British travellers regarded all inhabitants of the seventeenth-century Ottoman empire as ‘slaves of the sultan’, yet they also made fine distinctions between them. This book provides the first historical account of how British travellers understood the non-Muslim peoples they encountered in Ottoman lands, and of how they perceived and described them in the mediating shadow of the Turks. In doing so it changes our perceptions of the European encounter with the Ottomans by exploring the complex identities of the subjects of the Ottoman empire in the English imagination, de-centering the image of the ‘Terrible Turk’ and Islam.
Author(s): Eva Johanna Holmberg
Series: Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 243
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Praise for British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: ‘Slaves’ of the Sultan
Introduction
‘Slaves’ of the Sultan: British Perceptions of the Millet System
The Travellers and Their Accounts
Previous Scholarship on the English Encounter with the Ottomans
Writing the Ottoman World in the Early Seventeenth Century
Cultural Descriptions and Eyewitness Encounters
The Writing of Difference
Race Words
The Structure of This Book
Chapter 2: Scattered Nations: Jews and Greeks
Scattered and Enslaved Swindlers
Drinking and Dancing Greeks
Unlearned, Vulgar, and Frivolous
Eyewitness Accounting and Ways of Seeing
Edited and Appropriated Descriptions
Edited Voices of Others
Comparative Interests
Scattered Nations?
Chapter 3: Eastern Christians
Listing and Categorizing Christians
Counting Their Numbers
In the Holy Sepulchre
Crossing Paths with Eastern Christians
Slaves of the Sultan: And Spectacles of Difference
Chapter 4: Viewing and Addressing Women
Teaching Lessons with the Help of Female Examples
Dress and Women’s Value
Covering Women
Lascivious Ladies: Clothing, Morals, and Cosmetics
Famous Beauties
Classy Ladies of the Rich
Encounters and Accessibility
Free to Roam: And to Gaze At
Chapter 5: Free Franks and Visiting Westerners
Free Men of the West, French, or Catholics
Catholic Identifications and Merging Identities
Vulnerable Franks
Franks of Europe and the Love of Strangers
Chapter 6: Conclusion: ‘Sundry Sorts of Nations’
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Literature
Index
