On the Ottomans and the Med

The more I read about the 16th century, the more utterly hegemonic the Ottomans seem in the Med - everything the Holy League, Spain etc accomplished were basically holding actions or proxy fights (Tunis etc) designed to keep Ottoman influence from spilling over into the Western Med. Venice holding on as long as it did seems increasingly surprising.

How badly do you have to screw the Ottomans to see a more uncertain picture in the Eastern Med? And how far could the Ottomans have gone in the Western Med if they'd been so inclined to fully exploit their dominance?
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
The more I read about the 16th century, the more utterly hegemonic the Ottomans seem in the Med - everything the Holy League, Spain etc accomplished were basically holding actions or proxy fights (Tunis etc) designed to keep Ottoman influence from spilling over into the Western Med. Venice holding on as long as it did seems increasingly surprising.

How badly do you have to screw the Ottomans to see a more uncertain picture in the Eastern Med? And how far could the Ottomans have gone in the Western Med if they'd been so inclined to fully exploit their dominance?

To screw the Ottomans? Not much in reality. You could end the Ottoman dominance of the Med in the crib, if you prevent them taking over Gallipoli. Keep them in Asia, and the Byzantines/Balkan powers able to hold the line - and the Ottomans don't have complete control over trade in & out of the Black sea, the revenues which certainly helped fund their armies and fleets - and maintains a strong partner.

Can you do it later, with a still mighty Ottomans? I'm not sure. Not if they want to. Perhaps an early more successful Reconquista then goes and takes over North Africa successfully, and managed to convert the residents to Christianity - this would end Muslim power in the Western Med, and isolate the Ottomans to the Eastern Med - then added support for the Knights, and other naval powers in the Med, and you've got Christian pirates/raiders thoughout, which can severely hurt Ottoman shipping, and challenge their naval superiority/power.
 

Thande

Donor
Paradoxically one could argue that a way to get the Ottomans to focus more on the Med in general might be if they lost their possessions elsewhere, though it's hard to see how another power (Persia?) could strip them of Mesopotamia/Arabia/etc. And then of course they might just focus on revanche to get those territories back. But it's a thought.

There is also the point that the Ottomans were typically only titular overlords of the local rulers of western North Africa--the trouble being that this was technically true of a lot of places, but one has to carefully define whether the de facto situation was of the Sultan's word meaning something (as in e.g. Cyrenaica) versus it rarely doing so (as in Algiers). A part of getting what you want would be for the Dey of Algiers not to become such an independent office, but that's just restating the question - why would the Ottomans not be willing to let it become so as they were in OTL.
 
I don't think they could have gone much farther in the Western Med -- they had proxies as far as Algiers and Malta. Trying to conquer Southern Italy -- against Spain and Austria -- would be pretty hard to pull off. I could see them sacking Venice, though, dominating the Adriatic.

To undo Ottoman dominance in the Eastern Med, you'd need them to be really screwed. Have Selim the Grim die while conquering Egypt or have the Safavids really screw the Ottomans at Chaldiran. This destabilizes their eastern frontier and leaves them without Egypt. Concentrated action on the northern front would further pressure the Ottoman state, and I doubt they'd be able to rebound into being a Mediterranean power.
 
IIRC Suleinan the Magnificent's flagship was almost sunk in a storm on his way to invade Rhodes. Just have his ship sink and Suleiman drown and Ottoman influence can be curbed at the height of its power.
 

Cueg

Banned
IIRC Suleinan the Magnificent's flagship was almost sunk in a storm on his way to invade Rhodes. Just have his ship sink and Suleiman drown and Ottoman influence can be curbed at the height of its power.

What? Was this before or after he killed his firstborn? If before, you'll get another conqueror.
 
What? Was this before or after he killed his firstborn? If before, you'll get another conqueror.

This was before the Siege of Rhodes in 1522. And I suppose you mean Mustafa, since Suleiman`s first-born son Mahmud died of smallpox in 1521. Even so, Mustafa is only 7 at the time.
 
As controversial as this may sound....killing Suleiman might actually help the Ottoman Empire in the longrun if you actually avoid his immediate successors and maintain competent Sultans in power during the tail end of the 16th century and early 17th. Without the massive court intrigue that came with the rise of the Ottoman harem in power, things could potentially go a lot better for the Ottomans. Admittedly, Suleiman's immediate successor wasn't bad per se and has a bad rep not being a worthy successor to his father, but not being interested in military conquests isn't good for an imperialist empire. What they needed after Suleiman's death was another Selim the Grim, not someone uninterested in statecraft.
 
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