GEOSTRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS
West European states were surrounded by states with relatively well equipped armies. This made territorial expansion at the expense of neighbors problematic and costly in men and materiel.
Advocates of expansion were therefore inclined to look outside the region. Arab and Chinese armies found it easier to extend their political boundaries or conquer and administer neighboring areas because large portions of their borderlands were lightly populated and culturally and politically fragmented. The expansionist impulses of Arab and Chinese rulers could be satisfied close to home without recourse to the sea.The centuries-long struggle of Iberian Christians to wrest control of the peninsula from Muslims concluded successfully in 1492 with victory over the kingdom of Granada. After that point all of western Europe was ruled by Christians, and it experienced no invasion threat from outside forces. The cultural as well as military foundations of their civilization having been secured at home, the region’s rulers were more favorably disposed to sponsor activities far afield. The clearest illustration of this point is the decision by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to support Columbus’s westward voyage to the Indies almost immediately following their armies’ victory over Granada. The intimate connection between these two world- historical events is noted in the opening paragraph of Columbus’s log:
Most Christian, exalted, excellent, and powerful princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the islands of the sea, our Sovereigns: It was in the year of 1492 that Your Highnesses concluded the war with the Moors who reigned in Europe. On the second day of January, in the great city of Granada, I saw the royal banners of your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, which is the fortress of the city. And I saw the Moorish king come to the city gates and kiss the royal hands of your Highnesses, and those of the Prince, my Lord.
Afterward, in the same month, based on information that I had given your Highnesses about the land of India and about a Prince who is called the Great Khan, which in our language means “King of Kings,” Your Highnesses decided to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the regions of India, to see the Princes there and the peoples and the lands, and to learn of their disposition, and of everything, and the measures which could be taken for their conversion to our Holy Faith.19In contrast, from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries the Arabs and Chinese periodically experienced the threat—and at times the reality—of invasion. Mongol armies captured Baghdad, seat of the Abbasid caliphate, and took over China. Ottoman Turks subdued Egypt and occupied the Fertile Crescent. The potential of borderlands to pose strategic dangers as well as opportunities partly accounts for Arab and Chinese rulers’ disinclination to use their ships for expeditions of conquest. The risk of diverting scarce resources to distant places when the home base was not secure outweighed gains anticipated from overseas ventures.