Trade and Empire, 1700-1870



expense of the Tartar Khanates and the Ottoman Empire. Russia had already expanded
eastwards as far as the Pacific by the middle of the 17th century; it now had secure
footholds on both the Baltic and Black seas.

All these European powers pursued a variety of mercantilists policies, designed to
enrich both the state and the local merchant class. These included protecting local
industries against foreign competition, protecting the local shipping industry by
preventing foreign merchants from trading with either the mother country or its colonies,
and a variety of policies designed to extract as much profit as possible from those
colonies. Empires yielded financial benefits by providing control over precious metal
supplies (in Latin America); giving access to abundant supplies of slaves (Africa);
allowing the cultivation of warm-climate crops such as tobacco and cotton, or trapping
furs in colder climates, and selling these on to consumers in Europe (the Americas and
North Asia); or allowing control over trade routes, or better yet the sources of supply of
scarce commodities such as spices (in Asia).

Such considerations were also present at the time of the Ottoman expansion into
Central and Eastern Europe, although the desire to spread Islam was another motivation,
just as spreading Christianity was a concern of the early Iberian explorers. Booty, control
over trade routes, and (in the 14th and 15th centuries) access to the silver mines of Serbia
and Macedonia were all important motives for the Turks, and indeed the prospect of
plunder can help to explain why many Christians fought on the Ottoman side.
Furthermore, the Ottomans actively intervened to prevent the Portuguese from obtaining
a monopoly of the spice trade in the Indian Ocean, fighting the interlopers both directly
along the Persian Gulf, and indirectly via their support for the sultan of Acheh, from
where pepper continued to be exported to Ottoman-held territory, and from there to
Venice. This allowed the Ottomans to continue enjoying the rents from the transit trade
until the appearance of the Dutch and English in the Indian Ocean in the 17th century.
The Ottomans were not mercantilists, in that they were not concerned with the interests
of domestic merchants or producers, and correctly understood that imports were
desirable, and that the fewer exports were needed to pay for these imports the better.
However, they were also sensitive to the mutual dependence of Power and Plenty, which
was a general feature of the Eurasian geopolitical landscape at a time when the Military



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