For most people interested in history, the Battle of
Lepanto, October 7, 1571, is an interesting footnote. They’ve seen allusions to it, and may be
vaguely aware of the various paintings, musical compositions, and literary
works dealing with the battle, but the issues involved and even the people
(except for the romantic Don Juan of Austria . . . often confused with the
fictional womanizing Tirso de Molina character) don’t really excite or interest
them.
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| Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra |
For the people of the late sixteenth century, however, it
was the key event in history. It broke the back of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Ottoman Empire began its
long decline until dissolving in the chaos of World War I with the Arab Revolt. As Miguel de Cervantes said of his
participation in the battle when someone mocked him as a cripple,
“He charges me with being old and one-handed, as if it had
been in my power to keep time from passing over me, or as if the loss of my
hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the greatest occasion
the past or present has ever seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds
have no beauty in the eye of the beholder, they are, at least, honorable in the
estimation of those who know where they were received; for the soldier shows to
greater advantage dead in battle than alive in flight.”
This all sounds like pretty old stuff, but it has relevance
today. ISIS and the Ottomans bear a
close resemblance to one another.
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| Sultan Selim the Drunk |
No, ISIS doesn’t represent orthodox Islam any more than the
Ottoman version of Islam did. For
example, the immediate cause of the Battle of Lepanto was Sultan Selim the
Drunk’s desire to capture Cyprus so that he could have a monopoly on the supply
of his favorite wine.
Orthodox Muslims rejected as a little self-interested the rather
specious fatwas issued by the Imams at the behest of Selim declaring Islamic
ownership of Cyprus. They also rejected
the Ottoman claim to be the carriers of true Islam. That is one reason why it was so easy for
Napoleon to manipulate the Ottomans in his fight against the British, and for
the British to use Arab nationalism to defeat the Ottomans who were allied with
the Germans and Austrians a century later.
Selim’s escapade in Cyprus was, however, only one incident
in a long series of events leading up to Lepanto. The sieges of Nicosia and Famagusta were so
vicious and brutal (the defenders were promised immunity when they surrendered,
but were instead tortured to death after degrading and disgusting humiliations
were heaped on them) that they swung Venice, uneasy trading partners of the
Ottomans, toward an alliance with the other European powers. It even united Catholics, Protestants, Jews,
and non-Ottoman Muslims in a crusade against the Turks.
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| The Siege of Szigetvár |
The Ottoman conquest of Cyprus was the trigger of Lepanto,
not the cause. The 1565 Siege of Malta
and the 1566 Siege of Szigetvár (“the Hungarian Alamo”) were a continuation of
Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent’s lifelong efforts to extend Ottoman hegemony
into Europe after his failure to take Vienna, the Hapsburg capital considered
the heart of Europe, in 1529. Defenders
at Malta and Szigetvár included both Jews and Muslims resisting the Ottoman
version of Islam.
At the heart of Ottoman expansionism was the fixed belief
that the empire could only survive if it continued to grow, and “growth” was
defined as conquest for land, slaves, and gold.
The rapid growth of the Ottoman Empire as the principal Islamic power
stopped virtually all technological advance and original thought in the
countries they controlled and influenced — which meant pretty much all of Islam
until 1918. To most people, Christian,
Jew, or Muslim, the Ottoman Empire was
Islam.
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| The Battle of Lepanto |
Unfortunately, the idea that economic growth could be
achieved by other means, such as the trade and technological advancement that
had often characterized Islam before the rise of the Ottomans, was alien to the
Ottomans. It was conquest or nothing.
Thus, at a time when Europe was beginning to develop the
advanced financial and banking systems that financed growth and innovation, the
Islamic world under the sway of the Ottomans began rapidly regressing. Where the problem in Christian and Jewish Europe
was that relatively few people were able to participate in economic growth, the
problem in the Islamic world was that — compared to the explosive growth in
Europe — the economic tide was receding instead of advancing. A tide can lower as well as raise all boats.
Paradoxically, the solution in both cases is the same:
expanded capital ownership financed with future increases in production instead
of past reductions in consumption. This
is found in the Just Third Way, particularly the Capital Homesteading
proposal.
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