Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:03, 1 April 2018

Ottoman-Portuguese War
Date 16th century Location Indian Ocean/East/Africa Result Portuguese victory: the Portuguese remain in the Indian Ocean and the Ottoman retreat to the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
Belligerents
Portuguese Empire	Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman–Portuguese or Turco-Portuguese conflicts refers to a series of different military battles between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire, or between other European powers and the Ottoman Empire and other muslim powers like India, Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo), Mughal Empire, Adal Sultanate, Somalia, Aceh Sultanate in which relevant Portuguese military forces participated. The war between the Portuguese and the Ottomans lasted for most of the 16th century, beginning in the first until the beginning of the last decade of the 16th century. Most of these conflicts were in the Indian Oceanin the process of the expansion of the Portuguese Empire. The turks considered the Portuguese as a huge threat to their monopoly in the area. Professor G. Casale puts it best: the Ottomans launched "a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia."

Result

In the end of the century, the Portuguese proved to be militarily superior to the Ottomans, defeating them in the majority of battles, as G. Modelski concludes: "the Turks never won a clear victory on the ocean. The Mediterranean galleys they employed proved no match against the great ships of Portugal." In fact, the portuguese prevailing over the Ottomans effort is almost a consensus among scholars, both from the West and East. The historian Palmira Brummett agrees: "it's clear that the Ottomans failed in their bid to challenge the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean." The Indian author Pius Malekandathil says: "Though both the Portuguese and the Ottomans moved to the maritime space of Indian Ocean almost simultaneously, the Portuguese managed to appropriate a major portion of it. The chain of Portuguese fortresses erected along coastal western India did a lot to prevent the Ottomans from completely integrating the economic activities of India into their designs, which they were cherishing from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards." The Author M.A Cook registers what happened after the Battle of Mombasa, in 1589: "Ali Beg in 1584 moved down the coast of East Africa as far as Malindi. He repeated the venture in 1589, this time reaching Mombasa, where his squadron succumbed, however, to the assault of a superior Portuguese fleet from Goa in western India. Thus ended the last Ottoman endeavour to challenge the domination of Portugal over the waters of India." Lastly, the Indian author G.A Ballard says: "it was an era of repeated stress and strife, but of stationary general conditions nevertheless; for in spite of being constantly attacked at this point or that, the portuguese were never driven away anywhere, and even when suffering temporary local reverses always recovered their supremacy sooner or later."

The different conflicts were the following:

• Battle of Diu (1509)
• Portuguese conquest of Goa (1510)
• Siege of Diu (1531)
• Conquest of Tunis (1535)
• Siege of Diu
• Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1538–1559)
• Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1580–1589)

Notes

1. Lee, Wayne, 2016, Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History, p. 261
2. G. Modelski, 1988, Seapower on Global Politics, p. 157.
3. Pius Malekandathil, 2010, MARITIME INDIA Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean, p.122 and 123
4. Mohammed Hasen al- Aidarous, The Ottoman-portuguese conflict in the Arabian Gulf during the second half of the 16th century.
5. Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman history: an introduction to the sources, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 68.
6. Salih Özbaran, The Ottoman response to European expansion: studies on Ottoman-Portuguese relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman administration in the Arab lands during the sixteenth century, Isis Press, 1994, viii
7. Lee, Wayne E. (2016). Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199797455.
8. Casale, Giancarlo (2010-02-25). The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199798797.
9. Modelski, George (1988). Seapower in Global Politics, 1494-1993. London: THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-349-09156-0.
10. Brummett, Palmira Johnson (1994). Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791417027.
11. Malekandathil, Pius (2010). Maritime India: Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean. Delhi: Primus Books. pp. 122, 123. ISBN 978-93-80607-01-6.
12. Cook, M.A. (1976). A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730. New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. p. 122. ISBN 0521208912.
13. Ballard, G.A (1928). Rulers of the Indian Ocean. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company,: University of Michigan. p. 130.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

References

• Attila & Balázs Weiszhár, Háborúk lexikona, Atheneaum, Budapest, 2004 (in Hungarian; title means in English Lexicon of Wars)

• Wars involving Portugal
• Wars involving the Ottoman Empire
• Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts