What if Constantinople had never fallen to the Turks?

[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.