Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery

Download or read book Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery written by Palmira Johnson Brummett and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work reframes sixteenth-century history , incorporating the Ottoman empire more thoroughly into European, Asian and world history. It analyzes the Ottoman Empire's expansion eastward in the contexts of claims to universal sovereignty, Levantine power politics, and the struggle for control of the oriental trade. Challenging the notion that the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire was merely a reactive economic entity driven by the impulse to territorial conquest, Brummett portrays it as inheritor of Euro-Asian trading networks and participant in the contest for commercial hegemony from Genoa and Venice to the Indian Ocean. Brummett shows that the development of seapower was crucial to this endeavor, enabling the Ottomans to subordinate both Venice and the Mamluk kingdom to dependency relationships and providing the Ottoman ruling class access to commercial investment and wealth.