Question: How many times did plague occur in the birthplace of the person who used the spice route that the Ottoman Empire controlled?

cornelis de houtman (2 april 1565 – 1 september 1599), brother of frederick de houtman, was a dutch explorer who discovered a new sea route from europe to indonesia and who thus begun the dutch spice trade. at the time, the portuguese empire held a monopoly on the spice trade, and the voyage was a symbolic victory for the dutch, even though the voyage itself was a disaster. houtman was also a spy, having worked against the portuguese by bringing back to the netherlands privileged nautical information obtained during his stay in portugal. <SEP> In 1466, perhaps 40,000 people died of the plague in Paris. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was present in Paris around 30 per cent of the time. The Black Death ravaged Europe for three years before it continued on into Russia, where the disease was present somewhere in the country 25 times between 1350 to 1490. Plague epidemics ravaged London in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665, reducing its population by 10 to 30% during those years. Over 10% of Amsterdam's population died in 1623–25, and again in 1635–36, 1655, and 1664. The plague of 1576–77 killed 50,000 in Venice, almost a third of the population. Late outbreaks in central Europe included the Italian Plague of 1629–1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty Years' War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. Over 60% of Norway's population died in 1348–50. The last plague outbreak ravaged Oslo in 1654. Plague occurred in Venice 22 times between 1361 and 1528. <SEP> The movie documents the first quest "to visit and document every region Marco Polo claimed to have traveled" using only land and sea methods of transportation. Mike Hale of "The New York Times" writes that the documentary includes how Belliveau and O'Donnell "encountered Mongol horsemen and hostile Chinese security officers and survived a firefight between Afghan factions. In the spirit of Polo's journey -- and to prove a point regarding the authenticity of his account -- they disdained airplanes, traveling by foot, on horses and camels and by jeep, boat and train." A text by the same name as the video, "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo", written by Belliveau and O'Donnell, and published by Rowman & Littlefield, serves as a companion to the documentary film. "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo" has been used by Belliveau to create a unique interdisciplinary educational curriculum that he presents at schools and libraries across the United States and internationally. In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is a 2008 PBS documentary film detailing Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's 1993 retracing of Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China. <SEP> for over 200 years, russia had been expanding southwards across the sparsely populated "wild fields" toward the warm water ports of the black sea that did not freeze over like the handful of other ports available in the north. the goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. :11 pursuit of this goal brought the emerging russian state into conflict with the ukrainian cossacks and then with the tatars of the crimean khanate and circassians. when russia conquered these groups and gained possession of southern ukraine, known as new russia during russian imperial times, the ottoman empire lost its buffer zone against russian expansion, and russia and the ottoman empire fell into direct conflict. the conflict with the ottoman empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as russia saw itself as the protector of orthodox christians, many of whom lived under ottoman control and were treated as second-class citizens. (ch 1) <SEP> The Empire controlled the spice route that Marco Polo once used. The economic structure of the Empire was defined by its geopolitical structure. The Ottoman Empire stood between the West and the East, thus blocking the land route eastward and forcing Spanish and Portuguese navigators to set sail in search of a new route to the Orient. When Vasco da Gama bypassed Ottoman controlled routes and established direct trade links with India in 1498, and Christopher Columbus first journeyed to the Bahamas in 1492, the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith.