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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
Commanders and leaders
Francisco de Almeida Afonso de Albuquerque Cristóvão da Gama	Suleiman Pasha Piri Reis Ali Beg

The Ottoman–Portuguese war 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.

Portuguese background

It all started in the beginning of the 15th when Portugal captured the city of Ceuta, in Morocco. From that year on the portuguese would cross the boundaries of the known world: for the first time in the history of men the Ocean would be navigated with scientific and geografical precision. And, as it should be obvious, the instrument for this unique achievement was their seapower. Seapower, here, can be translated in two words for the world of the portuguese at that time: Ships and warfare. Indeed, according to professor John C. Marshman, "during the whole of the sixteenth century the maritime power of the portuguese continued to be the most formidable in the eastern hemisphere, and terror of every state on the seaboard." So, from the 15th century on, this maritime power made Portugal the first World Power in history and the leading Global Economy from the end of the 15th to the 16th century, due to the African Gold and Asian spices. The leading authority about the Portuguese Empire, Charles Boxer, concludes: "In the 16th century the Portuguese dominated a part of the Planet and commerce superior to any other country". "Unfortunately to the East, the Portuguese were the heir of the medieval military dexterity longly accumulated from the last fase of the middles ages...their ships had the best artillery produced in Europe." From 1498 on, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Francisco de Almeida and Afonso de Albuquerque were the face of this powerful Empire.

Ottoman background

Certainly, this newcome powerful nation in the Indian Ocean spread an aura of "terror" there. The only capable force to face it was the Ottoman Empire, as its involvement in almost every battle against the portuguese in the 16th century suggests. But as early as the 16th century began, this muslim power was already suffering the economic impact from the arrival of the first Europeans. The Indian historian P. Malekandathil says that "The Portuguese efforts to monopolize the eastern trade by making the commodities flow to Europe through the Cape route had started at the cost of the Ottomans and reduced the flow of wealth to the treasury of the Ottomans." As a result, the Empire started a chain of struggles to challenge the portuguese in the Indian Ocean and their coastal areas. The Ottomans "smelt a severe political danger in their neighbourhood. Till 1515, the Europeans appeared to be an enemy of the Turks only in the western front. But in that year with the occupation of Hormuz (lying in the eastern part of the Turkish Empire) by the Lusitanians, the Ottomans found themselves being virtually encircled by the Europeans, which in fact sent political messages of caution to the Ottomans. The evolving economic pressure and the political threats emerging from the encircling European expansion made the Ottomans tum their attention increasingly to the politics of the Indian Ocean regions and interfere in them to their advantage."

The war

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 that century. Most of these conflicts were in the Indian Ocean in 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. Crowley, Roger (2015-12-01). Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 9780812994018.
8. Modelski, George; Thompson, William R. (1988-06-18). Seapower in Global Politics, 1494–1993. Springer. ISBN 9781349091546.
9. ^ Marshman, John Clark (2010-11-18). History of India from the Earliest Period to the Close of the East India Company's Government. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108021043.
10. Midlarsky, Manus (2000). Handbook of War Studies II. EUA: University of Michigan. p. 315. ISBN 978-0-472-06724-4.
11. ^ Modelski, George (1988). Seapower in Global Politics, 1494-1993. London: THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-349-09156-0.
12. Crowley, Roger (2015-12-01). Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 9780812994018.
13. Boxer, Charles (1973). The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825. England: Penguin. pp. 11, 13. ISBN 978-0140216479.
14. ^ Lee, Wayne E. (2016). Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199797455.
15. Malekandathil, Pius (2010). Maritime India - Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean. Delhi: Primus Books. p. 110. ISBN 978-93-80607-01-6.
16. Malekandathil, Pius (2010). Maritime India - Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean. Delhi: Primus Books. p. 113. ISBN 978-93-80607-01-6.
17. Casale, Giancarlo (2010-02-25). The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199798797.
18. Brummett, Palmira Johnson (1994). Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791417027.
19. 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.
20. Cook, M.A. (1976). A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730. New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. p. 122. ISBN 0521208912.
21. 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