Ottoman History Podcast - Galata and the Early Modern Mediterranean World

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

with Fariba Zarinebaf hosted by Sam Dolbee and Nir Shafir | In this episode, Fariba Zarinebaf discusses the history of Galata and the early modern Mediterranean more broadly. Beginning with the incorporation of Galata's Genoese community of Istanbul under Ottoman rule in 1453, Zarinebaf explains how the treaties known as the capitulations (ahdname in Turkish) provided a durable framework for commercial exchange and pluralistic everyday life in Ottoman port cities. She also considers how these arrangements compared with commerce and life in non-Ottoman Mediterranean ports. Through a focus on French-Ottoman relations, Zarinebaf offers a glimpse of how treaties become involved in changing economic fortunes in the Mediterranean and the world. She also attends to how these economic patterns shaped the more intimate aspects of social life in Galata, closing with the impact of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt on the French community of Galata. « Click for More »

Eastern Mediterranean ports were much more open to the Europeans than Western Mediterranean ports to the Ottomans and to Muslims in the early modern period. They just wanted these spaces like Galata to be open spaces for international traders that, you know, were their allies to come and go. And they succeed in negotiating for a space that is cosmopolitan, if you can talk about an early modern Ottoman cosmopolitanism. And I think we can use that term or that terminology in a kind of comparative scale. So what's going on after the day is over?

You have traded with these folks. Do you sit at the tavern and drink with them? Do you intermarry, you know, Ottomans? Can you do that? It's the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby. Today's guest, Fariba Zarinabov, who's a professor of history at University of California, Riverside. Nir Shafir and I spoke with her about her latest book, Mediterranean Encounters, Trade and Pluralism in Early Modern Galata, published in 2018 with UC Press. Galata, Merchants, the Mediterranean, and much more with Fariba Zarinabov in a minute when our program continues. My field is Ottoman history. I'm an urban historian. I'm also a social and legal historian. I worked both on Iran and the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period. This book is the third book I have published on the history of Istanbul.

The first book was on the history of the Iranian community in Istanbul, Lezirgani and Istanbul, that I co-edited and co-authored with my colleague and friend Thierry Zarkhan. It was while I was a graduate student and living in Perak. And the second book was on the history of crime and punishment in 18th century Istanbul. So this is the third part of the series. What is the origin story of this book? You presented it just now as kind of the third part of a trilogy. But did you always have this book in your mind? Is it a book you wrote yourself into? How did this narrative come to you? I always often ask myself, you know, how did I end up becoming a historian of Istanbul,

the Ottoman imperial capital, while I started really as a historian of Iran, of Safavid Iran. And, you know, I wrote my dissertation on Tabriz and its connectivity to the Ottoman Empire, and ended up, you know, with Istanbul. Some of it has to do really my own personal and intellectual development. I was a graduate student living in Istanbul in the late 1980s and early 1990s, working on Tabriz, which was a silk hub, you know, an imperial capital itself, you know, during the early modern period. And it's, you know, trade and commerce with the Ottoman Empire. But at the time, as you know, it was post-revolutionary period. I made one or two trips to Iran.

It was pretty difficult to do any research there. It was the end of the war with Iraq and, you know, political issues. I couldn't really move around. And I finished the dissertation, you know, and then I discovered really the rich Ottoman archives. I think my own life in Istanbul really impacted me as a graduate student from an American university, as an Iranian American living there.

And I lived in Jahangir at the time. I associated, you know, I was maybe even an expat, you know, with all the cultural institutes, with the French Institute, with EFEA. Then we were doing our project and then, you know, the American Research Institute. the American Research Institute. So it was also my own life there, my exposure to this amazing place that carried so much of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, this kind of very open space before, of course, it was gentrified. And the contrast, you know, between this space and, you know, a lot of other ports that I had visited, Venice, I had made a trip there. I lived in Chicago for a long time. So as an urban historian, you know, the kind of comparative approach with Tabriz, where I grew up, was really important for me. And also, you know, the fact that this was the time when there was a great deal of, you know, nationalist, you know, revolutionary zeal going on in the Middle East, the sort of, you know, polarization, and how we

projected, you know, nationalism into the history of, you know, these empires. You know, I kind of, that was my challenge. And to be able to see how, you know, in the pre-20th century time era, before nationalism, before these spaces, you know, became closed, what was life like? And you could see traces of that, you know, in Galata at the time or in Pera, they're fast disappearing. And the narratives that were produced. So one of the challenges for me was to kind of really go beyond that, because we're all products of nationalism, of revolutions, to kind of really see whether one

can really capture that history. And for me, the early modern period is always very important. I mean, you know, the 19th century is, of course, of great deal of interest to our students. All my Turkish students want to work on the 19th century. But I think, you know, before understanding really the earlier period, we cannot really understand what's going on. The 18th century, as you know, has been for a long time the black hole of Ottoman history. When I was a grad student, nobody was interested in it. The kind of paradigm of rise and decline was a grad student, nobody was interested in it. The kind of paradigm of rise and decline was still with us, right? So it was either the 16th century or the 19th century,

the impact of the West, right? And then the nation state. So, you know, since then, of course, there are lots of good studies of the 18th century. So that gap is being closely bridged. Now people are moving to the 17th century. So I was really interested in kind of covering that period. But in this book on Galata, I actually look at the entire early modern period. So one of the questions I really tackle is in part one of the book, you know, on urban fabric and its transformation after the Ottoman conquest is how Galata became an Ottoman port. I'm sure, okay, most of our listeners know what Galata is. But where is Galata? And what was it like before the Ottoman conquest? Can you just kind of describe it for us? Give us some details to fill in the picture? Yeah, well, you know, I mean, Galata was, for Constantinople, was the

port of European trade. But it was also a port that was under the control of the Genoese since 1204, right, since the Fourth Crusade. And the Genoese had real control of this port. The Byzantine authorities, you know, had some control, but they in many ways given up, you know, any sort of control over Galata and other ports on the Black Sea, on Chios, Venice and Genoa, as you know, were these two Italian nation states that competed with each other for the control of colonies on the Aegean, the Eastern Mediterranean, on the Black Sea port, and over Galata.

So before the Ottoman takeover, you know, Galata had had its share of, you know, this kind of competition between these two Italian city-states. And the Byzantine Empire did not really have that much of a control over this colony. So in many ways, you know, you see a bit of continuity from it. It still becomes, you know, during the 16th century, it still is more or less, you know, an Italian colony. But after 1453, the Ottomans really exert a great deal of control over it. So it's this dynamic between the Italian city-states, i.e. Genoa, later on Venice, and the Ottoman central authorities at Tokopo Palace to control the colony.

So I look at that dynamic between, you know, the Ottoman state and between the Italian city-states and later on Western nations and gaining autonomy over Galata and negotiating a space for these traders through the capitulations or these ad nomes. So I think, you know, looking at these treaties, beginning with 1453 treaty that Mehmet II granted to the Genoese community and the implications of these treaties and the articles of these treaties that expanded because Genoa got one, Venice got one in 1454. Then they were granted to France, England and the Netherlands. England and the Netherlands. And you can see how, you know, in part two of the book,

I trace these developments, I trace the ethnomics, you know, as legal institutions that play that important role in the development of port cities, not just Galata, but other ports like Izmir, Salonika. The kind of legal framework is really important. It's something that has been really ignored more or less, you know, by Ottoman historians, they haven't really they mentioned them, they talk about them, they write articles about them, they make assumptions. But you seldom see a systematic study of these treaties that have survived. I want to talk about the capitulations in part two. But I think part one, there were so many interesting things going on. And one of the lines that I found really interesting, and it was kind of like what you just said was that there was a way that there was an Ottoman administration over Galata that also preserved essentially the commercial and legal rights of an Italian city-state. And could you

talk more about what kinds of institutions and legal frameworks allowed that really interesting dynamic to persist? Galata was not taken by force. The Genoese community decided to sit peacefully and start the process of negotiating with the sultan. And they had had a treaty with the Ottomans before that. So there was a basis on which they were negotiating with Mehmed II. So I think that played a very important role. It wasn't really taken by force like the peninsula. So there was, you know, space for negotiation. And there they could insert their

voice and say, well, what about, you know, renewing that treaty? What about giving us the same rights that the Byzantine ruler had given us in 1261 and expanding those and giving us more? So I argue that, you know, there's, of course, you know, a history of Ottoman-Genouist cooperation. And you can see that during the takeover of the city and the negotiations that took place on the peaceful takeover of Galata. Therefore, you know, there's space there to negotiate, you know, these articles. And it's a basic treaty that's given to the Genouis. Basically, it guarantees their property, their freedom of trade, their freedom of worship, their freedom of domicile. It doesn't specifically spell out the customs rates. But basically, if they submit peacefully to Ottoman rule, they can enjoy the same privileges and maybe more.

And so it's an argument for continuity in some ways. Exactly. We don't really have, you know, much of a picture about life in Galata before, you know, in terms of scholarship. I have interacted with a lot of Byzantinus scholars and they all say that they don't have the same records. So it's really difficult, right,

to sort of write the history of Galata prior to the Ottoman conquest. And so maybe now we could move on to the capitulations. That was something, of course, that was discussed in your previous interview a little bit. But I think it bears talking about once again, just because as you explained, there's so often this sense in terms of translation that the Ahad Names are capitulations, and there's an implication of that being some sort of surrender. And you're suggesting something different. Yes, I am.

I think that, you know, scholars in their analysis of the Ahenames have looked at the ones that were granted in the 19th century, after the wars, during, you know, peace negotiations with Russia, you know, with Western European powers, and they project back into the earlier period. And very few scholars really actually, you know, look at the actual texts. And many of them have survived, you know, they're scattered here and there. I actually found both the Ottoman version and the French version of the 1740 Treaty at Nome between France and the Ottoman Empire. You know, there could be also, you know, kind of misunderstanding about the actual articles. So, you know, I focus on that a lot and it has more than 80 articles.

And I really think we need to go back and do a sort of comparative analysis of these various Athenomes, see how they have developed for each nation, right? What were the original ones and then how did the later ones develop? And I think they're really important because, you know, everyone assumes that they're granted out of a position of weakness. Actually, that's not true. And that, you know, they actually, you know, it was the surrender of Ottoman sovereignty to Western European nations. Maybe they became like that in the 19th century. I'm not disputing that. But I think for the earlier period, it's really different.

And then for the earlier agnomes, I think the 16th century agnomes were reciprocal. I mean, that's another area where there's a great deal of dispute, whether they were bilateral or unilateral, whether they were reciprocal. You know, what about the rights of auto merchants? Right. So many scholars have argued that they were one sided. They were were reciprocal. You know, what about the rights of Ottoman merchants, right? So many scholars have argued that they were one-sided, they were not reciprocal. And I think there's, you know, evidence that at least the earlier ones were reciprocal. And then the question that became really important for me was,

well, why didn't the Ottomans negotiate similar rights for their own merchants, for their own diplomats, after the 16th century with the European nations? Why didn't Ottoman Muslim merchants show up in Marseille and ask for similar treaties? You know, why didn't the Ottoman Empire have embassies, similar types of diplomatic setups in Europe? Those are all really important questions. I don't think I was able to answer those questions adequately. That's for people who are working on diplomatic history.

But I think one answer to that is that, well, the Levant companies became very closed. They were very monopolistic. They weren't really going to open up to Ottoman merchants, you know, and Muslim merchants and non-Muslims. So there was really no point in negotiating, right, for reciprocity in the 17th and 18th century Ahnames. So we can get into that a bit. But I think there are a lot of questions that, you know, I think we can discuss and open up as far as these Ahnames are concerned, the pre-19th century ones. But even there, there are a lot of differences.

And I wonder, is there a good example of one of these early Ahidnames that shows how the Ottomans were benefiting from it as well? Well, I think, you know, the ones that were granted to Venice, for example, I think it's very clear that there's a level of reciprocity. We know that, you know, Ottoman merchants, even Muslims traded with Venice. They were there. Certainly Armenians were there, you know, Ottoman merchants, even Muslims, traded with Venice. They were there. Certainly Armenians were there. You know, Ottoman Jewish merchants were there. And then the Ottoman Empire sent envoys to Venice to settle the disputes between Ottoman merchants and Venetian ones.

So there was reciprocity there. reciprocity there. But I also think, you know, I mean, this is what Enogic says, that even if they were not written in the Akhnames, there was a kind of unwritten understanding that these articles are reciprocal. But then I think the next question is, why didn't the Ottoman Empire set up permanent embassies, right, in Europe? Is it because Europe is closed to Muslims? Again, you know, keep in mind, you know, this is the period of inquisitions, expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. At least part of Europe is really closing down. Muslims, Jews may not feel that comfortable

kind of going back to the same spaces. So European cities and ports have their own history of diversity and lack of it. And I think from the few examples that I provided at the end of chapter six about Muslim merchants, for example, in Europe and their inability to really gain legal redress, we can see that that space was still very close to Ottoman Muslim merchants as late as the 18th century. Things change in the 19th century. So is it because the Ottoman state didn't care about the welfare of its own merchants,

to at least try to protect them or to enforce the reciprocity that we assume were in the Aht-Namiz? Why didn't they push for that? Some historians have argued that, well, merchants just were not organized in the Ottoman Empire. They didn't have any power till the 19th century, right, to exert any kind of influence on Ottoman policy. And all the Ottoman state cared was to collect revenue. So they were really an open system, right? They were promoting trade with allies, with friendly nations. They just wanted these spaces like Galata to be open spaces for international traders that were their allies to come and go. So they didn't really envision the same sort of arrangement for their own merchants in Europe.

And they had the power to do so in the 16th century. They could have negotiated these things from a position of power, and they didn't do that. Now, they come to that point in the 19th century, and they start doing that. So they are centuries late. And I think Europe has the upper hand. There's no doubt about it. Can you give us an example of one of these merchants in Chapter 6 of going to Marseille? I mean, who are these Ottoman merchants? Can you tell us one of their stories, how they're trying to interact?

Yeah, I did. I provided a few of those. And I found their petitions of one who ended up, I think he was North African. And then we have Bosnian merchants who are constantly crossing, right? He ends up in Trieste and his merchandise, his shipping grain, is confiscated on an excuse that the merchant owed money to Venetian merchants. So they confiscate his goods. And I think he was also transporting wheat

that belonged to other merchants. And he couldn't really get any redress. There was no one there, you know, representing the Ottoman government. He wrote three letters to the Ottoman state, to the Venetian bailout in Istanbul. And we don't know what happened to him, but it took a few months.

And I'm assuming that nothing happened. He went broke. So that's one example. I have a couple of others. But I think that's really a prime example. When you look at the text of his petition, he says, my family is going hungry. I can't come back. I don't really owe any money to these Venetian merchants,

and they have confiscated, you know, all my goods and the goods that belong to other people. And you can really see clearly the inability of the Ottoman Empire to have permanent embassies, you know, in Europe, in the Habsburg Empire, elsewhere, really hurting, right, Ottoman merchants. And there are probably more examples. I think Arbel also provides examples of Ottoman merchants in Venice during the time of war when they're arrested and their properties are confiscated. So obviously, during wartime, this is going to happen. It happens to French merchants in Galata, you know, the treaties are no more. So you're going to see a lot of violence. But I'm talking about the time of peace.

You know, even during those times, I think these merchants did not really feel safe in Europe. So I don't know whether this is just, you know, regarding Muslim merchants, or the same thing can be said about the Ottoman non-Muslim merchants. But we know that the Armenians had their own networks in Venice and Marseille. You know, that community thrived, you know, in these ports. But even they faced a great deal of discrimination. So again, I think we have to kind of pay attention to the European ports, you know, coming out of this period of inquisitions, you know, Islamophobic feelings, anti-Jewish sentiments. I think there is also pressure on Ottoman non-Muslim merchants to convert to Catholicism.

I think Nathalie Rothman has shown that with Venice, we know that a good number of Armenians converted to Catholicism in Isfahan, right, in Istanbul and in Marseille, right? So they are considered heretical if they are, you know, Armenian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox. So I think, you know, even, you know, with the non-Muslims, you know, there's this question of lack of tolerance that you can still see in some of these ports,

with the exception of Livorno, maybe. To what extent could Muslim merchants have been benefiting from access to those markets in Trieste or Livorno or wherever? And to what extent were they situated at a good point along trade routes and were doing fine provisioning the empire as it was? Europeans were coming to them. There were these longstanding legal frameworks for spaces of commerce and networks that existed within the empire. So what's the point of going? I expect that question is misguided in some ways.

And so I'm curious what's misguided about that or if there's some truth there somewhere. No, I think it's a great question. I mean, I think it's a point that I make indirectly in the book. I think it's a point that I make indirectly, you know, in the book, because again, you know, Panzack has shown through his research in the French archives, that in fact, there were lots of partnerships between Muslim and French merchants. And, you know, I showed some of that in my book as well, you know, how Muslim merchants would just load their goods onto French ships, Venetian ships, English ships, and sent them off to Marseille, to London, to Amsterdam, right? So do they need to be there physically? If they don't feel comfortable,

they don't have a space where they can go to their own mosque. There are synagogues, but they cannot go to their mosque to pray, right? They don't have their own burial grounds. I mean, you can just like compare, you know, the spaces, you know, let's take Marseille, let's take Amsterdam, let's take Livorno, let's take Venice to see whether non-Christian or, you know, Muslim merchants had, you know, those spaces that the treaties provided for European merchants. And they didn't have them until the 19th century, probably. So I think they didn't feel comfortable going. So they preferred probably to partner with Ottoman non-Muslim merchants, with Ottoman Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, and then with the European merchants like

the French and the Venetians. And we have the evidence of those partnerships, and I have found evidence of those. So I think you're absolutely right. I don't think it's a naive question. But at the same time, I do think that we have Muslims in Marseille, right? And there are Bosnian merchants probably in the Habsburg Empire. So we need to do more research. I'm not saying that there was a complete absence, because I have found some evidence. But when we look at the numbers, you just cannot compare it. So, you know, going back to Karim Barkey's work on the empire of difference, I think one could make the argument that Eastern Mediterranean ports were much more open to the Europeans than Western Mediterranean ports to the Ottomans and to Muslims in the early modern period. Now, does the situation change in the 19th century? It changes for Ottoman non-Muslims, but it's still closed for the Muslims.

So that point doesn't really come out so clearly in the book, but it's implied. We're talking about, you know, how do we find these stories of Muslims in Marseille, Muslims in Venice, and so forth like that, or vice versa, the story of Galata. How do we find these stories in the archives? Can you just tell us about, if we're trying to find the hidden history of Galata, the one that people haven't been able to explore enough, where do we look for it? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And it's really hard, as you know, you know, the field of Ottoman studies is really studied usually from the perspective of the state, right? Most of our archival material is produced by the scribes, right? Whether we are talking about the sigils, you know, I looked at

the Ejnebi Defterleri of Registers of European Nations. Rarely you come across, you know, the petitions that are written, right, by the people themselves. But much of the material is filtered, right? And so there's a lot that probably is left out. So I think we face that issue with the history of a lot of empires. But it's going to be up to us to look for more material, to look at multiple archives, and to really try to uncover, right, those voices. You have to master the sources, right? And then, you know, from reading between the lines. And to try to also include everyone? And then, you know, from reading between the lines. And to try to also include everyone.

And then if somebody's voice is not there, you know, to pose a question. Not to assume that the archives give us all the information. So I think that was a great challenge for me. But as you know, Nir and Sam, you go to the Ottoman archives all the time. You never know what you're going to find. We have to actually expand the scope and go to Marseille and go to, you know, to London and look at multiple archives and not give up. Because I think very often when we emphasize, you know, the filtering of the archives, you know, or the filtering out

of voices, people give up. They assume that they're not going to learn anything. So it's up to us. What's difficult about the archives and the court records is that you get these really interesting cases. And then you never see these people again, right? Maybe you do. And maybe it ends up being really interesting. But it's so hard, right, to put together a coherent narrative. And so I'm wondering, is there like a dream document out there that you were hoping to stumble upon? You know, the dream document would be the memoirs of these people who set out, right, from Marseille, from London, from all these places to live in Ottoman ports and their daily

accounts. In fact, you can't uncover them because, you know, so the other set of archives that I looked at, the non-Ottoman voices, right, and archives, which I think are also crucial when you're studying a port like Galata or Pera. And I focused on France and everybody, you know, it's like, why are you focusing just on France? What about England? You can't do it all. So I had to also look at the French archives. I went to Marseille. I didn't go to Nantes. And I looked at embassy accounts. I looked, so there are lots of travelogues and there go to Nantes. And I looked at embassy accounts. I looked. So there are lots of travelogues. And there's tons of those.

And a lot of people kind of say, oh, they're orientalists. There's nothing in them. They have amazing information. So they kind of make up for the gaps in the Ottoman records. Because they're written from personal perspectives. It's the everyday account, right? The memoirs that these people have left behind. So I think, you know,

those accounts for me were really, really important. And they are being published, you know, in French and English and different languages, and a lot of people are exploring them. So in a way, it takes us so many years to finish these books. Nir knows that. I mean, the process tends to be really long, but I think the end result can be really rich. So when I talk to my European colleagues about our archives, they're so impressed. They're like, well, I wish we had those archives or people who do ancient Mediterranean history. So we have a lot. It's just that, you know, I think we need to sort of be creative. Hurry up, Nier.

Yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying to finish my book. Well, I think maybe it's good to shift here to talk about France, because that ends up being a useful focus in the book. And something I was thinking about, maybe this is more of an implicit argument too, is like how much of these trade agreements with France and economic relationships with France are kind of built on the structures of the first arrangements for Galata. Yeah, I showed that in part two of the book, where I tried to trace these Ahnames from 1453 onwards. And it's really fascinating. I also found the text of the Ahname that the

Mongols had granted to the Genoese in Tabriz, right, in the 14th century. So they go back. And I do emphasize the sort of, you know, pre-Ottoman antecedents of these Ahnamehs between Muslim states, the Mamluks, you know, the Ilkhanids, the Ottoman principalities like Aydin and Menteshe with the Italian city-states. So there's a long history there. And I think, you know, the Venetians, in a very smart manner, sort of tried to build on those, the ones that they had with the Mamluks.

The French did the same thing. So when the Ottomans took Egypt and Syria in 1517, you know, the French said, well, what about renewing those agreements between a Muslim state, i.e. the Mamluks and, you know, and Suleiman, right? So there is a Muslim antecedent, right? It's, you know, the origins really go back to ancient Mediterranean, to medieval Mediterranean states, as well as to the Islamic states. So the Sharia approves it, and it has to be approved by the Shaykh al-Islam. So the Ottomans cannot just sign off these treaties. It has to be studied and approved by the

Mufti, and it has to be based on the Sharia. So it has, you know, kind of legal basis to it. So they built on those. With France, it was the ones that France had negotiated with the Mamluks, right? With the Italian city-states, they have pre-Ottoman Byzantine sort of, you know, antecedents. And they're very similar. You know, I think the basic arrangements are more or less the same. And then, you know, you see that by the 18th century, the articles have increased from 12 or 18. I'm talking about the treaties with France from 1536 to 1740 to 80. You know, so that also shows that France is deeply involved in the Ottoman Empire and in commerce and diplomacy. And it's really the country that has, you know, the most trade with the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century.

It's the way the relationship has evolved. Then I also, you know, kind of looked at what's going on in Marseille as a port. Right. And it's really interesting because when we say France, a lot of people assume that these traders are from Paris. But they're mostly from Marseille as a port, right? And it's really interesting because when we say France, a lot of people assume that these traders are from Paris, but they're mostly from Marseille, from Provence. So it is really, you know, what's going on also in Marseille and how Marseille benefits from, you know, what Colbert does, the kind of reform of the Levant trade and the treaties that French ambassadors are negotiating with the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Age, and how, you know, this increase in trade between the two nations also benefits Marseille as a city, how its population grows as a result of, you know,

the Levant trade. And then, you know, I look at what happens to Marseille and Galata, and the Franco-Ottoman relations after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. So speaking of it, but this comparative angle, I mean, you know, this is a book about Galata. And you're, you know, really focusing on Galata. And I was just wondering, at the same time, you're also speaking about other cities like Marseille or Venice, you know, what is it about Galata that is special? You know, what's unique about the story of Galata and the story of the Mediterranean that can't be told from Marseille that you came across in the course of your research? Yeah, great question, Nir. So, you know, I mean, I had to make two decisions.

When I proposed this book to the UC Press, and I highly recommend those folks. Originally, I was going to go into the 19th century. It was, you know, about modernity and how the role of Galata and Pera in modernity. So it was, you know, very chic, and it appealed to a lot of people. But they wrote back, and they say, you got to decide, you know, either you're going to do the 19th century, or you want to do the early modern. You can't do both. Initially, I was kind of, you know, why not? And then I decided that that was really important because the early modern history of Galata is so important, the way it gets shaped. And I think the role of, you know, the Genoese community, of course, and the sultan, because, you know, he had a vision for Galata to develop. And I tried to kind of show that in the first part of the book. So

there's tension between his attempts to control Galata, right, and the Genoese to resist that control, or later on, you know, the local Greeks. So a lot of Turkish historians, you know, my friend Atem Erdem, he believes that Galata becomes Ottomanized, it becomes Islamicized, right? believes that Galata becomes Ottomanized, it becomes Islamicized, right? And if you read Evliya Celebi and his account of, you know, second half of the 17th century, you kind of assume that, but it's not true. It still remains pretty much, I don't want to say European, maybe Greek. So is that by chance, is that by accident, or is that part of the vision? Not, you know, to kind of over-Ottomanize or Islamicize, you know, the port. So I think it's that whole question of negotiation, right? And it's in the light of these treaties with the Ottoman rulers after Mehmed, Bid'aizid and Suleyman.

And it's the ability of, you know, not only the Italian nation states, city states, but the Western European nation states to kind of say, well, what about, you know, that that treaty that you gave to the Genoese? We want the same thing. And, you know, the English saying you want the same thing that you gave to the French. Right. So they kind of built on that and they succeed in negotiating for a space that is cosmopolitan. for a space that is cosmopolitan, if we can talk about an early modern Ottoman cosmopolitanism. And I think we can use that term or that terminology in a kind of comparative scale. So they create a space

and there are other similar spaces in the Ottoman Empire. As you know, there's Salonika, there's Izmir, you know, Alexandria. We have studied Izmir. Salonika is getting, you know, some attention. But Alexandria is totally not studied for the early modern period. Most scholars focus on the 19th century. But I really think that there is an early modern foundation of these ports that become so cosmopolitan in the 19th century.

about coffee and sugar and how French commercial networks are bringing these commodities in from the Caribbean and what that says about these economic dynamics? So one of the topics that I have been interested in, I think it's going to be on my next book, I'm kind of focusing back or shifting back to Tabriz as a caravan city. And I'm going to look at its connectivity to all these ports, Ottoman and European. So I'm moving further east. But silk trade is always very important for Galata and for a lot of Ottoman caravan cities like Aleppo and Izmir. So the French were interested primarily in importing Iranian raw silk from Aleppo, predominantly from Syria. And then, of course, Izmir, you know, becomes really important for the French silk industry and Galata. But the trade declines between Europe, between France and the Levant. The French, you know, have to get

involved in other trades. And I think this is also happening with England. So we kind of see a gradual shift, right, in French commercial contacts with the Levant and the position of Marseille, right, as a port that kind of trades not only with the Levant, but also with North Africa and with America. So, you know, so Marseille becomes this kind of middle point for this kind of global networks of trade. And the French merchants from Marseille start connecting Galata with the Americas, and they're importing colonial goods like coffee and sugar into Galata, into Izmir and other Ottoman cities in the 18th century. And pretty soon those colonial goods take over. So I looked at the impact of that trade on the local coffee and sugar trade with Cairo and whether it hurt the position of these traders, right, in Cairo and also in Istanbul, in the Misur-Carsası. And the resistance, right, of these merchants to the import of colonial coffee and sugar. And then, of course, you know, so who did the Ottoman state support and protect? You know,

is it still abiding by the articles of the treaty, you know, of the Ahtname, giving, you know, the European or French merchants freedom of trade, they can bring anything they want, they can move around, Merchants' freedom of trade, they can bring anything they want, they can move around. Or is it not becoming aware of the needs of its own producers and merchants? So there you can kind of see this kind of changing dynamics where the guilds that are a corporate body, they can express their discontent with what's going on. They can petition the government and say, we don't want French coffee in the Mr. Charges, so they can only be sold in a few shops in Galata. A question of clarification.

Is there basically a shift from French merchants primarily acquiring goods like silk to bring to France to this new arrangement where they're bringing in coffee and sugar and they're making use of these legal commercial instruments that used to be tailored toward them gathering expensive goods from the Ottoman Empire to them bringing, I don't know how expensive coffee and sugar are in comparison to silk. It seems like that's the shift that we see. Yeah, it is. You know, so when you look at some of these shipwrecks, right,

when something happens as a result of piracy and the ships get taken over by bandits, you know, they have to kind of, when they petition, they say, this is what my ship had. So you see the inventory of the goods that that French ship was carrying from Crete to Galata. And you see that a lot of it is colonial goods, right? So when you look at the customs registers, the Gimrik Defterleri for the late 18th century, you see that they're bringing now a lot of colonial goods from East Indies and from the West Indies. Whereas before they didn't, the Ottomans imported them themselves from India, right? Not from the Caribbean, but from India.

So you start wondering, you know, so what's happening to the position of Muslim merchants in Cairo, in Alexandria, you know, or Ottoman merchants who used to import those goods? Do they really take over? And in the 19th century, that's going to be the trend. So you kind of start seeing the beginnings of that trend in the second half of the 18th century. And then not only that, you know, the French are also moving goods between Ottoman ports. So they are, you know, transporting foodstuff from Egypt to Istanbul, from Crete to Istanbul, from the Black Sea ports to Istanbul. So they're also involved in the provisioning of Istanbul, you know, and they are lending money. So their activities, as you noted, go well beyond commerce, right? They're doing all kinds of things in Galata.

I think them doing all kinds of things in Galata might be a good segue to the final chapter of the book, which is about sexual and cultural encounters in Galata. And how do you see these commercial economic power dynamics and boundaries being complicated by, as you say, sexual and cultural encounters? So I looked at, you know, conversion, because I wanted to talk about that, because I think it's really important. So when you look at the treaties in the late 17th century between France and the Ottoman Empire, the French increasingly, you know, become aware of the importance of the Catholic communities in the Ottoman Empire, and French increasingly, you know, become aware of the importance of the Catholic communities in the Ottoman Empire, and they want to have jurisdiction over them. So in the treaties, they negotiate the right for their missionaries, the Jesuits, the Capuchins, to conduct, you know, their activities without any inhibition from Ottoman officials, and to be able, you know, to

sort of open, you know, to sort of open, you know, churches, you know, because again, in Perra, you have lots of Catholic churches. In Galata, you don't. So that becomes very important for the government in France, right? They're kind of competing with the papacy, with the Vatican. And the Vatican, you know, opens up this office of propaganda feed it, the sole aim of which is to propagate Catholicism among the non-Muslim Christian communities of the empire, right? So it's this kind of competition for the hearts and minds of the Christian communities, i.e. the Greek Orthodox and Armenian, all right? So that's already in the 1673 article, it's in the 1740 article, and you really see the full implication of that. And the

Ottomans very naively give that right to the Europeans. Now, you know, I saw a reference to, you know, Vergen, the French ambassador saying that that's wrong. The treaty really meant French Catholic communities, not Ottoman Catholic communities. We shouldn't really interfere in their affairs. So that really opens up this whole thing, you know, the tensions that arise as a result of the conversion of many, many Armenians to Catholicism within these communities. And then the Ottoman state has to intervene to punish the monks who are converting these folks and Armenians and the Greeks, not so many Greeks, but many, many Armenians who are converting these folks, and Armenians and the Greeks, not so many Greeks, but many, many Armenians who are converting to Catholicism. Now, why do they convert to

Catholicism? I think it's in order to be able to enjoy some of the same rights that are given to the French traders. They want to be the dragomans of the French embassy. They want to be protected or brothel merchants. You know, they want to live safely in Marse of the French embassy. They want to be protected or brothel merchants. You know, they want to live safely in Marseille. Many of those folks are Catholic, right? I think it's really important. I wonder if this is also true of the Armenians who end up in Venice. So that's one aspect of this kind of cultural interaction. The second one, you know, that kind of deals more with intermarriage, you know, sexual encounters has to do to what extent, you know, we can translate cosmopolitanism to interactions in the nighttime. You know, so what's going on after day is over?

You have traded with these folks. You know, do you sit at the tavern and drink with them? Do you intermarry, you know, Ottoman? Can you do that? So there's a level of that that's going on. So there are some Frenchmen who are marrying Ottoman Greek and Armenians, not so many Muslims. And then, you know, what I also found is that as the number of these marriages increase, then the French and the English react to that, right? They start issuing these demands on the

intermarriage between French traders and residents in these ports and Ottoman Christian and not so many Jewish, but mostly Ottoman Christian subjects. So there are these bans coming from these states, both England and France, both the state and the Chamber of Commerce. They don't want too much intermixing. They, in fact, demand their own, you know, residence to go back to Paris or Marseille to live there for 10 years, right, and then come back to these ports. So there's a limit over which you can really interact,

you know, with the locals. And I think this is really developing in the 18th century. Not that these vans are effective. I think people are still intermarrying and there's still a great degree of sexual encounter going on. Now, did the Ottoman state try to prevent that? I don't think they were really, as far as Muslim women were not involved, they didn't really care. But as far as the Armenian and the Greek Orthodox communities are concerned, they were against it

too. They didn't want to lose their flock, right? So some of the documents I found had to do with the complaints and petitions of the Greek Orthodox communities all over the place, you know, against these attempts for intermarriage. So people were being punished and kind of stepping over these boundaries. So, you know, to what extent can you really also, you know, overcome the sexual boundaries of these communities? And it's within these communities, it is the European nations themselves that don't want that, right? And the Ottoman state is the last to become aware of it. normally don't even know the differences between, you know, the Armenian Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox and the Catholic Church. But they are bound, you know, by their own relationship to these communities to protect them. But of course, the Catholic Church, you know, the Catholic Armenian Church becomes legal in the early 19th century. But so before that, I think the whole

saga of the Armenian Catholic community is really interesting. I try to highlight that in the book, of the Armenian Catholic community is really interesting. I try to highlight that in the book because I think it really gets ignored by the historians. And so the book ends in some ways with the French Revolution and Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Oftentimes, this is the beginning point of history, right? Modernity begins with the French Revolution or Napoleon. And so I'm interested in how you thought about ending in that way.

Was it a close to an era? Was it a kind of accumulation of changes that lead to a new kind of power dynamic in the 19th century? How do you see that? Yeah, I think it's both. I think really to understand, you know, the 19th century developments, the Tanzimat reforms and all of that, we need to look at this early period, right? And these developments, because I think what also happens is that, we need to look at this early period, right, and these developments, because I think what also happens is that, you know, Ottoman merchants, Muslim and non-Muslim,

also gain a voice. You know, they're also able to put pressure on the Ottoman state to rescind some of those articles that are harmful to them. The guilds are, you know, powerful. Of course, in the 19th century, they lose their power. So they are a corporate body. They are mobilizing. And the Ottoman state in the early 19th century creates the Avrupa to Jar. And they're giving some of the same benefits and privileges to their own. And they try to put limits on the articles of the treaties that were harmful to their own. So there's a bit of continuity into the 19th century. But I think as far as France is concerned, so the French Revolution is a huge change. You know, it's a big revolution in Europe. I wanted to also, you know, examine its impact on Ottoman ports that were connected to Marseille. You know, so what happens to these communities in the Ottoman Empire? And interestingly, the Ottoman state, Selim III's government, recognized the French Revolution. It was the third state that did that, right?

So all the other states that had diplomatic ties with the Ottoman Empire were opposed, with the exception of Sweden, to France. So there's a lot of tension in Pera between these communities as a result of that. The French community itself is divided between the monarchists and the revolutionaries. But at the same time, you know, when Austria is putting pressure on the Ottoman government to stop celebrations, you know, on the anniversary of the beheading of the king, the response is, well, they can do whatever they want. They can, you know, wear the tricolor cockade.

We are not going to stop them. And that's really fascinating. So the Ottoman government is not really worried. But what happens is when Napoleon invades Egypt in 1798, that relationship is disrupted. As a result of the mistreatment of the Egyptians, the Ottoman, you know, Mufti issues a fatwa declaring war as legal with France. It's a state of war, even though Napoleon says, you know, he wants to restore the authority of Selim III. And of course, the Ottomans see through what Napoleon is trying to do. So I think that's the 1798 invasion of Egypt is the big disruptor. And so I look at the impact of that and the documents that I discovered, you know, during that time, it was during the coup period, it was really, you know, we were feeling insecure there as Americans, you know, and I was looking for

these documents and finding these amazing documents on the French embassy and how the ambassador should be arrested and put in the Yedekullah prison, and the French embassy and how the ambassadors should be arrested and put in the Yedikule prison and the French staff, and then these imperial orders for the arrest of all French subjects in the entire Ottoman Empire until 1801, until they signed another treaty for a period of three years in the Yedikule prison. So I think it was the end of one phase for sure, because it was also the solution of the Levant Company.

So they started after peace was restored. They started negotiating another treaty. And the Ahed Names are revoked? The 1740 was revoked. Right. You know, as soon as Napoleon invades Egypt. So it's revoked. Then, you know, every French merchant then, you know, becomes subject to arrest, to, you know, confiscation of his property, to mistreatment.

And there are also families living there. So I wonder what happened to the wives and the children. I keep in mind that, you know, the community itself feels threatened. They can't go to France. So, you know, you have the French ambassador, Gouffier, who was recalled to Paris, and they're confiscating his property in Paris, right? So where does he go? He ends up in Russia, right? So I kind of felt for these communities, because, you know, they're not, you know, safe at home. They're not safe at Perra anymore, after 1798. So you kind of feel for them. And some of them are monarchists, some of them are revolutionary. So what's going on? So it's really a kind of fascinating chapter, I think, in the history of not only Perra, but of the French community. Again, it was, you know, one of those decisions that do I include that, you know, where

do I include that? And I thought, I have to have an end to the story, right? It is the French Revolution, but it's really 1798. It's not so much the French Revolution itself because it gets recognized, but it's 1798 and its impact on this community that had nothing to do with Napoleon and his plans, but somehow they get caught in between. And it seems like an interesting contrast between the story of the Genoese in 1453 of being able to stay in this place, even though there's a new regime, and the French in 1798 not being able to stay in this place, even though there's a new regime, and the French in

1798, not being able to stay in this place. Right, exactly. So the chargé d'affaires that gets imprisoned, he's actually a Levantine, he's coming from one of these families. So he's a local. And so when he gets out of Yedikule, then he renegotiates the next treaty between the Ottoman Empire and France. So the next, you know, series of treaties, which I end the book with, become much more reciprocal. So there are, you know, articles in there for Ottoman merchants in Europe. I enjoyed, you know, writing this book a great deal. And I want to say to the grad students who are probably going to be our biggest audience, you've got to go there if you can.

If you're working on Aleppo, you can't go to Aleppo. So choose a topic, a place where you can go visit. You have to spend many, many years. Field work is really important. When we were stuck during the coup in Istanbul and we couldn't really move around, I went to Galata and you really start coming across these amazing people who open up to you. You discover places that you wouldn't normally do because you travel on a certain route, right? You don't see all these places. that you wouldn't normally do because you travel on a certain route, right? You don't see all these places. So you really have to open yourself up to all kinds of

possibilities. You have to go out there. You really can learn so much that you won't be able to learn from your textbooks or even from the archival material. That's why I decided to switch to Istanbul, because I couldn't go to Iran. And I think I ended up writing probably a better book. That's Fariba Zarinabaf. Her book, Mediterranean Encounters, is out now with UC Press. Of course, as always, you can find more information on our website,

ottomanhistorypodcast.com, including a bibliography, images, links to related episodes, and more information about Fariba Zarinabov's other work. You can also join us on Facebook, where the community of listeners is over 35,000 strong. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. Until next time, take care. Thank you.