The Ottomans were a rising star in Anatolia when in 1354, they hired Venetian ships to ferry them across the Bosporus into Thrace in Europe. Then when Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453. He doubled or tripled the prices of Asian commodities. So his treasury was overflowing. The Portuguese saw profit to be made by bypassing the Turks & Italians. So Prince Henry the Navigator financed explorations. By 1488 they reached South Africa. By 1498 they reached India. By 1513 they reached Guangzhou China.
Limitations began to appear on the Ottoman war machine when they failed to conquer Vienna in 1529. They failed to conquer Malta in 1565. They lost the Battle of Lepanto in 1575. However the next few centuries saw the peak of Ottoman power. King Jan Sobieski's defeat of Ottoman forces at Vienna in 1683 was a mere hiccup. It was only in the 19th century that Ottoman power began to decline as industrialization became a viral phenomenon in Europe.
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