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Essay / The Ottoman Victory at Constantinople and Its Role in History
In my opinion, the Ottoman Victory at Constantinople was the most important event that changed the history of mankind. The Ottoman Empire lasted more than 600 years, longer than the Mughal and Ming empires combined. If the peasant revolution that ushered in the Ming dynasty was unique, the Ottoman Empire was also founded by a tribal leader born into a world of chaos and perpetual war. The fall of Constantinople was significant for several reasons. It was a psychological blow for the Europeans. They realized that even their most fortified walls could be breached. This was the final blow to the Byzantine Empire and had repercussions throughout Eurasia. The city of Constantinople had a deep hold on the minds of the Islamic people. Army after army failed to conquer it. On May 29, 1453, when the city finally fell, a crescent moon remained suspended in the sky. Constantinople under the Turks adopted the Crescent as its symbol. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay More than half a millennium later, Islamic nations around the world commemorate the victory with crescent moons on their flags . Before the fall of Constantinople, the city's economic conditions were terrible. Its population has been reduced to 40,000, compared to around half a million in the previous century. After the city was captured by the Ottomans, the city's economy recovered. Sultan Mehmet II established the Grand Bazaar near his palace and provided tax breaks to people wishing to settle in his city. The Grand Bazaar is often considered one of the world's premier shopping centers. However, the capture had a negative impact on trade in the European region. This led to the closure of the Silk Road, which was one of the strategic routes to the east, and triggered the beginning of the era of exploration and discovery of the new world. Europeans could no longer trade via the Black Sea because the Ottomans had established a monopoly in that region. The Ottoman conquest affected Italian trade and reduced the number of trading bases in this region, although this proved positive for the Italian state of Geneva which invested in Spanish and Portuguese expeditions, instead of ancient Byzantine Empire. Spanish colonization was financed by Genoese semi-governmental bankers, to whom the Spanish monarchs were heavily in debt. The colonization of the new world brought them great profits. The fall of Constantinople was economically beneficial for the Ottomans but not so much for the Byzantine Empire's former trading partners. The rise of the Ottoman Empire also sparked animosity between Greeks and Turks. The Greeks had dominated both sides of the Aegean Sea for thousands of years. When the Ottomans invaded the Byzantine Empire, the Greeks and their city, once the largest in Europe, found themselves under Turkish rule. The Turks transmitted an unfree and repressive belief system to all their subjects, including the Greeks. Christianity was now an inferior religion. Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral in the world at the time, was transformed into a mosque. Many Greek scholars fearing death or forced conversion to Islam fled across the Adriatic Sea. They recovered Greek manuscripts thousands of years old. These manuscripts were translated into Latin and helped fuel the Renaissance. The Ottomans received a new base for their future conquests. A few years later, in 1529, they knocked on the doors of Vienna. They..