This book compels us to count the Ottoman Empire as a player, rather than a spectator, in the so-called European Age of Expansion. Historiography on the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century has usually emphasized its importance as a land power, but Ciancarlo Casale reminds us that the Ottomans were also actively interested in the commercial opportunities afforded by maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. He traces the fortunes of an “Indian Ocean faction” in the worlds of Ottoman commerce and courtly politics, a group that appreciated from early on the opportunities afforded by an aggressive foreign and military policy oriented toward competition with the Portuguese for control of the spice trade, and that enjoyed considerable success in realizing its objectives over the course of the century.

Unfortunately, rhetorical excesses mar the argument and obscure the book's real contribution. Among these is the title. It is clear from Casale's narrative that the Ottomans did not really “explore.” Like the Portuguese, they had their own “Age of Reconnaissance” that expanded the horizons of their world, but their crucial initiatives were not voyages of exploration into uncharted waters; as Casale himself notes, they were military conquests in the Near and Middle East. The conquest of Egypt in 1516 and of Yemen some twenty years later gave them control of commerce in the Read Sea and of ports on the Indian Ocean itself. It also brought them control of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina, and earned them the prestige that came with being guardians of Islam's holy cities. The Indian Ocean faction saw the openings created by these accomplishments, and urged their superiors to push onward into the rich commercial world of the Indian Ocean. Eventually, the Ottomans became serious challengers to Portugal's monopoly of the spice trade. The story of how this happened is certainly one of “expansion,” but not of “exploration.” And while the process involved considerable extensions in the political, economic, and intellectual horizons of the Ottoman world, it was by no means “global,” as Casale repeatedly suggests.

Despite these excesses, Casale's book is of great interest to all those interested in the process by which convergence took over from divergence as the dominant pattern in global history during the period from 1400 to 1800 (to borrow language from Felipe Fernández-Armesto). For readers like this reviewer, who are accustomed to thinking of this process as one of European expansion into the non-European world, this book provides an important corrective. Figures characterized by the Portuguese as “pirates” become in Casale's narrative visionary maritime commanders with considerable strategic vision. Military engagements that might have looked like mere reactions to Portuguese hegemony become power plays in a military and commercial strategy with its own shape and objectives. By charting the aspirations and accomplishments of the Indian Ocean faction, Casale converts the Ottoman Empire into an agent in what we once called the “European Age of Expansion,” and reminds us that Western Europeans were not the only ones in the business of creating the new convergences of the early modern age.