As mentioned in the previous issue, the Spanish capture of Granada in 1492 marked the victory of the Spanish reconquest and the complete withdrawal of Islamic forces from the Iberian Peninsula. It was also in this year that Europe began its colonial expansion around the world.
1. Colonial expansion in Europe.
1. Spain.
The rise of the Spanish Empire began in 1492, when an Italian navigator named Christopher Columbus, financed by the Spanish crown, sailed west with three ships in an attempt to find a new route to Asia. What he didn't expect was that he would discover a whole new continent - the Americas.
Over the next few hundred years, the Spaniards continued to expand their colonies, conquering most of North and South America, as well as Africa, Asia, and Oceania. They built a large and complex colonial system, transporting resources and goods from all over the country to Europe and other colonies.
2. Portugal.
In 1415, Portuguese soldiers captured the North African port city of Ceuta, and in 1418 defeated the Moors who attempted to recapture Ceuta.
From a scientific and religious point of view, ocean voyages are undoubtedly profitable. Under the leadership of Alfonso V (1443-1481), Portuguese maritime explorations reached as far as the Gulf of Guinea.
In 1458 and 1471, it occupied part of Morocco and Tangier from the Moors, respectively.
In 1488 Dias was sent around the Cape of Good Hope.
The Battle of Diu in 1509 defeated the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey as well as the Republic of Venice and became the hegemon of the Indian Ocean.
On June 7, 1494, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which established the "Papal Meridian" 2,200 nautical miles west of the Cape Verde Islands as the boundary, with Portugal in the east and Spain in the west.
In this way, Portugal and Spain were divided among the globes in the presence of the Pope.
3. English and French.
During the era of colonialism, many Arab countries were ceded from the Ottoman Empire and transformed into colonies by European powers. The Western powers not only expanded their influence on the Arab countries, but also transformed them into their agricultural and raw material dependencies to the greatest extent possible, and dominated the economic lifelines of the Arab countries through the export of capital.
In the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, Britain and France decisively helped the Ottoman Empire deal with Tsarist Russia, which led to the defeat of the Russian army and heavy losses.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain and France were already aware of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1830, France occupied Algeria in North Africa.
In 1881, France occupied Tunisia in North Africa.
The British directly occupied Egypt, which owned the Suez Canal, in 1882.
Italy gleefully occupied Libya in 1911.
Britain began to control Bahrain in the first half of the 18th century, and in 1933 seized the right to exploit Bahrain's oil. And by taking control of Oman, and by extension, the Strait of Hormuz, until the sixties of the twentieth century completely withdrew troops from Bahrain and Oman.
As a result, the Ottoman Empire's sphere of influence in North Africa basically fell into the hands of Britain, France and Italy.
For the Arab region, Britain and France took control of the region by nurturing the great Arab uprising that encouraged the ** people to rebel against the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which will be discussed next time.
5. Arabs.
1. Ottoman rule.
The Arabs have not been able to build a huge empire since they rose to power in the 7th and 13th centuries. When the Ottoman Empire conquered this place, it also reached a certain autonomy agreement with the nobles of Mecca and Medina, and successfully took over this place. From the 15th century onwards, the Arabs were fully under the jurisdiction of the Turks, and their territory was naturally included in the territory of the Ottoman Empire.
For more than 500 years, the Arabs were only responsible for chanting scriptures and selling camels, and they had no strength to compete with the Ottoman Empire.
Britain and France continued to force Egypt to accept its servile, exploitative loans, bringing Egypt to the point of bankruptcy, establishing financial and then political supervision over Egypt. In the final analysis, this policy finally transformed Egypt into a colony.
Morocco suffered the same fate in the twentieth century. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine were all under the control of the "Ottoman Treasury Authority," which dominated the entire Ottoman economy. Foreign banks have opened a large number of branches in the Arab countries. Foreign capital is invested in railways, navigation, plantations, mining and extractive sites, and enterprises for the initial processing of raw materials. On the eve of World War I, British, American, and German monopolies competed with each other for concessions to exploit Iraqi oil. At the same time, the political dependence of the Arab states on foreign finance capital has been strengthened, and their colonialist partition has been completed.
In some countries, such as Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, the imperialists have preserved a little of the appearance of the native**, the ** colonialist regimes that are completely subservient to foreign countries and are obedient to their policies; In other countries, such as Algeria, Sudan and Libya, foreign colonial regimes have exercised direct rule. In this way, the economic oppression of foreign finance capital in the Arab countries is combined with political oppression.
2. The Arab revolt.
In the later years of the Ottoman Empire, various Arab families successively fell to Britain and France. Among the many Arab families, the powerful ones are mainly the Hashemite family, the Saud family, and the Rashid family. These families are gearing up for a unified Arab region.
3. The Levant region.
Damascus, a city steeped in history, is known as "Paradise on Earth". However, the region has never established an independent state of its own, but has been under the rule of other countries for a long time.
Whether it was the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Empire, or the Seljuk Empire, the rise of any empire in history would have put a foot in the region. This is not a paradise, but a place of four wars, endured endless wars. The region in which Syria is located was known in ancient times as the "Levant", which means the place of the rising sun. This place is an important passage connecting the continents of Eurasia, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and is known as the "crossroads of the world".
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, cargo from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean had to be unloaded and transshipped here. It can be said that this region is the most central location in the entire world market.
4. The Kingdom of Najd.
In the 16th century, the Hejaz region in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula was occupied by Turkey and became a province of the Ottoman Empire.
Around 1446, the ancestors of the House of Saud left Kardiff in the eastern part of the peninsula and settled near the Wadi-Mulgar valley in the Najd region, where they named the place Deriyah.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the House of Saud became one of the three most powerful families in Najd.
In the first half of the 18th century, a new sect of Islam, Wahhabis, emerged in the Najd region. The Wahhabis faction, as the idea of achieving political unity, was fully accepted by the Saudi family, and later played a decisive role in the establishment of a centralized state by the Saudi family.
*。In 1750, the Bedouin sheikh Muhammad ibn Saud established the emirate in Deriyah. After that, the head of the House of Saud conquered Najd, captured Riyadh, and attacked Kuwait, Karbala, annexed Al Ahsa, conquered Mecca and Medina, and seized the entire Hejaz from the Turks.
The first Wahhabi dynasty ruled by the House of Saud was established in 1811. Seven years later, Egyptian (then provincial) troops sent by the Turkish Sultan razed El Yiyah, the capital of the Saudi Emirate. The Saud family was forced to flee to coastal towns in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf.
In 1824, Turki, the grandson of Muhammad ibn Saud, seized Riyadh and established the second Saudi Emirate.
In 1834, Turki's eldest son, Faisal, succeeded to the throne, but was captured in a battle with the Turks and exiled to Egypt.
Faisal fled from Egypt in 1843 and regrouped, regaining control of the central peninsula in 1845.
After Faisal's death in 1865, civil war continued as his sons fought for power.
Muhammad bin Rashid, the Sheikh of the Shamal tribe in the northern region, took the opportunity to invade and occupied Riyadh in 1891. The second Saudi emirate was destroyed.
Faisal's youngest son, Abd al-Rahman, fled to Kuwait with the remnants of the Saud family.
In 1924, Abdul Aziz Saud, ruler of the Najd Kingdom, united Najd and Hejaz.
At the end of this issue, the next issue will talk about the great Arab uprising.
My gzh: Herodotus, a 40-year-old real estate man, is not panicked at all, like a tree at the door, the flowers are in full bloom, and the branches are luxuriant. With the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a special topic on the Middle East has been opened, and this is the twenty-ninth article. Let's use common sense to fend off the prejudices of the times.