Imperial Ottoman

Economy · Article

The Spice Trade Under the Ottomans

The Ottoman role in the Indian Ocean spice trade after Selim I conquered Mamluk Egypt in 1517, and the empire's control of the Red Sea routes.

The conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1517 by the Ottoman sultan Selim I reshaped the trade in spices and luxuries between Asia and the Mediterranean. For the first time, the Ottoman state controlled both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the two main maritime outlets of the Indian Ocean, and it inherited a position that the Mamluks had held for nearly two centuries. The conquest also brought the holy cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman rule, and the Ottoman sultans were now the protectors of the Hajj as well as the masters of the spice road. The story of the Ottoman economy and trade cannot be told without the spices.

The world of the spice trade in 1517

In 1517 the spice trade was already in flux. The Portuguese, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama, had reached the western coast of India in 1498, and within two decades they had seized a string of forts in the Indian Ocean: Hormuz, Goa, Malacca, and, most importantly, the Moluccas, the source of cloves and mace. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt, who had previously controlled the Red Sea trade in pepper, cinnamon, and other spices, were being cut out of the long-distance trade by the new Portuguese route.

The Ottoman conquest of Egypt was not primarily about spices. Selim I invaded the Mamluk state to eliminate a Shia-adjacent Muslim power, to seize the resources of the richest province in the Islamic world, and to assume the title of caliph, which he took from the last shadow Abbasid caliph in Cairo. But the conquest gave the Ottomans control of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Egyptian trade infrastructure, and it forced them to deal with the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.

Ottoman policy in the Indian Ocean

Selim I and his son Suleiman the Magnificent both understood that the Portuguese threat to the Red Sea had to be met. The Ottomans organized a fleet at Suez, drawing on the resources of Egypt and using shipbuilders and gunners recruited from the Aegean. In 1538 Suleiman sent a fleet under Hadim Suleiman Pasha, the governor of Egypt, into the Indian Ocean. The fleet recaptured Aden, raided the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, and briefly occupied Muscat, but it failed to take Hormuz and the campaign was not repeated on the same scale.

A more permanent Ottoman response was the support given to local Muslim rulers in the Indian Ocean. The Ottoman sultans sent letters, flags, and gunners to the sultan of Aceh in Sumatra, the rulers of Gujarat, and the rulers of the Swahili coast, all of whom were threatened by the Portuguese. The Ottomans could not, however, replace the Mamluks as the principal suppliers of spices to the Mediterranean, because the Portuguese had effectively closed the Red Sea route to the larger volume of trade. After the 1530s, the bulk of the pepper, cloves, and nutmeg reaching Europe came by sea around the Cape, in Portuguese, then Dutch and English ships.

The continuation of the Red Sea trade

The Red Sea trade did not disappear. The Ottomans retained a fleet at Suez, and a small but profitable traffic in spices, drugs, and textiles continued to flow from India to Suez and from Suez to Cairo and Alexandria. The Yemen, which the Ottomans had conquered in the 1530s, produced coffee and exported it through the port of Mocha, a trade that the Ottomans organized through the local administration and that produced substantial revenue. The small but lucrative trade in Indian pepper, cardamom, and indigo, conducted in Muslim and Indian ships, was supplemented by the legal import of Portuguese spices re-exported from Lisbon.

The result was a strange two-tiered market for spices in the Mediterranean. The mass market, in pepper, was supplied by the Portuguese and, increasingly, by the Dutch and English East India Companies, and it was sold in Europe at falling prices. The luxury market, in cardamom, cinnamon, fine pepper, and certain drugs, was supplied through the Red Sea and Alexandria, and it was sold at premium prices to customers who preferred the traditional sources. The Ottoman state earned a substantial revenue from this trade through customs duties in the capitulations framework and through monopolies on certain goods.

The Hajj, the Holy Cities, and the spice trade

The Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Holy Cities gave the sultans a unique position in the Islamic world. The annual Hajj from Cairo and Damascus brought tens of thousands of pilgrims into the Hejaz, and the trade that accompanied the pilgrimage was a substantial item in the budget of the empire. The spice trade, which supplied Mecca and Medina with pepper, cinnamon, and other goods, was organized in part by the Mamluk religious and commercial establishment that the Ottomans had inherited, and the sultans continued to subsidize the holy cities with annual gifts of grain, textiles, and cash.

The spice trade, in other words, was not only an economic matter. It was a religious and political obligation of the Ottoman sultans, and the protection of the Red Sea and the Holy Cities was a defining responsibility of the caliph. The combination of commercial revenue, religious obligation, and strategic interest explains why the Ottomans, who were primarily a Mediterranean and Balkan power, maintained an Indian Ocean fleet for nearly a century.

The decline of the Ottoman position

The Ottoman position in the Indian Ocean declined steadily from the seventeenth century. The Portuguese were gradually replaced by the Dutch and English East India Companies, whose superior naval power and disciplined administration made the Red Sea trade increasingly difficult. The Yemen, the most exposed Ottoman possession in the region, was in intermittent revolt through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Ottomans lost effective control in the late seventeenth century. The first coffeehouses of Istanbul, opened in the 1550s, depended on a trade that the empire could no longer fully protect, and the Ottoman coffee trade became an important economic sector in its own right.

By the eighteenth century the Ottomans had effectively withdrawn from the Indian Ocean. The Red Sea continued to carry a small but profitable traffic, the Hajj continued to be organized, and the holy cities remained under Ottoman sovereignty, but the great maritime trade of the Indian Ocean was in the hands of European companies and the rise of British power in India and the Persian Gulf. The integration of the Ottoman economy into a European-dominated world system, marked by the capitulations, was a process that began in the early sixteenth century and was completed in the nineteenth.

Conclusion

The Ottoman role in the spice trade after 1517 was modest but significant. The empire could not displace the Portuguese, Dutch, and English from the principal sources of spices in the Indian Ocean, but it retained a profitable share of the trade through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and it organized the annual Hajj that brought pilgrims to Mecca and Medina. The history of the spice trade is an important part of the broader history of the Ottoman overland and maritime trade routes, and it shows how an essentially continental power adapted to a maritime revolution it could not control.