Book review: Fariba Zarinebaf, Mediterranean Encounters: Trade and Pluralism in Early Modern Galata

Book cover

FARIBA ZARINEBAF, Mediterranean Encounters: Trade and Pluralism in Early Modern Galata, University of California Press, Oakland 2018, pp. 404. Hardcover £70.00, paperback £33.00

From the outset Galata emerged as an important commercial hub in a multicultural environment, being a bridge between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, as well as a gateway to the Eastern markets for Europe. The historical importance of this port and neighbourhood of Istanbul is the subject Fariba Zarinebaf’s book, which is a fascinating study on one of the most exceptional spots in the Early Modern Mediterranean.

Zarinebaf firstly locates Galata geographically and historically, underlying its position and relationship with Byzantium and its transformation due to the influence of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages. Here the Republic of Genoa established a foothold in 1155 and in 1261 was granted special privileges by the Byzantine emperor with the Treaty of Nymphaeum in exchange for a military alliance against Venice. The Superba gained administrative and commercial control of Galata, where Genoese institutions were established and business flourished along with its diversity. The more the Genoese traffics grew, the more Galata assumed an Italian look and the Republic even adjusted its foreign policy as it forged links with Turkish principalities in Anatolia for military and commercial purposes; among these, the contacts with the emerging Ottomans proved to be particularly fortunate.

This vicinity grew closer and proved to be the game changer for the Ottoman Conquest of the Red Apple, as Galata maintained its neutrality during the Siege of Constantinople and benefitted from a peaceful Ottoman takeover. Mehmet the Conqueror brought about important change through his incorporation of Galata into the Ottoman administration. In doing so, tightened Ottonman control over Galata, through settling Muslims coming from other provinces of the empire. This was followed a few years later by the placement of Sephardic Jews and Moriscos after their expulsion from Iberian kingdoms. As Zarinebaf noted it was “clear that the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople and takeover of Galata ended the Latin control of Galata and imposed an Ottoman administration over it while allowing it to retain some of the commercial and legal rights of an Italian city-state” (p. 36), since Mehmet was interested in reviving the trade.

Thus the Ottoman conquest did not oust but further enriched the complexity of social, religious and commercial interactions of Galata, creating a unique space that led to exchanges as well as to the creation of porous identities and boundaries. Within these communities tensions at times sparked. Zarinebaf demonstrates this through several examples unearthed from Ottoman archival records. From the “grief-stricken” Moriscos who after years of persecutions and expulsions from the Kingdom of Spain were understandably not in the best terms with Latins, to the issues related to taverns (and brothels) and nocturnal activities that were allowed in this part of Istanbul.

Due to its character and economic potential, Galata strongly appealed to traders and people looking for new opportunities, it became congested and had high crime rates, which were further aggravated by fires and plague. Thus those who were looking for a more tranquil settlement found it on the “lofty and healthful” hills of Pera, as the British artist Thomas Allom defined them (p. 83) and a whole new neighbourhood emerged outside the walls of Galata in the 17^th century. European diplomacy shaped this new space importantly with beautiful palaces, most of them situated on the so-called “Grand Rue de Péra”, which became a fundamental diplomatic hotspot where the diplomats of several European countries lived side by side every day.

After offering a background of the urban development of Galata, Zarinebaf brings to the attention of the reader the legal framework that permitted all the exchanges highlighted above. She introduces an analysis of the ahdnames, known in the West as capitulations. Going through a competent bibliography to identify their origins and uses, she highlights their emergence during the Middle Ages, when they were widely utilised by several Muslim and Christian states, although the latter stopped using them after the expulsion of Muslim and Jewish communities, as ahdnames/capitulations came from “a shared legal tradition to ease cohabitation and commerce across religious divides” (p. 92)

The origin of the Ottoman ahdnames can be found in the Byzantine, Seljuk and Ilkhanid legal traditions, cultures that deeply influenced the Ottoman state building and customs. Opening with the Treaty of Nymphaeum signed between Byzantium and Genoa in 1261, which proved to be an effective base for the Ottoman ahdnames, Zarinebaf argues how the reciprocity in treatment between the contracting parties faded away with time in the Ottoman tradition. Ahdnames were indeed used as a political and commercial leverage to handle the presence of Italian city-states communities that were trading with Levant and the Black Sea, but they were also used to help the sultans in their struggle against their archenemies, the Habsburgs.

When moving to the 17^th and 18^th century, Zarinebaf focuses on the development of the ahdnames with the three major players in the Mediterranean Sea in the early-modern period: France, England and Holland. Although these were not the only countries to receive adhnames, they held stronger relations with the Sublime Porte and also acted as successful mediators on many occasions for peace treaties between the Sublime Porte and the Habsburgs or Russia, especially with the integration of the Ottomans in the European system. With agreed or revoked privileges according to the political and economic opportunity, ahdnames of this period are also a lens through which we can appreciate the adaptability of the Ottoman state, balancing laissez-faire and protectionism due to the circumstances of the moment. Measures that were also instrumental to provisioning the capital with large quantities and low-price supplies in accordance with the policies of the Circle of Justice.

The final part of the book focuses on one of the main topics of this study, the French-Ottoman relationship in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The political and commercial relationship between Paris and Istanbul, after some turbulences knew a new splendour thanks to the appointment of Colbert, whose efforts culminated with the ahdname of 1673 that created an increase in commercial exchange and grew France’s political influence at the Sublime Porte.

These developments happened in a period when the Ottomans suffered several blows at the hands of Austria and Russia, that further tightened the connection between Versailles and the Sublime Porte. The zenith was reached with the famous ahdname of 1740, the best ever received by a foreign nation.[1] French merchants were permitted to trade products previously under monopoly and had full and unprecedented access to the Ottoman internal markets. Nevertheless, “while French merchants were gaining new freedoms to trade in the Black Sea and in the interior of the Ottoman Empire (domestic trade), Ottoman merchants were still excluded from Marseille and other French ports” (p. 145).

Zarinebaf also demonstrates through court records that these concessions were not easily accepted by locals, who sometimes resolved to violence, especially in periods of economic crisis. The records are also used by the author to provide the reader with a map of the French interactions with the Ottomans at very different levels. Business and partnerships were undoubtedly a primary source of contacts, whilst other important bonds were established through financial operations, as several Frenchmen (including some ambassadors) often acted as creditors for many Ottomans. Furthermore, in such a multicultural environment as Galata, sexual and cultural intermingle was inevitable. Many Europeans married local Ottoman non-Muslim women and this phenomenon was another source of frictions – mostly of religious, but also of jurisdictional and legal nature – and it led to the ban on interfaith marriages, to the point where agents of the English Levant Company “were even required to take an oath not to marry Ottoman women” (p. 245), while France would strip its subjects of consular protection should they have done so (even if the women were French who were born in the Levant).

The book closes with the advent of the French Revolution, which proved to be a troublesome event even in Galata, as it split the French community, although the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 caused more substantial damages to the Ottoman-French relationship. While the invasion was unsuccessful, it seriously compromised the position of France at the Sublime Porte and when a new ahdname was agreed by Mahmud II in 1812, where Ottoman merchants received reciprocal treatment, political and commercial relations had changed profoundly.

Zarinebaf tries to condense in nearly 300 pages the history of Galata in the Early Modern period. She corroborates her results through a vast bibliography and not only does she shapes an enthralling piece of urban and social history, she also enriches the work with an ample economic, religious, political and background. Galata has a complex history and its development unfolded following diplomatic, religious and commercial paths. Such a broad, rich and layered heritage is treated by Zarinebaf with a rational approach that tries to offer the reader a gradual introduction to get to the final point where she analyses in greater detail the interactions between the French community and the Ottoman Empire and its subjects in the 18^th century. The use of archival resources from the Başbakanlık Arşivi in Istanbul, Islamic Research Center in Istanbul (ISAM), Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et Industrie of Marseille, Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi is extensive and well used.

[1] The only exception would be the Republic of Ragusa. The Republic had also access to the Ottoman domestic market through the ahdname of 1458, although its international status as foreign nation is object of debate, as Ragusa was a tributary state of the Sublime Porte. I personally adhere to the position expressed in Lovro Kunčević, “Janus-faced Sovereignty: the International Status of the Ragusan Republic in the Early Modern Period”, in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, eds. Gábor Kármán, Lovro Kunčević, (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 91-121.

*A big thank you to Samantha Gordon for having given her time to proofread this review.

Credits: The painting on the headline of this post is by Charles Robertson: “A Carpet Seller, Cairo”, 1881.

The cover of the book shows a famous depiction of the French ambassador Charles Gravier, Count of Vergennes in Turkish clothes by Antoine de Favray, 1766.