As Marshall Hodgson suggests, the Islamic world appears to have reached a high-water mark in its global influence in the early sixteenth century (Hodgson, 1993). Indeed both Western Europe and the Islamic world at that time were rebounding from periods of serious distress in the fourteenth century: Islamic territory had been rolled back from the west by Europeans, and from the east by Mongols; and Europe had suffered through plague, famine, financial catastrophe, and political disunion (Lewis, 833, 838). It appears that by the early sixteenth century both Europe and the Islamic world had recovered significantly and were poised to take universal dominance. Yet Europe, by the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had achieved global preeminence, while the Islamic world (and especially the Ottoman Empire) were in serious decline (Burke, 45).
As Archibald Lewis notes, by the early sixteenth century the Islamic world had not only secured its western and eastern boundaries, but it had also begun to expand (Lewis, 835). In India and North Africa, Muslims were able to defend their frontiers and make some territorial gains, but it was in the West that Islam had its greatest successes, wresting the Balkans from the Latin West, capturing the city of Constantinople (1453), and advancing west in sufficient strength to besiege the Hapsburg capital of Vienna (Inalcik and Quataert [A], 21). In addition, Islam was represented in the West by the Ottoman Empire, a centralized state whose unity contrasted with the feuding political patchwork of Western Europe (Lewis 838-9).
Yet from this point on, EuropeÆs global power would increase, while that of the Islamic world receded. There are several reasons why this happened. First, European military and naval power was becoming more technologically advanced, with the sciences of artillery and navigation becoming more refined. Specifically, new ship designs enabled Western mariners to enjoy naval ...