Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery

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SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1994 - Political Science - 285 pages
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.

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Contents

Introduction The Physical and Historiographic Space
1
The Ottomans and Levantine Foreign Policy
21
The Western Salient Venice Ismail Safavi and Europe
27
The Eastern Salient Ismail Safavi and the Mamluks
51
Ottoman Naval Development
89
Traders Trade Goods and Trade Zones
123
The Aegean the Mediterranean and the Grain Trade
131
Trade on the Eastern Salient
143
Conclusion The Ottoman Economic Mind in the Context of World Power
175
Notes
183
Glossary
251
Bibliography
255
Index
277
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About the author (1994)

Palmira Brummett is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee.

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