What if Constantinople had never fallen to the Turks?

[al Roumi]

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I disagree with this, particularly the part about the Ottomans not trading with the Byzantines. Trade in the medieval era is not like modern trade: it was essentially impossible to regulate for most nations. The were too few products, too few trade routes, and too primitive transportation systems to allow shifting from one market to another. The Ottomans would always have traded with the Byzantines because they had no choice, there simply wasn't another market available to them at that time. The only choice available was not trading at all, which was only ever used as a short-term political weapon by a nation that needed the trade less than their trade partners did (e.g. the English wool trade with Flanders throughout the medieval period).

Indeed, the Turkish name for the city (Istanbul) is itself emblematic of the huge significance of the place for trade purposes even when the Byzantines and Ottomans were at each others' throats. Istanbul is derived from a Turkish phrase which roughly translates as "into the city." When people asked each other where they were going, if the destination was Constantinople they would simply say "into the city." That was because Constantinople was so massively important to the region, that you didn't need to even name it. Just calling it "the city" was enough to let everyone know what you meant.

You've mentioned Columbus sailing west as proof that it wasn't important. That actually proves the exact opposite. The entire reason that another route to India was needed was because the fall of Constantinople itself was what closed off the old routes eastward. Without the fall of the city to the Ottomans, Columbus would never have gotten funding for his voyage and the Americas would not have been re-discovered until much later. Indeed, the Genoese thought that Constantinople was so important as a trade hub, that they founded an entire city there (Galata) on the north shore of the Horn. The mega-traders of the era, the Genoese and the Venetians, were pretty much the only people that showed up to aid Constantinople in 1453 during the final siege. They appeared because they knew the city was so utterly important to their own trade that it was worth an open war with the Ottomans to prevent its fall.

It is worth noting that the fall of Constantinople actually marks the beginning of the end of the Italian trading empires. After that point, trade shifted to the overseas trade routes, to the Americas, India, and East Asia. Those routes were monopolized by western European powers who were the only ones capable of sustaining regular trade across huge bodies of open water. Again, this was only done because the much cheaper overland route to the East was closed. If that closure never happened, the venture capital for the initial voyages of exploration would not have emerged until much, much later. Italy would have remained prosperous for far longer, and Spain and Portugal in particular would have had a much more stunted economic growth.

That's an interesting analysis, especially the correlation between the fall of Constantinople and the "beginning of the end" for Genoese/Venetian power. However, I have to question a couple of things:

1 Why the Ottomans would have cut trade off any more so than the Byzantines? As you said, trade was more of a constant reality than a negotiable and infrequent fancy. The Venetians traded extensivley with the Ottomans, it was their continued wealth and influence in the eastern mediterranean that eventualy lead to conflcits between Ottoman and Venetian. Furthermore, trade with the east depended as much on the states in between Asia minor and China/India as those at the extremities of the caravans. If continental overland trade was risky or obstructed, it was surely as likely to have been so due to situations in Persia, Afghanistan etc?

2 Wasn't there enough going on in Italy which had a more immediate effect? i.e. Spanish control of the peninsula -absorbtion of Genoa into the Spanish sphere of influence and economy? The vast majority of Spain's New World ventures were financed by non-Iberian bankers/traders, eg Genoese, other Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German. Especially the Genoese.

Ultimately, Yaseikhaan is right that the strategic worth of Constantinople/Istanbul was compromised by the Western european powers seizing the economic initiative and trading directly in Asia, as well as acquiring New world wealth. So really, it's the Portugese, Dutch and Spanish who sabotaged either occupier of Constantinople/Istanbul's hopes of trade derived wealth.

In fact, for the agrandized Ottoman empire, the strategic focus of trade switched to that passing along the Arabian coast, as the Portuguese held island forts off Yemen and Oman. I think there was even an abortive attempt by the Ottomans to invade India at one stage -to secure control of resources at their source.

[TinCow]

Both of you essentially present the same questions, so I'll try and answer them together.

First: Why did the fall of Constantinople matter if the Ottomans were open to trade?

The key is the control of the actual city itself, because that is the hub of trade. Large-scale trade requires markets, warehouses, harbors, banks, etc. That can only be done inside a city large enough to support the resources and provide security for them. In the East, Constantinople was the undisputed champion trade hub for obvious reasons: it lies at an immensely strategic spot. All traffic from the Black Sea to the Med must go past it. In addition, it also stood astride the shortest land route from Europe to the Middle East. It is simply a superb location, both strategically and economically... and that's why there's been a major city there for so much of human history.

Prior to the Ottoman conquest of the city, the Ottomans did not have easy access to such a major trade hub of their own. Keep in mind that the pre-1453 Ottomans were much different from the post-1453 Ottomans. Until the capture of Nicea in 1331, the Ottomans did not even control any city of significant size, let alone a major trade hub... that's 250 years after Manzikert. There was simply no way for them to restrict trade at that point because they had no ability to influence any trade hub of significance.

The 120 years that span the period between the Capture of Nicea and Constantinople include the capture of numerous Byzantine cities in Greece and the Balkans, but that accomplished little more than to choke off the land-routes to Constantinople. One of the main reasons the Ottomans failed in their attempts to take Constantinople prior to 1453 is that they had absolutely no naval power worth mentioning. In any siege, the city was easily supplied by the water and the Ottomans could do nothing about it. They simply did not understand naval warfare. This same aspect prevented them from choking trade into Constantinople.

At the same time, without a major trade hub of their own they continued to be forced to do business through Constantinople, even before the Byzantines became a vassal state. Nations require wealth to operate, and the Ottomans were no different. Most Ottoman merchants chose to take their goods into Constantinople to export them, even though the Byzantines were often at odds with them, because it was more profitable than using lesser trade hubs. At the same time, the Byzantines were happy to accept this business, as it's what kept them clinging to power.

All that changed when the Ottomans took over the city, for a few reasons. First, the Ottomans finally, and for the first time, had complete control over that trade route. No one could trade through Constantinople without their permission, and with the aid of Rumelian Castle (built in 1452) and its twin on the other side of the Bosphorus, no one could even trade from the Black Sea to the Med without their permission. Thus, the shift in trade access in the region changed radically in the space of a single year. Where once trade freely flowed by sea whether the Ottomans wanted it or not, now no one went anywhere without paying taxes and duties.

These payments were not the same as those exacted by the Byzantines. I admit it's hard to find an accurate way of making a comparison here, simply because the situations were not comparable. Post-Manzikert Byzantium was constantly in need of western military aid. This put them is a weaker bargaining position and resulted in diplomatic and economic concessions to the Europeans that the Ottomans never had to give. So, in order to make a proper comparison, we really have to compare post-1453 trade costs with pre-Manzikert trade costs. Anything I said about that would be total guesswork. However, the fact remains that the price of doing business through Constantinople went up after the Ottomans took the city, which made that trade route less profitable.

Second, the Ottomans were Muslim. While Orthodoxy was not palatable to Catholic Europe, it was still Christianity and many Catholic leaders had very real beliefs that the Schism could be overcome and the Christian world united. There was an affinity between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East that was sufficient to keep at least minimal bonds between those peoples. That ended with the Ottoman conquest. The Ottomans regularly milked the concept of Holy War to build the massive armies they threw against Europe every so often. I don't think I need to explain how the Ottoman expansion throughout the Med over the 200 years after the fall of Constantinople engendered bad blood between the religions. The Catholics did not make themselves palatable to the Ottomans either with the long history of the Crusades and the numerous Hapsburg/Ottoman wars. The Christian/Muslim relationship was simply far, far worse than the relationship between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The impact the cost of trade through the area, as it vastly increased the risk of sudden cuts in the trade route and confiscation of goods that were already on-site.

Second: The overland trade route was not cheaper/Italians funded the voyages of discovery.

In this, I agree with 'khaan. Cheaper is a relative term and it depends on who we're talking about. Yes, it was much cheaper for the Italians, but it was not cheaper for France, Spain, England, Portugal, etc. I very much agree with that. There is no doubt whatsoever that the western powers were going to eventually discover the sea routes to Asia and the Americas, and when that happened the land route would have been less attractive (though shipping through Egypt via portage to the Red Sea would have remained cost-effective if it had not been taken over by the Ottomans).

However, I do believe that the western powers would not have made these discoveries when they did if the same level of profit had been maintained through Constantinople via Italy. Italian money and trade skills became very much focused on finding a way around the Ottoman obstacles after 1453. It was their initiative that resulted in the first voyages of exploration that awakened the rest of Europe. The Spanish money that funded Columbus would have been irrelevant if the Genoese weren't trying to find another route to Asia.

I agree that eventually the western powers would have accomplished this on their own, but not on the same time frame. Before the discoveries of the first explorers, there was very little interest in funding those journeys because the route was thought to be too long and too difficult... it just wasn't worth it for the less prosperous western powers to invest in it. Even after the fall of Constantinople it took 50 years before the new economic situation was sufficiently bad to warrant the first attempts. If the Constantinople route had remained prosperous, the cost-benefit analysis would have been such that it would have taken much longer for it to be a worthwhile investment to take the risk of funding explorations for new sea routes.

How much longer? I have no idea. Any number I pick will be arbitrary... but just imagine how much different the world would be if the Americas had been colonized only 50 years later. Just think of US history. How different would this country be today if the American Revolution hadn't occurred until 1826? By that time, the slave trade had been completely abolished in the British Empire. If the US had not had slavery at the time of its independence, would the Civil War have still occurred? If the American Revolution doesn't end until 1833, when does the French Revolution occur? Would the Napoleonic Wars have been fought in the 1860s with ironclads and repeating rifles? Just thinking about all the ramifications of a delay in colonization makes my head spin.

[al Roumi]

Second: The overland trade route was not cheaper/Italians funded the voyages of discovery.

In this, I agree with 'khaan. Cheaper is a relative term and it depends on who we're talking about. Yes, it was much cheaper for the Italians, but it was not cheaper for France, Spain, England, Portugal, etc. I very much agree with that. There is no doubt whatsoever that the western powers were going to eventually discover the sea routes to Asia and the Americas, and when that happened the land route would have been less attractive (though shipping through Egypt via portage to the Red Sea would have remained cost-effective if it had not been taken over by the Ottomans).

However, I do believe that the western powers would not have made these discoveries when they did if the same level of profit had been maintained through Constantinople via Italy. Italian money and trade skills became very much focused on finding a way around the Ottoman obstacles after 1453. It was their initiative that resulted in the first voyages of exploration that awakened the rest of Europe. The Spanish money that funded Columbus would have been irrelevant if the Genoese weren't trying to find another route to Asia.

I agree that eventually the western powers would have accomplished this on their own, but not on the same time frame. Before the discoveries of the first explorers, there was very little interest in funding those journeys because the route was thought to be too long and too difficult... it just wasn't worth it for the less prosperous western powers to invest in it. Even after the fall of Constantinople it took 50 years before the new economic situation was sufficiently bad to warrant the first attempts. If the Constantinople route had remained prosperous, the cost-benefit analysis would have been such that it would have taken much longer for it to be a worthwhile investment to take the risk of funding explorations for new sea routes.

I had been going to say that the one sticking point in this for me is Portugal, which had the greatest and earliest drive to find an alternate route to the Indies. I thought (until a minute ago) that the Portugese had aspirations of usurping the Italian east/west mediterranean trading hegemony -irrespective of rising commodity costs.

What I'd say now (having checked up on Henry the Navigator) is that Portugal was primarily interested in bypassing Saharan overland trade -to the eventual detriment of Moroccan trade. I guess, as Fragony says, that Portugese aspirations expanded eastwards later, closer to a date which is harder to disaggregate from Ottoman tarif increases.

So in essence I agree with Signore TinCow

How much long? I have no idea. Any number I pick will be arbitrary... but just imagine how much different the world would be if the Americas had been colonized only 50 years later. Just think of US history. How different would this country be today if the American Revolution hadn't occurred until 1826? By that time, the slave trade had been completely abolished in the British Empire. If the US had not had slavery at the time of its independence, would the Civil War have still occurred? Just thinking about all the ramifications of a delay in colonization makes my head spin.

:) For one, there may never have been a war of independance in the US! You could still have Queeny's head on your money...

[seireikhaan]

Well, in this sense, I do agree with you, TinCow, in that any considerable delay would have thrown history at least a touch off kilter. However, at that point, the question of "what if Constantinople had never fallen" becomes somewhat of an absurd question. Changing any part of history is bound to have some ramifications. I think we're all fairly familiar with the ideas regarding the changing of history, but I'll just summarize the point: If Europe discovers the America's 50 years later, that means all sorts of bizarre shinanigans that are pretty much impossible to predict. Least of which the impact the Protestant Revolution would have had on colonization(indeed, assuming it even happens when it does ) We can look at all the bad things that have happened and say "hey, that might not have happened!" However, we must also look at the good things and come to the same conclusion, while also acknowledging the general can of worms that is opened up. Much of history is a continuation of one tragedy to another, and its impossible to say what new, terrible things also could have occurred.

I'm not going to stand here and say that there was no impact from the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. My general view is the impact is usually overestimated. From my perspective, the simple, unbalanced economics of the flow of goods from east to west was going to break things loose sooner rather than later. The Atlantic states had little to lose, and technology was rapidly giving them the capability of accomplishing a direct link. And, one last thing, I guess. Columbus' initial voyage included rather few ships. I've never found a reliable source on the actual amount of capital invested in the initial journey, but, judging by the fact that his second voyage from Europe consisted of over five times the number of ships as the first, the amount of capital required for the initial thrust of the journey was not stupendous. Thus, any initial thrust to find the new world was not, I believe, as difficult or expensive(at least, for a large kingdom such as Portugal, Spain, France, etc...) as people tend to make it out to be.

Of course, as you pointed out, its basically conjecture to try an say when it would have happened. Basically, it comes down to my conjecture being less deviant from history than yours.

[Subotan]

This is as silly as question as asking "What would have happened if Berlin had not fallen to the Russians in 1945?". However, the theme is quite interesting, and the roots go back much further than 1453.
Had Manziker, Myriocephalum and 1204 not happened, then maybe we would have had a longer lasting Byzantine Empire.

let me clear up what i think Vladimir is saying:

the Byzantines, like the original Romans before them, screwed themselves with all the murderous politics, constant rebellions, over-reaching their boundaries, etc. So in a way, you could say that they caused their own downfall with internal turmoil, and the Turks were simply that little extra tip in the wrong direction needed to destroy it.

Not nessecarily. It weakened their ability to resist, but it wasn't the cause. Politics had been happening for centuries before the Turks, and the Avars, Pechengs, Magyars, Bulgars, Arabs, Rus etc. had all failed to defeat "Romania".

I agree, in a sense. the 4th Crusade was indeed like punching a geriatric in the head, the death wasn't immediate, but it pretty much sealed Byzantium's fate two and half centuries down the road.
.

This.

One of the most important developments, had Byzantium somehow survivied a few more years, is that the Battle of the Mohacs would probably not have happened, leading to an independent Hungary/Bohemia in Europe....

[ShadesWolf]

An intersting concept?

What might the results have been. Possibly a city state like Venice etc.,

Could a crumbled state have lasted? the intersting point is that constantinople was the seat of the Greek church, so might it have ended up like the vatican?

What effects would this have had on the spread of Islam and on Greece as a whole?

[Ibrahim]

An intersting concept?

What might the results have been. Possibly a city state like Venice etc.,

Could a crumbled state have lasted? the intersting point is that constantinople was the seat of the Greek church, so might it have ended up like the vatican?

What effects would this have had on the spread of Islam and on Greece as a whole?

well, I can answer the last question:

1-wouldn't have made that much of a difference. the Ottomans already had a considerable part of the Balkans in their hands by 1450, and in fact the capital at the time iirc was in Edirne (Adrianopolis).

what the fall of Constantinople did more than anything was add great prestiege to the Ottoman rulers.

[Fragony]

Possibly a city state like Venice etc.,

It kinda was at that point, the Byzantines had become more culturally inward and didn't really bother where borders overstretched anymore, been taken apart piecemeal.