Capitulations

Cyprus was an important medieval emporium, which maintained its commercial importance after the Ottoman conquest. The aims of this study are: to identify the consuls of Venice in Cyprus and their dragomans; to list the items of trade exported by the Venetians and the disagreements experienced between the merchants of Venice or the consuls in Cyprus and the Cyprus administrators in the first part of 17th century; and to investigate what the Venetian presence meant to the daily lives of the Cypriots. In addition, an attempt is made to illustrate Ottoman– Venetian relations from the Ottoman point of view, and to describe the role that the sea captains of Venice played in Ottoman trade between Cyprus and Istanbul in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, the Venetian consulate in Cyprus is compared with the one in Aleppo at the end of 18th century. The evidence used is derived principally from the records of the Nicosia cadi's court and of the Ottoman Prime Ministry archives in Istanbul.

ES: trabajo de investigación que explora el papel que tuvieron las capitulaciones de Santa Fe como fundamento histórico y jurídico de la conquista de las Indias.

EN: this research paper explores how the Santa Fe capitulations were the historical and legal instrument of the Indies.

This article analyses how the Catholic pilgrimage to Jerusalem was represented in the Ottoman capitulations of the seventeenth century. Religious articles were first encountered in capitulations granted to Catholic European states (France, Venice and the Holy Roman Empire), but later also in the ones granted to the Protestant Dutch Republic and to the Orthodox Russian Empire. Focusing his research on Ottoman texts, the author has identified three problematics raised by the scarce formulation of these articles: the pilgrims' political allegiance, their religious affiliation and travel conditions. The study has concluded that the capitulations revealed a close link between commerce and pilgrimage, that they refrained from endorsing one Christian faction over the other, and that the Russian treaties actually contained more detailed provisions regarding travel conditions to Jerusalem.

The arrest in 1905 of Edward Joris, an anarchist from Antwerp who had settled in Istanbul, for his implication in the failed bomb attack on Sultan Abdülhamid II, created anxiety and embarrassment among Belgian foreign policymakers. Public opinion, on both the domestic and international front, demanded a firm response from Brussels to what was perceived as the unlawful incarceration of an innocent Belgian citizen. Belgian diplomats initially adopted an aloof attitude, not wanting to strain official relations with Istanbul, but this position quickly changed after Joris was condemned to death. An official request for the extradition of the convict was sent to Istanbul giving rise to a diplomatic conflict, which only reached a solution when the Sultan pardoned Joris in 1907. This unusual episode in the history of Belgo-Ottoman relations—Catholic conservatives defending a leftist bomber and jeopardizing the interests of Belgian capitalists in the empire—offers an ideal case to investigate core features of prewar Belgian diplomacy, while providing a powerful illustration of some of the inevitable excrescences that were a structural part of unequal treaty law in the Ottoman lands.

Abstract  This article examines the hitherto unexamined Ottoman Turkish text of the Capitulations granted to the British in 1641. As well as containing the articles governing Ottoman-British trade and diplomatic jurisdiction, the Capitulations con- tained a historical narrative that provided a formal record of diplomatic encounters and practices. By emphasising the importance of bringing tributary gifts and royal letters as a precondition for receiving the friendship of the sultans, the inclusion of the historical narrative within the treaty text presented an Ottoman worldview that saw the sultan at the top of a hierarchy of monarchical power, but also created a layered narrative of precedent that strengthened the rhetoric of alliance through an ancient friendship. In examining the text of the Ottoman Turkish and English versions of this treaty, including full translations of the historical narratives in an appendix, this article makes the case for viewing the Ottoman Capitulations not just as historical treaties, but as historical texts.


Keywords: Capitulations, Ahdname, Ottoman-British relations, historical narrative, diplomacy



Bu makale şimdiye kadar incelenmemiş 1641 yılında İngilizlere verilen ahdname-i hümayunun Osmanlıca metn ini incelenmektedir. Osmanlı-İngiliz tica-reti ve diplomatik nüfuz alanlarını düzenleyen maddeleri içermenin yanısıra, kapi-tülasyonlar diplomatik karşılaşmaların ve uygulamaların resmi kaydını ortaya koyan bir anlatıyı da barındırmaktaydı. Sultan'ın dostluğundan yararlanmak için hediyeler ve kraldan mektup getirmenin öneminin altını çizmek suretiyle, tarihsel anlatının ahdname metnine dahil edilmesi, Sultan'ı saltanat hiyerarşisinin tepesinde konum-landıran Osmanlı dünya görüşünü göstermekle kalmamakta, aynı zamanda kadim dostluk yoluyla ittifak retoriğini güçlendiren katmanlı bir öncelik anlatısı yaratmak-tadır. Tarihsel anlatıların tam tercümelerini zeylde vermek suretiyle bu ahdnamenin Osmanlıca ve Türkçe versiyonlarını inceleyen makalemiz, Osmanlı ahdnamelerini sadece tarihsel antlaşmalar değil, aynı zamanda tarihsel metinler olarak da görmek gerektiğini savunmaktadır.



Anahtar Kelimeler: Kapitülasyonlar, Ahdname, Osmanlı-İngiliz ilişkileri, tarihsel anlatılar, diplomasi

Scholarship relating to the maritime nature of the Southern Levant depicts, for the most part, low-key, slow-paced activity. Indeed, the meager volume of this scholarship alone suggests as much, a fact which may explain the scarcity of references to the area in general Mediterranean literature. Several elements joined together to create such a picture, which is arguably inaccurate at best. Excessive attention has been awarded to the seamanship of the Jews, focusing mostly on written sources which are reticent on the issue. And, as far as concerns material evidence, particularism has dictated the tone in the approach of Israeli Archaeology towards the interpretation of coastal (and, indeed, dry-land-) sites; little has been done by way of a synthesized analysis, one that would supply finds with a wide, long-term historical context.
Owing to the accumulating produce of local maritime and coastal archaeology, such biases and lacunae are now more readily remediable. Especially, excavations conducted in shallow water along the coast of Israel have recently been able to produce a critical mass of evidence, possibly sufficient for answering various general questions of historical nature. In Dor alone some twenty-five sites of interest have been identified, more than a third of which have been excavated and established to consist of shipwrecks from the period of Late Antiquity. It is the intention of the paper abstracted here to approach late antique Dor through the scope of maritime activity, and to supply it with a historiographical contextualisation.

The main concern of scholars treating the circumstances of European presence in the Ottoman Levant has for a long time been with the capitulations, the privileges by which non-Muslim foreigners were allowed to reside and trade in the Ottoman Empire without becoming Ottoman subjects. Traditionally, they have been regarded as the basis for Ottoman-European political and commercial relations, and the only things protecting the European communities in the Ottoman Empire from the abuses of Ottoman justice and administration. As a consequence, a lot has been written about the frequent ineffectiveness of these documents against “unjust” or “excessive” financial demands by Ottoman officials.
    Such demands, commonly called “avanias”, have been seen to epitomise the central government’s lack of control over local and provincial administration, the rapacity and arbitrariness of Ottoman officials and the helplessness of the European merchant communities who could save themselves and their trade only by paying dearly. Whatever the true nature of these “avanias”, it would seem they could offer interesting insights into the workings of Ottoman-European relations. But unfortunately not much research has been done on them.
    In this paper I will present two cases of exaction involving the inheritances of a Dutch and an English merchant of seventeenth-century Izmir, and see what they might tell us about the phenomenon avania and the day-to-day contacts between local Ottoman administration and the European merchants in the Levantine seaports. Before going over to the actual subject of avanias, however, I would like to begin with a short introduction to the capitulations and the trade they governed.

The port-city of Izmir (old Smyrna) plays a crucial role in modern world history. From the 1570s, that city became subjected to European mercantile interests and quickly developed into the main conductor of an irreversible European takeover of the Ottoman economy – the structural basis of a centuries-long decline of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire. Or, so the historical consensus dictates. The problem is that this consensus has been constructed over a conspicuous shortage of sources by an overreliance on grand theories paired with a fundamental misunderstanding of the Ottoman (political, legal, economic and social) system and its solutions to the challenges of the times. This study wants to uncover and question the teleological (mostly Eurocentric, oftentimes triumphalist) historiography of city, empire and world systems that have resulted. In its stead, it lays the foundations of a historiography that restores 17th-century Izmir (and perhaps early-modern Ottoman civilization) to the role of an active and autonomous participant-alternative to Europe’s expanding world system.

The Ottoman Empire framed its relations with non-Muslim states through peace agreements known as capitulations. While their renewals also came with additional articles, in the early seventeenth century the Ottoman-Venetian peace agreements took a unique twist: the capitulations' texts remained unchanged, with new articles being implemented through separate documents labelled as "imperial signs" (nişan-ı hümayun). In this paper, I will argue that two such documents, granted to Venice in 1604 and 1639, differ both in form and function from other nişans and that they played a crucial role in the peace-making process, along with the capitulations.

L’analisi transnazionale dell’anarchismo in quanto fenomeno globale implica l’utilizzo di
prospettive diferenti che connettano luoghi e contesti attraversati da persone e gruppi, idee ed esperienze. Dalle biografe individuali, ai molteplici legami con la madrepatria fno alle rotte condivise
dall’esilio e dall’emigrazione dentro e fuori il Mediterraneo, lo studio si focalizza sull’anarchismo
interno alla comunità italiana in Egitto nel suo periodo di massimo vigore (1899-1906). Il caso
specifco è occasione per rifettere su come i modelli di integrazione, continuità e organizzazione a
cui diede vita il radicalismo globale dell’epoca non possano prescindere dalle specifcità dei contesti
di arrivo o passaggio in una regione, quella a Sud ed Est del Mediterraneo, sottoposta a diferenti
forme di colonialismo (europeo, ottomano e capitolare).

Having gained the ahdname, ahdname-i hümâyûn or capitulation, a European nation was permitted to establish an embassy in Istanbul and consulates in the ports of the Ottoman Empire. In 1740, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies gained an ahdname as a result of the attempts made by her king. The aims of this study are: to evaluate the capitulation of 1740 granted to Sicilyateyn, to identify the early ambassadors of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and their dragomen in the Ottoman capital and to explain the concept called hadd-i itidal concerning the dragomen from the Ottoman point of view in the 18th century. The evidence used is derived principally from the records of the Nicosia qadi’s court and of the Ottoman Prime Ministry archives in Istanbul.
Keywords
Cyprus, Ottoman, Neapolitan, trade, dragoman, capitulation

This study summarize the Ottoman capitulations, their historical background and historical development. Purpose of Ottoman capitulations as an instrument of diplomatic relations was generally ignored by the researches. This study evaluates the status of foreign subjects, international merchants, ambassadors, consuls, dragomans according to capitulations. There had been many conflicts between the merchants and local authorities. The paper also analyise the settlement of these disputes and the relationship between capitulations and local law.

L'analyse du texte de l'Onirocriticon d'Artémidore de la deuxième moitié du IIe siècle ap. J.-C., de sa partie théorique ainsi que du catalogue des rêves, montre assez le grand intérêt que les chercheurs peuvent y trouver. C'est un texte qui ouvre de nouvelles voies aux historiens et particulièrement aux historiens de mentalité, aux spécialistes de l'iconographie, de la symbolique, ou de l'anatomie et à tous ceux qui s'intéressent à la flore ou à la faune, à la cuisine ou à la médecine. Il est indispensable de l'étudier dans son intégralité et non d'une façon fragmentaire, puisqu'il nous donne l'image de la société dans toute sa complexité. Nous avons réuni 3421 rêves racontés par des hommes, femmes ou enfants de toutes couches sociales, que nous analysons en utilisant le logiciel Excel. Ce sont des Grecs en majorité, mais aussi des Romains, citoyens d'Ephèse ou d'autres cités de l'Orient grec. Nous parlons de toutes les occupations et de tous les métiers de cette société ancienne de l’Orient romain. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à la société, à sa structure et son image. Il nous semble que cette source, souvent méprisée, devrait attirer davantage l'attention des chercheurs.
Onirocriticon metninin, hem teorik kısmınin hem de rüyalarin kataloğunun analizi, araştırmacılarin büyük ilgisini çekmektedir. Burada bahsedilen metin, tarihçilere, sosyal bilimcilere, ikonografi uzmanlarina ve de hayvanlar, bitkiler, mutfak ve tipla ilgilenen herkese, semboller ve anatomi ile ilgili yeni yollar açmaktadir.
Bu metni, bütün olarak incelemek mümkün değildir, çünklü bize toplumu bir bütün olarak tanitmaktadir. Bilgisayar yardimiyla, eserde incelediğimiz 3.421 rüyayi biraraya getirdik.
Burada, Artemidor ile ilgili olan çalişmalarimizin bir kismini sunuyoruz. En çok ilgilendiğimiz şey, toplum, toplumum yapisi ve görünümüydü. Araştırmacıların, çok kez eleştirilen bu kaynakla daha çok ilgilenmeleri gerektiği kanaatindeyiz.
Αρτεμίδωρος ο Εφέσιος  (ή Αρτεμίδωρος ο Δαλδιανός): ή Ονειροκριτικός

(The actual proceeding will be later published) The period of first two Köprülü grand viziers have been generally reflected as one of bellicose territorial expansion. However, the military achievements of the father and son grand viziers have understandably overshadowed the peaceful dealings of the Ottoman Porte during their incumbency. To be explicit, Ragusan (1662), French (1673) and English (1675) capitulations were renewed during Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed’s term in office, whereas the Dutch were reassured of their former privileges (1668) and the Genoese were recognised once more as an independent trading nation in 1665. Most of these accords were reached due to the expansionist policy of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed:That is to say, the Ottoman strategy was implicitly built upon constructing peaceful relations with third parties during their conflicts in Eastern Europe or the Mediterranean. A similar peaceful connection was desired by the Swedish Kingdom in late 1660’s through Crimean mediation by the dispatch of a certain Aslan Aga to the Ottoman Porte. The Aga was authorised by the Swedish Chancery to conclude amicable relations with the Ottoman Empire along with a commercial treaty whose provisions would grant the Swedish Kingdom the same capitulatory privileges with the British in exchange of 40 000 occa of copper to be annually shipped to the Ottoman Empire. Even though the preliminary response of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha was positive, the hardships of maintaining a commercial convoy in the Mediterranean discouraged more serious undertakings and the Swedish enthusiasm came to a pre-mature end. The intermediary agent, Aslan Aga, left behind a short relazione of his dealings in the Ottoman Empire, a copy of which is preserved in the Swedish Royal Archives and constitutes the main narrative source of the present study.

Little in the study of history illustrates the bias of the selective timeframe quite like the study of empire. In the great empires of the past selecting a time frame shapes not only the questions asked, but the results, often to the point of invalidating a useful past. Etymologists, for whom looking backward is a method of seeking origin, not justification or revision, are often freer to explore the historical origins than historians; with this idea firmly in mind, this paper seeks to examine the contentious issue of Ottoman capitulations to the Western Empires in a etymological manner that follows the evolution and usage of the word 'capitulation' and considers alternative historiographical methodologies that would assist in understanding the structural forces and changes overtime. Put simply, the use of the long-term in the study of empire allows a recovery of important issues that are rendered invisible, intentionally or otherwise, by a limited timeframe.

Avrupali bir devletin tuccarlarinin Osmanli Imparatorlugu sinirlari icerisinde serbestce ticaret yapabilmesi icin Osmanli devletinin soz konusu Avrupali devlete ahidname-i humayun vermis olmasi gerekliydi. Ahidname-i humayun sayesinde dost devletler Istanbul’da elci bulundurabilir, Osmanli ticaret merkezlerinde konsolosluk kurabilir ve ahidname sahibi devletin tuccar ve tebasi kendi bayraklari altinda serbestce ticaret yapabilirdi. Bir baska deyisle yabanci elciler, konsoloslar, tuccar ve teba kapitulasyon semsiyesi altinda faaliyet gosterirdi. Bu calismanin temel amaci XVIII. yuzyilda Kibris’ta gorev yapan Ingiliz konsoloslarini tespit ederek; bu yuzyilda konsoloslarin gorev anlayisinda yasanan degisimi, Kibris konsoloslugunun Halep’e bagliligini, Kibris Ingiliz konsoloslarinin diger devletler adina yaptigi konsolos vekilligini, Kibris Ingiliz konsoloslarin gelir kaynaklari ile guvenliklerini ve XVIII. yuzyilda Kibris’ta, kapitulasyon korumasi altinda faaliyet gosteren Ingiliz tucc...

Using archival documents in the Ottoman archives related to British travellers in the Ottoman empire who were travelling under the protection of the capitulations, this article examines the yol emri (travel permit) issued to travellers by the Ottoman state and focuses specifically on the case of Edward Wortley Montagu. In so doing it seeks to highlight the importance of Ottoman archival sources for an understanding of the diplomatic and commercial relations between Britain and the Ottoman empire, an importance that is often overshadowed by a heavy reliance on British sources.

When the Dutch Republic and the Ottoman Empire established formal relations in 1612, they committed themselves to maintaining friendly diplomatic relations as well as commercial ones. Seventeenth-century Dutch diplomacy in Istanbul revolved around Dutch trade, especially in Izmir. Ottoman cultivation of the Dutch served mainly international strategic purposes, for their role in which the Dutch received unusually benign Ottoman treatment. Formal diplomacy aside, relations between these states and their subjects materialized in the everyday contact between Turks, Franks, Latins, Greeks, Armenians and Jews in Izmir. The development of that city peaked during the pivotal years 1675 - 1678. In these mere four years a confluence of administrative, commercial, and international political developments transformed the Dutch nation of Izmir from a collective of smuggling freebooters into a discrete professional community. As such, these years are an endpoint as well as a starting point in Ottoman-Dutch relations: they mark the shift of the primacy of the Dutch Levant trade in a Mediterranean mould, towards the primacy of professional Dutch international diplomacy.

This article unearths the little-known history of the Hanseatic legation in mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul through a close reading of the career and writings of its head of mission Andreas David Mordtmann. A trained Orientalist, Mordtmann ventured well beyond the social and spatial boundaries that seemed to confine the select and inward-looking diplomatic milieu of Pera. He travelled extensively throughout Anatolia and had close relationships with notable Ottoman high-officials and intellectuals. After the legation was disbanded in 1859, these contacts secured him employment in the Ottoman state service. Applying a transcultural approach, the article examines Mordtmann's overlapping and often conflicting roles of diplomat and scholar in the light of recent scholarship on nineteenth century diplomatic culture and (German) Orientalism, paying particular attention to his complex position as an observer with multiple and shifting political, cultural, and professional affinities. Uncovering the mental and material worlds of this Orientalist-turned-diplomat-turned-Ottoman will not only shed new light on some of the intricacies of diplomatic life in Istanbul, but also show how it was ultimately more 'locally embedded' than previously presumed in the literature.

Öz Kudüs şehri birçok din ve mezhebe ait toplulukların bir arada yaşadığı özel bir yerdir. Şehir, tarih boyunca çeşitli devletler tarafından yönetilmiştir. Osmanlı Devleti de dört yüzyıl boyunca şehre hâkim olmuş ve bu süreç içerisinde farklı dinlere ait toplulukların din, eğitim ve sosyo-ekonomik alanlardaki yaşamlarını düzenlemek amacıyla çeşitli kanunnameler hazırlamıştır. Gayrimüslimlerin de şehirde dini-kültürel faaliyetlerini sürdürebilmeleri için birtakım kurumlar inşa etmelerine izin verilmiştir. Ancak ilerleyen yıllarda kapitülasyon anlaşmaları yoluyla imtiyaz elde etmiş olan Avrupa Devletlerinin Ortadoğu coğrafyasında yeni hedefler belirlemeleri ile birlikte şehir mülkiyet mücadelesinin yaşandığı bir alana dönüşmüştür. Osmanlı Devleti, Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nın başlaması ile birlikte kapitülasyonları kaldırarak imtiyazlar yoluyla mülk edinen yabancı kurumları denetleme fırsatı elde etmiştir. Bu çalışmada kapitülasyonların kaldırılma sürecinde yabancıların denetimindeki mülklere yönelik hazırlanan talimatnameleri, bunların yürütülmesi sürecinde oluşturulan komisyonların çalışmalarını ve bu sürecin Kudüs gibi kozmopolit bir şehirdeki uygulamalarını incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bunun için Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi'nde yer alan birincil kaynaklar incelenmiş, çalışma ikincil kaynaklar ile de desteklenmiştir.
Abstract
The Property Rights in the Ottoman Jerusalem of Wartime (1914-1918) Jerusalem is a special place where communities, belonging to many religion and sect, live together. The city was ruled by various states throughout history. The Ottoman Empire also ruled over the city for four centuries and during this process the empire issued various decrees to regulate the lives of the communities belonging to different communities in religion, education and socioeconomic areas. Non-Muslims were allowed to build some institutions in order to continue their religious-cultural activities in the city as well. However, in the subsequent years, with the setting of new targets in Middle East geography by the European States, which have obtained concessions through capitulation agreements, the city had transformed into an area where the urban property struggle took place. With the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman State obtained the opportunity to inspect foreign institutions that acquired property
through concessions by abolishing the capitulations. This study aims to examine the regulations drafted for the properties under the control of the foreigners in the process of abolishing the capitulations, the works of the commissions formed during their execution and the implementation of this process in a cosmopolitan city like Jerusalem. For this study, the primary sources in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives were examined and the study was reinforced by the secondary sources.

The capitulations were one of the most central and long lasting problematiques of the history of the Ottoman economy, which covers a great span of Ottoman history from the very inception of notable a international trade on the Ottoman Mediterranean till the aftermath of dissolution of the Empire.
Vast majority of the existing studies are either specified with seperate and isolated perspective of either law or commerce and/or stuck with the extensions of the declinist paradigm by depicting the capitulations as a totally harmful practice and a stigma on the state authority/“sovereignty”.
Through this paper, I am intended to define the capitulations, to dwell on their historical venture, to remark their impact and to tackle with the misconceptions regarding them.

The chief aim of this article is to unearth, explicate, and contextualize the various techniques on which Mahmut Esat, Turkey's agent before the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Lotus case, drew in order to narrate a fresh understanding of Turkish "nationhood" during a period of intense vulnerability for the newly established republic. The argument advanced by Turkey in this case--that it need not demonstrate the existence of a specific jurisdictional exception in international law in order to proceed with its prosecution of the French captain of the Lotus, a French vessel--has often been dismissed as an example of cynical apologetics. Nevertheless, a close reading of Turkey's pleadings reveals that it was inclined to oscillate between a variety of universalistic and particularistic approaches, Esat litigating the Lotus with an eye to exploiting the schism that lies at the heart of the concept of "civilization" so as to submit Turkey to the normative authority of the international legal system while bolstering its positive power as an independent sovereign state. More specifically, it was by merging two modes of reasoning--the one prizing systematicity, the other prioritizing sovereignty--that Esat sought to construct a new, robustly reconciliatory identity for the "Turkish nation", one that would enable it to embrace its commitment to international order by securing its place in "la civilisation contemporaine" while amplifying the ambit of its autonomy as "un état civilisé".