If the Europeans had a surefire way to trade directly with Indians, rather than through Middle Eastern middlemen, did trade decrease significantly in the region?
The discovery of new trade routes to Asia did not destroy Middle Eastern trade, but it resulted in a shift of the centers of trade from the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea which had a negative impact on Middle Eastern trade and societies.
According to the book A History of Islamic Societies by Ira Lapidus, by the 18th century, the European commercial dominance which owed so much to the discovery of new routes to Asia “subverted Muslim societies by depriving Muslim regimes of revenues from taxes and trade. The political consequence was to weaken the central governments, which depended on commercial revenues, and to promote factional strife and the exploitation of the peasantries” (page 275).