Eli5 Why didn’t the Ottoman Empire expand more into Africa?
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Probably due to geography. Even Europe didn’t colonize the sub-Saharan regions until the 19th century, despite the fact that it’s closer and should be easier to get to than Asia or the Americas. Yet despite being the crucible of our species, Africa really isn’t conducive to civilization. Basically it’s like playing Civ on the hardest difficulty. Everything there is working against you. The soil isn’t the best, so large scale agriculture is difficult. Tropical diseases are a major problem even now, let alone prior to modern medicine. There are few navigable rivers, and most of the ones that are navigable, aren’t year round. Which makes it hard to get goods and people into and out of the continent. So even if you found valuable resources you could extract there, actually digging them up and shipping them back was a herculean task. This is why there was comparatively few advanced states on the continent prior to the industrial era. It’s also probably why so many early Homo species took the huge risk to migrate out of the region and into Europe and Asia.
Islamic civilization did make a few half-hearted incursions south of the Sahara. But for the Ottomans, the Balkans were just a more attractive option, even up against organized Christian militaries. That region is very resource rich and far easier to develop. On top of that, the Ottomans wouldn’t have exactly had free reign to cross the Mediterranean and explore the west coast. So they were limited to the east, which is less attractive.
Industrialization would mitigate some of Africa’s problems. Chemical fertilizers improved soil, railroads made transport easier, medicine made terminal tropical diseases somewhat less terminal. But by the time Europe had its “Scramble for Africa”, the Ottoman Empire was well into its decline. They peaked in the 17th century and had been gradually loosing territory since. By WWI, they had lost all their African and European holdings. So they weren’t really in the position to be staking claims. Even for the Europeans, Africa was an expensive endeavor, despite having the technology to cope with it. A lot of those same problems are still with us in the post-colonial era. Just look at the untold billions spent on developmental aid versus ROI. It’s only really resulted in a couple advanced states. Namely Nigeria and Kenya.
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