building projects, including bridges, mosques, and palaces. The mosques built by Sinan are considered the greatest architectural triumphs of Islam and possibly the world. They are more than just awe-inspiring; they represent a unique genius in dealing with nearly insurmountable engineering problems.

Suleyman was a great cultivator of the arts and is considered one of the great poets of Islam. Under Suleyman, Istanbul became the center of visual art, music, writing, and philosophy in the Islamic world. This cultural flowering during the reign of Suleyman represents the most creative period in Ottoman history; almost all the cultural forms that we associate with the Ottomans date from this time.

The reign of Suleyman, was the high point of Ottoman culture and history. While Ottoman culture flourishes during the reign of his son, the power of the state gradually began to decline over the next 350 years. Islamic historians believe that the decline was due to two factors: the decreased vigilance of the Sultan over the functions of government and their consequent corruption, and the decreased interest of the government in popular opinion.  A major factor seems to be a series of eccentric and sometimes insane Sultans all through the seventeenth century. When the Ottomans abandoned the practice of killing all rivals to the throne, they began to imprison them. The Sultanate, then, often fell to individuals who had been imprisoned for decades and some did not do well in such prolonged captivity. This led to the growth of the power of the bureaucracy and its consequent corruption. 

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The Ming Dynasty's Maritime History: Ming Emperor Yong-lo and his admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho)

The Europeans were not the only group to pursue exploration. In 1405 the Chinese began a series of voyages into the Indian Ocean directed by Cheng Ho, a powerful court eunuch of the Ming Dynasty.

 The motives for exploration were not unlike those of the Europeans: a desire to recover trade (profit) in the form of tribute from kingdoms in Southeast Asia; the reinforcement of the claim to universal authority (similar to the spread of Christianity as the universal religion), and a thirst for knowledge.

 These expeditions involved tens of thousands of men and more than a hundred large junks (a style of ship) each. They visited the Maldive Islands, Calicut, Hormuz, and along the East African coast. They fought off pirate fleets near Sumatra, installed a new ruler in Calicut and defeated the king of Ceylon. They returned with many exotic items, including a giraffe from Africa that quickly became the emblem of the Ming Dynasty. 

The last expedition in 1431 sent the adventurer Hung Po with a party of Muslim merchants to Mecca who return with many more precious cargos for the Emperor. Half a century later, Portuguese ships approached the same region from the south. By then the Ming program of expansion had faded and the Europeans would wait to meet the first Chinese ships in Malacca and Canton.

The Ming dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644 and created one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history. After the dynasty's founder, the Hung-wu emperor, the Ming dynasty's most famous ruler was the Yung-lo emperor known as "The Consolidator," who ruled from 1403 to 1424. 

One of Yung-lo's major undertakings was to incorporate the states of South and Southeast Asia into China's tribute system. This tribute system was based on the overlord-vassal relationship between the ruler of China and the rulers of other countries expressed by the traditional cultural view that saw China as the largest and oldest state in the world. As such China was viewed as the "parent state" of all other kingdoms and the source of civilization in general. The Son of Heaven (the emperor) affected a paternal interest in the orderly government of the tributary states by confirming the succession of new rulers, sometimes offering military protection against attack, and usually conferring the boon of trade with China.

This was not the system of aggressive imperialism that was common in Europe, but rather an expression of the Chinese cultural view: foreign rulers who wished contact with the Middle Kingdom (China) had to accept its terms and acknowledge the universal supremacy of the Son of Heaven. Trade with China was incredibly valuable and the tribute formalities of the performance of the kowtow (the "three kneelings and nine prostrations"), the exchange of envoys, tribute, and conduct of diplomatic relations; were the price to be paid.

Yung-lo's planned expansion of China's tribute system was marked by seven great maritime expeditions that begun in 1405 and continued until 1433. These expeditions were led by an Admiral named Cheng Ho (Zheng He), who, being a Moslem, was suited to deal with the Islamic rulers of South Asia. 

 

The first fleet sailed in 1405-1407 with sixty-two vessels carrying 28,000 men, and over 100 support vessels. 

They reached Sumatra, India and Ceylon, as did the second and third expeditions. The forth voyage in 1413-1415 reached Hormuz on the Persian Gulf and Aden on the Red Sea. A fifth voyage also went as far as Aden. The seventh voyage started out with 27,500 men and reached Hormuz again in 1431-1433. Chinese vessels visited far down the east coast of Africa and seven emissaries reached Mecca.

The development of Chinese shipbuilding and techniques of navigation on the Asian sea routes made Cheng Ho's voyages possible. His seagoing junks were very large: over 400 ft long and 160 ft wide. They were the largest wooden ships ever constructed. They had nine masts with both triangular and square sails that could be turned to allow the ships to sail into the wind - an innovation the Europeans would not develop for another 50 years. They had four decks and up to thirteen watertight compartments. Europeans did not develop watertight compartments until the 19th century. Cheng Ho's armada was bigger than all of the navies of Europe combined.

Cheng Ho's (Zheng He's) Armada

They navigated by using the compass and detailed sailing directions that brought them to the coasts of China's customary tributaries, such as Siam and Vietnam. In addition to these some fifty new places were visited and their rulers enrolled as tributaries. Missions from Hormuz and the African coast came to China four times, from Bengal eleven times. Rulers in Sumatra and Ceylon were brought back into the system by force. Commercially these expeditions provided a line of communication with the existing overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asian ports. Politically, the tribute system was expanded from land-based trading partners to sea-trading partners. This incorporated much of the known world into the Chinese concept of the universal rule of the Son of Heaven.

After the beginning of 1433 China's beginnings as a naval power were suddenly stopped, never to resume again.  Why?

Ideological reasons

The court eunuchs that promoted the expeditions came under considerable opposition from their rivals, the Confucian scholar-officials -- so much so that Cheng Ho's accomplishments were practically suppressed from the historical record.  

There was an internal Chinese court policy struggle between competing theories of the commercial and technology benefits of foreign trade, against the benefits in social purity of isolationism. Isolationism won.

China was politically unified - a decision by a single ruler to ban ocean travel was sufficient to stop an entire civilization from developing sea power.  It became illegal to put to sea in a multi-masted ship

Economic Reasons

The completion of the Grand Canal as a more efficient and safer means of grain transport caused China to neglect and abandon its ocean-going navy. 

maritime threats were always considered secondary in China to continental or land-based threats, and thus in difficult economic times such as the middle Ming dynasty, the maritime solutions to national security (i.e. the navy) lost resources to the continental solutions (i.e. the army).

Cheng Ho was an organizer, a commander, a diplomat, and an able courtier, but he was not a trader. No chartered companies, like the Dutch VOC Company or the British East India Company, emerged to found colonies or establish overseas trade. Unlike its European counterparts, the Chinese state remained uninterested in the commercial and colonial possibilities overseas. This was partially due to the Ming government's major source of revenue coming from land tax and not from trade tax. 

Thus Ming China failed to become a maritime power. Through this default, the Eastern seas and eventually China's own coast would be dominated by a secession of non-Chinese seafaring peoples -- the Japanese, the Portuguese and Spanish, the Dutch, and finally the British and the Americans.

The sophistication of Zheng He's fleet underscores just how far ahead of the West the East once was. Indeed, except for the period of the Roman Empire, China had been wealthier, more advanced and more cosmopolitan than any place in Europe for several thousand years. Hangzhou, for example, had a population in excess of a million during the time it was China's capital (in the 12th century), and records suggest that as early as the 7th century, the city of Guangzhou had 200,000 foreign residents: Arabs, Persians, Malays, Indians, Africans and Turks. By contrast, the largest city in Europe in 1400 was probably Paris, with a total population of slightly more than 100,000.

A half-century before Columbus, Zheng He had reached East Africa and learned about Europe from Arab traders. The Chinese could easily have continued around the Cape of Good Hope and established direct trade with Europe. But as they saw it, Europe was a backward region, and China had little interest in the wool, beads and wine Europe had to trade. Africa had what China wanted -- ivory, medicines, spices, exotic woods, even specimens of native wildlife.

In Zheng He's time, China and India together accounted for more than half of the world's gross national product, as they have for most of human history. Even as recently as 1820, China accounted for 29 percent of the global economy and India another 16 percent, according to the calculations of Angus Maddison, a leading British economic historian.

Asia's retreat into relative isolation after the expeditions of Zheng He amounted to a catastrophic missed opportunity, one that laid the groundwork for the rise of Europe and, eventually, America. Westerners often attribute their economic advantage today to the intelligence, democratic habits or hard work of their forebears, but a more important reason may well have been the decision of 15th-century Chinese rulers to pursue an isolationist policy.

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Mercantilism

What is wealth? Where does it come from? Is the wealth of a nation different from the wealth of an individual? What is balance of trade? What is balance of payments? 

Mercantilism was the economic system of the major European trading nations during the 16th, 17th, and 18th cent., based on the premise that national wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. It superseded the medieval feudal organization in Western Europe, especially in Holland, France, and England. 

The period 1500–1800 was one of religious and commercial wars, and large revenues were needed to maintain armies and pay the growing costs of civil government. 

Mercantilist nations were impressed by the fact that the precious metals, especially gold, were in universal demand as the ready means of obtaining other commodities; hence they tended to identify money with wealth. As the best means of acquiring bullion, foreign trade was favored above domestic trade, and manufacturing or processing, which provided the goods for foreign trade, was favored at the expense of the extractive industries (e.g., agriculture) unless those raw materials could be sold at a very great profit. State action, an essential feature of the mercantile system, was used to accomplish its purposes. Under a mercantilist policy, a nation sought to sell more than it bought so as to accumulate bullion. 

Besides bullion, raw materials for domestic manufacturers were also sought, and duties were levied on the importation of such goods in order to provide revenue for the government. The state exercised much control over economic life, chiefly through corporations and trading companies. Production was carefully regulated with the object of securing goods of high quality and low cost, thus enabling the nation to hold its place in foreign markets. 

Treaties were made to obtain exclusive trading privileges, and the commerce of colonies was exploited for the benefit of the mother country. In England mercantilist policies were effective in creating a skilled industrial population and a large shipping industry. Through a series of Navigation Acts England finally destroyed the commerce of Holland, its chief rival. As the classical economists were later to point out, however, even a successful mercantilist policy was not likely to be beneficial, because it produced an oversupply of money and, with it, serious inflation. 

Mercantilist ideas did not decline until the coming of the Industrial Revolution and of laissez-faire. Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Oliver Cromwell conformed their policies to mercantilism. In France its chief exponent was Jean Baptiste Colbert.

 

See Essay on Mercantilism and the Seaborne Empires

Iberian Expansion

You know that Portugal led the European Age of discovery with several important sea going expeditions down the west coast of Africa under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator. Why did Portugal lead Europe in overseas exploration and expansion?  Why did Henry support multiple expeditions? Especially since they were expensive and mostly ended in failure? What ultimately led to  success and gave Portugal an early lead?

At the beginning of the fifteenth century Portugal had a population of one and a quarter million and an economy dependent on maritime trade with Northern Europe. Although Portugal lacked the wealth and population of its contemporaries, it would lead the European community in the exploration of sea routes to the African continent, the Atlantic Islands, and to Asia and South America over the course of the sixteenth century. 

Several factors contributed to Portugal becoming the pre-eminent European pioneer in maritime exploration. 

1) its geographical position along the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula, coupled with the relative lack of natural resources which promoted the development of a seafaring tradition for trade and fishing. 

2) the evolution of a complex maritime economy in which the port cities of Lisbon and Oporto became the commercial centers of the country. The merchant community, including a large number of Genoese immigrants from the Italian city state of Genoa,  used these port cities as their base of operations from which they financed a number of  trading ventures.

3) Portugal benefited from a relatively stable monarchy whose kings encouraged maritime trade and shipping ventures. The Crown gave every possible incentive by implementing tax privileges and insurance funds to protect the investments of ship owners and builders. 

Often, members of the aristocracy such as Prince Henry the Navigator, were also investors. The aristocracy used their political position to facilitate the Crown's granting of royal sanctions that regulated the voyages of exploration made by the merchant community. Portugal was fortunate to have kings who recognized the kingdom's dependency on overseas trade and assisted in its expansion in every possible way. The stability of the monarchy was essential to the establishment of sustainable economic growth, thus the stability of the Portuguese monarchy gave the kingdom a seventy-year head start over the Spanish who were distracted by a civil war and the Reconquista of Granada. It was not until Columbus' voyage in 1492 that the Spanish were finally in a position to challenge Portugal's predominance in exploration.

    Much of the credit should go to Prince Henry the Navigator's mother, Philippa of Lancaster.

Portugal

While the English and French were fighting the Hundred Years war (which started in 1337) Ferdinand I of Portugal fought three wars with Castile, losing each one and bankrupting the country. 

After losing the last war (1381–82)  Ferdinand’s daughter and heiress, Beatrice was married to the King of Castile. Portugal would thus have gone to Castile on Ferdinand’s death, but a national revolution gave the throne to Ferdinand’s half brother, João I. As a result Castile invaded Portugal.

The Archbishop of Braga, primate of the church in Portugal made an agreement with Prince John of Gaunt, son of England's king, Edward III, and arranged that John's daughter, Philippa of Lancaster, would be married to the 28-year-old King João I and become queen of Portugal in exchange for England's aid against Castile. King João I was forced by necessity to agree to these terms although he had no intention of fulfilling his part of the agreement. 

Initially the king retreated to the country for two months with his mistress and their two illegitimate children, and sent back protestations that his monastic oath would prevent his ever contracting a marriage. He was Master of Avis - a crusading order of the church (like the knights Templars and the Hospitaliers) and therefore was supposed to be celibate. John of Gaunt immediately produced a letter from the pope absolving the king of his vows of celibacy but the king continued to avoid the marriage. 

On February 2, 1387 John sent the king a demand, delivered by an army of England's best troops, that the marriage take place at once or England would withhold from Portugal a loan that was desperately needed. King João I finally capitulated and later that month, on Candlemas Day, the Archbishop of Braga united the sullen king with the mortified princess in a resplendent ceremony. In public the royal couple played their parts but in private King João  treated his bride harshly. After the ceremony he left her at once for the camp of his army and plunged into the campaign against Castile.

Philippa was older than King João I by a few years and had already been refused by several other royal bachelors, notably by King Charles VI of France and Albert, Duke of Bavaria. Despite these rejections Philippa would prove herself to be an extraordinary ruler and mother of a great empire. She had received a remarkable education as a girl studying under the Flemish poet Froissart , the foremost chronicler of medieval courts. Another of her tutors was the Friar John, the great pioneer in physics and chemistry, who presumably developed in her a sense of critical inquiry that was to become one of her outstanding characteristics. Her mentor was Geoffrey Chaucer, an close friend of her father's. Her father's confessor was the reformer John Wycliffe, who was Professor of Philosophy at Oxford and the first translator of the Bible into English. He also played a role in molding Philippa  to be free of superstition thus enabling her to become a tolerant and enlightened leader.

King João I initially refused to accept Philippa as his wife because he felt forced to go through with the marriage. Thus he avoided her and sought solace between campaigns from his mistress in Lisbon. 

This situation reminded Philippa of her father's own mistress who dominated her childhood home to the detriment of her mother. Philippa was determined not to go through the same humiliating experience in her own household. She waited patiently until the king was away at the battlefront, and sent a group of clerics and knights to the house where his mistress lived. The mistress was then committed to the convent of Santos where the king could not get to her. Philippa took pains to make certain that her rival was treated with every respect and given a dignified establishment with an ample allowance. Philippa then adopted the king's two illegitimate children and reared them with her own children as they were born. Eventually Philippa gained her husband's respect and affection. She bore him ten children.

Over the next two generations King João I delegated the administration of civil affairs to Philippa while he guarded the kingdom's frontiers. Because of her close relationship to the English throne, Philippa was able to improve the diplomatic and commercial bonds between the two kingdoms. She was also able to improve internal relations between the Portugal's middle class and the aristocracy, as well as the relations between the Christian and Jewish communities.

By the year 1410, Philippa and João had ruled Portugal together for a quarter of a century, during which the kingdom had been constantly at war with Castile and the Moors. All trade, finance, and taxation were designed as war measures. The law at the time compelled every able-bodied man not serving in the armed forces to labor for a certain number of days per year on the walls and defenses of his home town. In addition, all male non-combatants were required to serve some weeks annually in the watchtowers and observation posts on the inland borders with Castile and along the seacoast to defend against Moorish raiders. The expense of this extended warfare and the lack of metallic material for coins exhausted the royal treasury, forcing Philippa to issue a bizarre fiat money, in the form of leather tokens, as legal tender. 

In 1411 there was a political change in the enemy kingdom of Castile and the situation drastically changed. Suddenly Portugal was largely at peace.

With peace came the totally upheaval of Portugal's war economy. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, mechanics, and shipyard workers were thrown into unemployment. 

The royal councilors feared the danger of a civil war from the domestic turmoil of peace and suggested a foreign war as a diversion. 

Others advisors pushed for a resumption of hostilities against Castile. 

Another suggestion was to send an army to help the emperor of Austria against the Turks but King João vetoed sending the kingdom's defenders so far away. 

Philippa proposed sending an armed expedition to the Muslim kingdom of Fez (Morroco) in order to reach the kingdom of Prester John, the fabled African Christian ruler. Philippa believed that an alliance with Prester John would give Portugal access to the Indian sources of spices and oriental products, thereby destroying the monopoly of Egypt and Venice over the spice trade. 

Although the majority of the royal council harshly criticized Philippa's proposal, history eventually proved her right as her successors, King João II and King Manuel the Fortunate, both implemented similar policies of pursuing the Indian trade.

Philippa's proposal was not based on a whim but on facts inspired by her extensive readings of the most respected scholars of that age including:

the written account by the Greek historian Herodotus of a voyage around Africa from the Red Sea, south through the Indian Ocean, and north up the Atlantic to Gibraltar, made centuries before by Phoenician galleys at the command of the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho. 

the Roman historian Pliny who chronicled a southerly voyage along the southwestern African coast by a Carthaginian named Hanno. This voyage was also chronicled by Herodotus

She was also aware of the voyages of Lief Ericson across the Atlantic to Greenland that led her to assume that the ocean could be traversed safely without fear of superstitious monsters. 

Philippa probably studied the popular account of Marco Polo's expedition to the Orient. 

All of these sources corroborated the personal testimonies of hundreds of Genoese, Venetians, Byzantines, Jewish, and Moorish merchants who all traveled from the eastern coast of Africa to the Malabar coast of India where they traded in the bazaars of Calicut. 

  

Using her vast knowledge the queen not only conceived of the bold plan of an invasion of North Africa, but she also painstaking worked to win political support for it among the royal council. 

On her suggestion, spies were sent to Ceuta to report back concerning the feasibility of her plan. One spy returned with information about the great south central African market and the importation of gold through Timbuktu, the hub of that particular trade network. This was some of the first information that Europeans had about the source of Arab gold, until this point they had believed that the gold was brought from India. The importance of this discovery was immense because the Arabic states were the only suppliers for gold-starved Europe, now the capture of Ceuta became an even more attractive option since it could potentially save Portugal's crippled economy.

With this information Philippa believed that the Florentine bankers could be persuaded to finance her invasion, she was correct and the bankers joined the enterprise. Philippa then sought the good will of the clergy and their assistance in winning popular support for the invasion. Once the blessing of Rome was secured, the queen had to convince her husband to authorize the undertaking. At this time King João I was tired of war and considered the stronghold of Ceuta impregnable. He flatly refused the lure of gold and religious glories. Philippa then enlisted the aid of her three oldest sons, all eager to win the spurs of knighthood, to convince their father. Eventually King João I yielded once he realized that his wife had managed to convince the majority of her former detractors of the logical and potential of her proposal.

It took three years of active preparation before the army and fleet were ready for the invasion. At this stage Philippa stepped aside to allow her husband and sons to take over the planning of the expedition. She was now over sixty years old and exhausted from the task of financing and assembling the expedition. Disaster struck when Philippa contracted the plague and failed to recover. When she knew her end was near, she called her children to her. On her deathbed Philippa made her three oldest sons and daughter swear a solemn vow to carry out her dream of trying to gain an alliance with the kingdom of Prester John and through this gain access to the Indies. On July 25, 1415, Philippa was dead, but the fleet of over two hundred vessels  carried out her invasion and successfully conquered Ceuta.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry the Navigator was the fifth child and fourth son of King João I (John I) and Queen Philippa. Henry was somewhat of a paradox: a dreamer, a scholar, and a monk who nevertheless possessed the instincts of a businessman. Essentially, Prince Henry was a religious man, committed to breaking the hold of heathens and securing the triumph of Christianity in Africa.

The crusading legacy of Portugal exerted tremendous influence during Prince Henry's time. The expulsion of Islamic North Africans from the Algarve was still a part of the living memory of most Portuguese, and the four great military orders, St. John, Santiago, Aviz, and Christ, still occupied their castles throughout the Portuguese realm. The importance of these military orders cannot be understated, for Prince Henry's own connections to the Order of Christ would play a significant role during the early years of Portuguese expansion.

 

Suppression of the Knights Templars and the Order of Christ

The Order of Christ was the Portuguese derivative of the Knights Templar who were one of the orders of crusading knights that in the previous two centuries had assumed the responsibility of keeping open the routes to the Holy Land. 

When accusations of sodomy, blasphemy, and witchcraft were leveled against the Templars in the early fourteenth century, the Templars were quickly condemned. On Friday, October 13, 1307, the king of France gave orders to arrest all Templars residing within his domains and called upon the Pope to issue a Bull outlawing the Order throughout Christendom. 

The history of Templars in Portugal, however, was different. The Templars had helped to expel the North Africans from the Algarve, and King Diniz could not forget this service. Rather than ignoring the Pope's instructions, King Diniz modified them. The knights were allowed to escape from Portugal. King Diniz seized and occupied the property of the Templars and established his own national order, The Military Order of Christ. The new knights continued to wear the Templar's crusading cross as their emblem and frequented the Portuguese Court.

Another influence on Prince Henry's behavior was the search for knightly honor. Like many European courts of the time, chivalric traditions were very important. It was this moral and ethical code that governed practically all conduct and in which the aristocracy looked for achievement. Under the influence of English chivalry, King João introduced coats-of-arms, crests and mottoes for members of the Portuguese Court. For himself, the king chose the motto "Il me plaît", "He pleases me". Following the king's lead, Prince Henry chose "Talent de bien faire". Talent did not mean power, nor did it mean faculty. Rather, it meant "desire". The desire to do well.

Ceuta

The city of Ceuta, lay opposite Gibraltar, and served as the launching point for pirates operating in the straits, and was the port where many Christian prisoners began their tenure as slaves. It was the northern terminus of caravan routes and a center of North African trade activities. It was a logical target.

When Portuguese ships entered Ceuta in 1415, the city was unprepared and fell to the Portuguese with relative ease.  Nonetheless it was an expensive enterprise and despite the wealth of the caravan town the Portuguese failed to recover the cost of the expedition or the three thousand men left to garrison the town. Although a financial failure, the fall of Ceuta greatly added to the prestige of King João, his sons and to Portugal.

 

The Europeans were completely ignorant of what lay beyond Cape Bojador. The two captains Prince Henry chose for his first expedition of exploration were not experienced sailors. Perhaps the selection was deliberate, for it seemed unlikely that any experienced sailor who had come into contact with the myths and legends surrounding sea travel would willingly sail into the unknown. They returned without success.

Prince Henry persevered and sent expedition after expedition into the "Sea of Darkness", as they called unknown water, in a fifteen-year attempt to round Cape Bojador. Even though he exhorted his captains with promises of increased reward and glory, it was not until 1434 that Gil Eanes (sometimes spelled "Eannes") managed to round the Cape. The physical distance traveled was not what was significant about this voyage. Rather, what was important was that Eanes traveled beyond Cape Bojador and returned to Portugal, eliminating in one broad stroke many of the myths and legends about the "Sea of Darkness".

A number of explanations have been offered as to why it took Portuguese sailors so long to accomplish this task. The two most significant problems were that those ships which navigated along the shores of the African coast risked running aground and those who attempted to steer into the open water and strayed too far could be blown out to sea. Eanes succeeded because he did not attempt to sail in sight of land. Rather, Eanes charted a wide course into the Atlantic before altering his course and turning back towards Africa. When Eanes encountered land again, Cape Bojador was behind him.

Wind

As word spread throughout Europe of the Portuguese expeditions, sailors, astronomers, cartographers, and geographers began to arrive at Sagres to offer their services to Prince Henry. There were Christians, Jews, and Arabs - Prince Henry had discovered the Arabs' superior navigational skills while at Ceuta years before - and what emerged at Sagres was not so much a school of navigation as much as it was a community of scholars, under the direction of Prince Henry, who joined together to conquer the unknown.

 

FINANCIAL REALITIES OF EXPLORATION & COLONIZATION: THE DEBACLE AT TANGIER

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As the exploration of the African coast proceeded, the Portuguese colony at Ceuta was rapidly becoming a drain on the national treasury and it was realized that without the city of Tangier, possession of Ceuta was worthless. When Ceuta was lost to the Portuguese, the camel caravans switched to Tangier as their destination.  Ceuta rapidly became an isolated community. The cost of garrisoning generated further losses, a situation that might be reversed if Portugal were to capture Tangier. There was, however, another reason to launch a military campaign against Tangier. Prince Fernando, Prince Henry's youngest brother, was only eleven years old when the Portuguese captured Ceuta and he had not won his spurs in battle like his older brothers. After much prodding, and some court intrigue, Prince Henry managed to convince his brother the king to begin preparations for an attack on Tangier in 1436.

In stark contrast to the attack on Ceuta years before, the Portuguese assault on Tangier was poorly conceived and badly executed. When the Portuguese fleet set sail in August 1437, it contained only 6,000 troops; Portuguese planners originally estimated that it would take 14,000 soldiers to comprise an adequate striking force. Furthermore, no attempt was made by Prince Henry to disguise his intention to attack the city, and the North Africans were well prepared to turn back the Portuguese. Three times Prince Henry attempted to assault the city, and all three times his armies were repulsed. 

Only after his chaplain deserted him and told the North Africans the details of the new assault did the full measure of the futility of his attacks grip Prince Henry. Realizing that his position was hopeless, Prince Henry asked the North African leader, Sala-ben-Sala, to dictate his terms for surrender. The North African's terms were harsh: an exchange of hostages - Prince Henry's brother, Prince Fernando, for one of Sala-ben-Sala's sons - and the Portuguese would have to abandon the city of Ceuta. The exchange of hostages was a show of good faith easily agreed upon by the two leaders but it soon became clear that Sala-ben-Sala would have to wrestle Ceuta from the Portuguese. Sala-ben-Sala declared that the Portuguese would have to abandon Ceuta before Prince Fernando would be released. When the Portuguese protested, and reminded the North Africans that they were holding one of the king's sons, Sala-ben-Sala replied that he had many other sons and that he did not particularly care for the one the Portuguese were holding. Thus, Prince Henry had to make a decision, either he could sacrifice the city of Ceuta to obtain his brother's release, or he could keep Ceuta and condemn Fernando to imprisonment. The city of Ceuta was deemed to be an important outpost of Christianity against the infidel and even the Pope advised against trading Ceuta for Prince Fernando's life. The city could not be sacrificed for one man, even for the brother of the king of Portugal.  Prince Fernando died in captivity four years later.

Prince Henry returned devastated from the debacle at Tangier. After a year, He resumed his exploration of the sea with new-found vigor determined to avenge the defeat and humble the Muslims by conquering the whole of Africa. Prince Henry committed himself to finding the fabled Prester John in order to bring the battle directly to his enemies. 

An incredible patchwork of hearsay and rumor contributed to the legend of Prester John but what was significant about Prester John for Prince Henry was not the land of riches that could be found within the borders of Prester John's kingdom, but the belief that a Christian king had managed to establish and sustain an empire in the heart of Muslim-held territory. Therefore, locating and allying with Prester John meant delivering a devastating blow to the Muslims.

Old World Contact's Prester John

 

Henry sent an expedition in 1441 to "make peace" with the indigenous populations of North Africa. Instead after sailing as far as Cabo Branco (Cape Blanco), his captains returned with ten prisoners. One of the prisoners happened to be the chief of the tribe by the name of Adahu. Fortunately for the Portuguese, Adahu spoke Arabic and could communicate with an Arabic translator.

Upon returning to Sagres, Adahu described what he knew of Africa and the land-based trade routes. The questioning of Adahu was undoubtedly an exciting exercise for Prince Henry; for the first time since the capture of Ceuta, Prince Henry was able to verify the information gathered by explorers with Adahu's first-hand knowledge. The capture of Adahu also marked the beginning of the use of the indigenous population as interpreters for subsequent voyages.

An envoy was sent to the Pope to report the information gathered by Prince Henry and to request that the Portuguese Prince be granted spiritual jurisdiction over all the lands he "discovered" to the south. Prince Henry also wanted that those who lost their lives on these voyages be considered to have died while on a crusade. The Church agreed and these concessions were matched by the Portuguese monarch. Prince Henry was given a charter entitling him to one-fifth of the profits of the expedition, normally a prerogative reserved for the Crown. All captains sailing down the African coast must first seek Prince Henry's permission.

Certainly, Portugal was interested in developing markets and resources to stimulate its economy. The reality, however, is that for the first twenty years, the revenue gathered from such voyages was negligible, leading some to speculate that the financing for the voyages must have come from a private source, including Prince Henry's own fortune. Although the main source of his revenue was not available until later in his life - the product of the concessions granted to him by the Portuguese Crown - it must be remembered that Prince Henry had control over the Military Order of Christ. Thus, the Military Order of Christ may have supplied the bulk of capital required to finance the early years of Prince Henry's explorations. The use of funds from a religious order made it imperative that exploration should be justified as having a high religious purpose, such as the conversion of heathens to Christianity or inflicting damage on Islamic territories. After 1443, it is possible to argue that exploration became self-sufficient with the profits from trade and commerce making voyages profitable. For example, merchants could expect a fourfold profit when trading in cloth.

Prince Henry instituted many of the practices that would become standard features of European exploration. By systematically exploring the African coast, Prince Henry inaugurated a policy of exploration that built on the knowledge of previous voyages. Instead of remaining content with the extent of existing knowledge, Prince Henry used the end of one voyage as the beginning for the next.  By using interpreters, Prince Henry was able to build an effective and reliable source of information about the areas to be explored by Europeans. Interpreters also significantly contributed to the European voyages of exploration by allowing Europeans to communicate with indigenous populations in a peaceful manner. Such relations were important to establishing friendly trade and gathering information.

THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS

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The Atlantic Islands were the birthplace of the Portuguese colonization pattern of exploration, settlement, agricultural conversion of lands, the institution of the plantation model (donatary captaincy), and the incorporation of African slave labor on a large scale. The first recorded Portuguese expedition into the Atlantic took place in 1341 with its destination being the Canary Islands that were known to the ancient Greeks as the Fortunate Islands. The expedition successfully returned to Lisbon with a cargo of four indigenous people, fish oil, red wood and skins. Despite this success there was no immediate follow up to this expedition.

 Portuguese ventures at sea then consisted of raiding and trading with towns along the known coastline of Northern Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean. This continued until the era of Prince Henry when the Canary Islands became important as a supply way-station for expeditions sailing the Canary route that was the shortest course to the West African coast. One of Prince Henry's early expeditions into the Atlantic occurred in 1420 with the rediscovery of Madeira. Prince Henry instigated its colonization because it was uninhabited and could easily be converted to the agricultural production of wheat and sugar. 

Madeira, one of the earliest colonies to incorporate the plantation system for the production of sugar

By 1500 Madeira was the leading producer of sugar and had incorporated a plantation system that depended heavily on African slave labour. The Azores were discovered in 1427 and colonized with criminals by Prince Henry and his associates. Again the pattern of agricultural production that incorporated the plantation model and slave labor was successful in producing wine, wheat, and sugar. Due to their location, the Azores also became an important way-station for the rapidly expanding African slave trade. This pattern of discovery and settlement was repeated in 1460 with Fernao Gomes' discovery of the Cape Verde Islands, and in 1470 with the discovery of Saõ Tomé. It is important to note that the Portuguese efforts in Africa and Asia were aimed at building trading posts rather than permanent settlements, in this regard the Atlantic Islands were unique until the discovery and settlement of Brazil in 1500.

The Canaries

The Azores

New Worlds

The Renaissance view of the universe had not changed much since Homer's time. 

The boundaries had been expanded to the east to include India, China and Ceylon by the Hellenistic era.

But Ptolemy's AD 160 map of the world, preserved by the Arabs and the Byzantines still largely represented the knowledge of the world available to the Europeans.

The Old World Orbis Terrarum

At the end of the fifteenth century Europeans believed that the world consisted of three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa —connected together and surrounded by ocean forming an Earth Island or Orbis Terrarum. The earth island was known to be the only land on the globe and it was surrounded, bounded, limited and defined by the ocean.

O-T maps, oriented to the East,  showed three continents, surrounded by ocean, sometimes with Paradise at the easternmost edge. Beyond the Earth Island the seas were associated with death, chaos and mystery. 

The O-T maps showed the essential symmetry of the universe.  The O-T map was an emblem of conquest. Jerusalem was the focus of that Conquest for more than two centuries of Crusaders, and it would remain the center of attention on maps until the invention of printing and the wide publication of Ptolemy's map in the 1470's. 

1493 world map in
Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum, The Nuremberg Chronicle

On the borders of the map and on the periphery of the world are creatures described in travel fantasies such as the Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1536)

When Columbus sailed west to search for a new way to Asia, he knew that the lands he ‘discovered’ must be on the east coast of this earth island—there was no other land. He called the people that he met Indios as a generic term because he knew they lived east of the Indus River. 

Despite differences between what he saw and the descriptions of earlier travelers, Columbus knew that he could not have discovered a completely new world because European cosmology held that there was only one world. 

The idea of a ‘New World’ would imply that another world, in addition to the one god-created world, existed. That would also imply that new people, not descended from Adam and Eve existed. Either of these notions would have been heresy.  To account for the discrepancies between expectation and observation Columbus suggested that he had discovered the lost paradise containing the Garden of Eden.

Neither Columbus nor Vespucci could discover a new world or even conceive of one. They could not discover what they could not conceive of as a possibility. For that, the European world view had to change.