Galata and the Early Modern Mediterranean World

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.

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.   

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Contributor Bios

	Fariba Zarinebaf obtained her PhD in Middle Eastern history from the University of Chicago in 1991. She is a professor of history at the University of California-Riverside and was the former director of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies there. She has taught at Bilkent University, Northwestern University and the University of Virginia. Among her publications are, Les Iraniens d’Istanbul, co-edited with Thierry Zarcone, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century Istanbul (University of California Press, 2010), Mediterranean Encounters, Trade and Pluralism in Galata (University of California Press, 2018) and Fariba Zarinebaf, John Bennet and Jack L. Davis, A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece (American School of Classical Studies, 2005), Women on the Margins: Gender, Charity and Justice in the Early Modern Middle East ( Isis press, 2014). Her next book is tentatively entitled; The Last of the Silk Caravans, Cross-Cultural Trade and Urban Life on the Ottoman-Safavid Silk Road in the Early Modern Period.
	Sam Dolbee is a lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. His research is on the environmental history of the late Ottoman Empire told through the frame of locusts in the Jazira region.
	Nir Shafir researches the intellectual and religious history of the Middle East, from roughly 1400-1800, focusing on material culture and the history of science and technology. He is an assistant professor of history at UCSD.

Further Listening

	Fariba Zarinebaf	144 2/8/14	Galata and the Capitulations
	Malte Fuhrmann	500 4/1/21	Ottoman Port Cities of the Modern Mediterranean
	Joshua White	435 11/22/19	Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean
	Robyn Dora Radway	465 7/5/2020	Mementos from Habsburg Life in Ottoman Istanbul
	Pascale Barthe	315 3/23/17	Early French Encounters with the Ottomans
	Nur Sobers-Khan	181 12/11/14	Slavery and Manumission in Ottoman Galata

Credits

Episode No. 507
Release Date: 23 July 2021
Recording Location: Chicago, IL / Somerville, MA / Torino
Sound production by Sam Dolbee
Additional thanks to Chris Gratien
Music: Blue Dot Sessions, "Fifteen Street,"; Zé Trigueiros, "Saez" 

Images and bibliography courtesy of Fariba Zarinebaf

Images

Arap Camii.

 

St. Louis de Francis Church.

Former French Embassy, Istanbul, overlooking Golden Horn.

Fariba Zarinebaf at Galata Court Street. 

Galata court document on the sale of the house of the French ambassador in 1798. 

Ordinance by king banning intermarriage between French subjects and Ottoman women, 1726, Chamber of Commerce, Marseille. 

Select Bibliography

Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 ( Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990).

Edhem Eldem, French Trade in in Istanbul in the Eighteenth century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999).

Ismail Hakki Hadi, Ottoman Dutch merchants in the Eighteenth Century: Competition and Cooperation in Ankara, Izmir and Amsterdam ( Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012).

Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY: Syracuse University press, 2005).

Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1984).

Michael Talbot, British-Ottoman Relations, 1661-1807Commerce and Diplomatic Practice in Eighteenth Century Istanbul ( Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2017).

Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, identity and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

Mauris H. Van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls and Beratlis in the Eighteenth Century ( Leiden: E.J. brill, 2005).

Junkor Thérèse Takeda, Between Crown and Commerce, Marseille in the Early Modern Mediterranean ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

Fariba Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century Istanbul (UC Press, 2010).