explain the effect of The Fall of Constantinople
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Constantinople fell in 1453. Dias attempted to sail around Africa to get to India in 1488, and with his failure Columbus set sail in 1492 and accidentally “discovered” the Americas, ushering in a new historical era.
The fall of the city did not directly cause these voyages of exploration, but it is not a coincidence that the dates fall so closely. The loss of the Constantinople and Byzantium (weak though it may have been) gave the Ottomans total control over European land based trade routes east. This greatly increased difficulties and costs for European merchants, and effectively cut off much trade for eastern luxuries that European elites had come to rely upon.
Dias, Columbus and a few year later Da Gamma set out on their maritime voyages to relieve and profit from this situation. Had Constantinople not fallen, European merchant adventurers would have eventually set out anyway, but it likely it would not have been so soon. And possibly China, which had only given up its own voyages of exploration a few decades earlier, might have revived them before Europeans set out, thus reaching the Americas first. (I know some people think the Chinese did this in the 1420s and ignored it, but most historians don’t agree.)
Anyway, for this reason alone the fall of the city was extremely consequential. Other posters have noted the direct impact on European and Middle Eastern geopolitics and military matters.
The fall of the city did not directly cause these voyages of exploration, but it is not a coincidence that the dates fall so closely. The loss of the Constantinople and Byzantium (weak though it may have been) gave the Ottomans total control over European land based trade routes east. This greatly increased difficulties and costs for European merchants, and effectively cut off much trade for eastern luxuries that European elites had come to rely upon.
Dias, Columbus and a few year later Da Gamma set out on their maritime voyages to relieve and profit from this situation. Had Constantinople not fallen, European merchant adventurers would have eventually set out anyway, but it likely it would not have been so soon. And possibly China, which had only given up its own voyages of exploration a few decades earlier, might have revived them before Europeans set out, thus reaching the Americas first. (I know some people think the Chinese did this in the 1420s and ignored it, but most historians don’t agree.)
Anyway, for this reason alone the fall of the city was extremely consequential. Other posters have noted the direct impact on European and Middle Eastern geopolitics and military matters.
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