Eli5 Why didn’t the Ottoman Empire expand more into Africa?
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Europeans, and by extension middle-eastern and Anatolian people, had lots of trouble surviving in Africa below the Sahara desert until the XIX century.
Tropical diseases and native population hostility made almost impossible for them to penetrate in Tropical africa. The Colony of the Cape was an exception because it has temperate weather. Smaller islands were also colonised because were either uninhabited or with very small “angry” natives.
This changed in the XIX century with the improvements in medicine, warfare and the ability of European powers to mantain a colony in an hostile environment (faster ships). But by then the Ottoman empire was in decline and actually lost most of its possessions in Northern Africa
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