 |
| The Hindu Phenomenon |
|
RETREAT AND RAGE |
|
|
|
|
| It
follows not only that, to be fully effective, the challenge to
Muslim dominance in that vast area had, in the final analysis, to be
maritime but also that the ummah and Muslim civilization would find
it difficult to survive in a meaningful sense the loss of control of
the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The Ottoman empire doubtless
provided a second powerful underpinning. But its fate too was linked
in no small way to the correlation of forces on the high seas.
Mediterranean Europe began to stir in
the eleventh century. The crusades, beginning towards the end of the
century, were an expression of that upsurge though they took a
religious form. But the crusaders were first absorbed in the Muslim
population and civilization and then beaten back. So, it was not
before the end of the fifteenth century when Vasco da Gama
discovered a new route to India via the Cape of Good Hope (our of
Muslim control) and landed in India (in 1498), that a serious
challenge to Muslim power can be said to have arisen. Though this
challenge took around three centuries to mature and get
consolidated, the impact on the fortunes of the Turkish empire was
evident by the late sixteenth century, when the Dutch and the
British were able to completely close the old international trade
routes through the Middle East. As a result, the prosperity of the
Arab provinces declined. The import of vast quantity of precious
metals from the Americas following Spanish conquest and loot of that
continent and the conversion of this gold and silver into currency
also played havoc with the Turkish economy. Globalization of the
world economy is, after all not a twentieth century phenomenon! |
|
|
|
