Byzantium Survives - Effects On Age Of Exploration?

Okay, so, as I understand it, and feel free to correct me, the MAIN reason a lot of the stuff that happened in the Age of Exploration happened is because Europeans were trying to find an alternate route to the spices and other goods of India, China, Etc. that WASN'T controlled by extremely hostile Muslims.

So, say Byzantium survives, for whatever reason. It controls it's Greek territories, and the entirety of Anatolia.

Persia is still controlled by any given Muslim state, though, and you also have the Islamic states in India. The rest of the Middle East will be more or less as OTL.

How easier does this make for Europeans to access the Indian spices and other resources? Easy enough to make them not discover the Americas, at least not for another half century or century or so?

If it doesn't affect the ease of getting Indian trade at all, what is needed to make things easy for Europeans to get Indian trade? Access to the Red Sea? Or maybe access to the Persian Gulf?
 
Well the thing is that many major trading powers like england spain or portugal would still try to find another route to india or china... just because of the monopoly Byzantium holds. So I guess the need to start exploring would be less but I do thing that around the same time or a few years later there will be explorers looking for a way to break Byzantiums hold on the eastern trade.
 
Well the thing is that many major trading powers like england spain or portugal would still try to find another route to india or china... just because of the monopoly Byzantium holds. So I guess the need to start exploring would be less but I do thing that around the same time or a few years later there will be explorers looking for a way to break Byzantiums hold on the eastern trade.

Okay, so, say this:

Somehow, friendly, Christian nations get ahold of both Red Sea and Persian Gulf access, two different nations, so that neither has a monopoly. For fun let's say a Catholic nation has Red Sea access, and an Orthodox nation has Persian Gulf access.

How does THIS affect trade and the Age of Exploration?
 
Okay, so, say this:

Somehow, friendly, Christian nations get ahold of both Red Sea and Persian Gulf access, two different nations, so that neither has a monopoly. For fun let's say a Catholic nation has Red Sea access, and an Orthodox nation has Persian Gulf access.

How does THIS affect trade and the Age of Exploration?

"Is there a shorter way?"

"Is there a way that doesn't require dependence on this particular nation that isn't us?"

Both are tempting, and ship designs that make finding out possible are emerging.
 
"Is there a shorter way?"

Well, if I recall correctly, hadn't scientists already determined the circumference of the Earth?

If they had, shouldn't people know going west, even if there wasn't a continent or two in the way, would be an awful lot longer than going east?
 
A country that has Red Sea control will see its competitors attempt to find alternate routes such as the circumnavigation of Africa.
 
I dunno how far-reaching the Byzantium you're talking about would be, but I guess it isn't completely impossible that just like Philip of Spain and Elizabeth of England got into a war and sent privateers on each other over the sea routes to America, Byzantium starts sending sea-faring mercenaries on British and Portuguese sailors as they're on their way to India.

Afterall, he who controls the spice routes, controls the European economy...
 
Its an interesting question. Perhaps a surviving Byzantium, Outremer and Abassyinia create a strong Christian presence in the region and control the Red Sea. Certainly the Italian trading cities had tax exemptions in the Christian states on the area during the Crusading era, and it was tolls which made the overland route so expensive.
 
What makes people think the Muslims were hostile? They were perfectly happy to sell spices to Europeans, usually Venetian or Genoese middlemen. (Indeed, it was the Venetians who first reacted to the Portuguese reaching India in 1498 by proposing a Suez Canal).

But I think a strong Byzantine Empire could nicely fill the role of the Other that the Ottomans did in any case.
 
They did it but I don't know if they were particularly happy about it. The locals on the route could be real pains in the arse, charging extra tolls, confiscating good or failing to curb bandits and justify it with religious reasons.
 
They did it but I don't know if they were particularly happy about it. The locals on the route could be real pains in the arse, charging extra tolls, confiscating good or failing to curb bandits and justify it with religious reasons.

And the Byzantines wouldn't do this because...? Especially when they were doing things like this to "Latins" back when they were a going concern. Face it--you have a trade monopoly, you screw over the folks who have to rely on it.
 
And the Byzantines wouldn't do this because...? Especially when they were doing things like this to "Latins" back when they were a going concern. Face it--you have a trade monopoly, you screw over the folks who have to rely on it.

Not any more than Latins were doing to each other, but that just reinforces your point.

Though I think its more likely to be the bureaucratic crap and less likely to be bandits or religious justifications - that's how the ERE operated.

But anyone with a trade monopoly will see everyone else wanting a way around it, even if the only actions of the monopolists is raising the prices for what the market will bear.
 
Not any more than Latins were doing to each other, but that just reinforces your point.

Though I think its more likely to be the bureaucratic crap and less likely to be bandits or religious justifications - that's how the ERE operated.

But anyone with a trade monopoly will see everyone else wanting a way around it, even if the only actions of the monopolists is raising the prices for what the market will bear.

Oh, I wouldn't rule out some bandits--once you left Constantinople, the ERE could be a pretty wild and wooly place.
 
Oh, I wouldn't rule out some bandits--once you left Constantinople, the ERE could be a pretty wild and wooly place.

I wouldn't either, but that's just life, not Imperial policy. The frontier is always bandit country.

And Constantinople itself wasn't exactly the safest city in the world at times.
 
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