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3 - Economy and Society in the Early Modern Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

Bruce Masters
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University, Connecticut
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Summary

The Ottoman conquests of the Arab lands occurred in an age when the boundaries of what had been the known world were expanding. Historians of Asia have long been aware that transregional networks of commerce and cultural exchange were not unique to the sixteenth century, even if most western Europeans had been only dimly aware of them before. In contrast to their insularity, the peoples of the Middle East had played a vital role in those contacts for millennia. But the incorporation of parts of the Americas into European empires and the intrusion of armed European ships into the trade of Asia in the sixteenth century greatly expanded the geographical horizons for many around the globe. The creation in 1513 of the Piri Reis map, which showed the partial Atlantic coastlines of both Africa and South America, was indicative of an awareness of a “new” world” (yeni dünya) among the sultan’s advisers. Ottoman naval expeditions to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century were yet another sign of the sultan’s recognition of the possibility for creating a global strategy. The expansion of contacts among peoples across oceans and continents led to the introduction of new crops, shifts in trade routes, and improvements in technology, as well as the arrival of previously unknown pandemics and military conquerors.

The impact on the sultan’s Arab subjects of their incorporation into this “world economy,” to borrow Immanuel Wallerstein’s formulation, was not as dire as it was for the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the Middle East suffered a contraction of its wealth after the sixteenth century. The shifts in global trade patterns in that century were partly to blame as the cities of the eastern Mediterranean ceased to be the key intermediaries in the east-west trade. The underlying cause of the decline for the Ottoman economy was more likely, however, the introduction of large quantities of silver from the Americas, which distorted the traditional ratio in the value of gold to silver in Middle Eastern economies.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918
A Social and Cultural History
, pp. 73 - 102
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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References

Reilly, James, “Rural Waqfs of Ottoman Damascus: Rights of Ownership, Possession and Tenancy”Acta Orientalia 51 (1990): 27–46Google Scholar
Simeon, Polonyalı, Polonyalı Simeon’un Seyahatnamesi, translated by Andreasyan, Hrand (Istanbul: İstanbul Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1964), 93Google Scholar

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