Ottoman naval forces during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries often included corsairs as components of the military forces that were employed by the state in its rivalry with other naval powers for control of the Mediterranean Sea. Individuals could during their careers be employed by the state as corsairs, while later during a war or campaign they might be given an official position in the Ottoman military hierarchy. Because the division between official and supplementary forces was porous, the extent of the contribution of corsair forces to the success of Ottoman seapower can be overstated. In 1543 Suleyman commissioned his admiral, Hayreddin Pasha, to lead the Ottoman fleet to the western Mediterranean shores to aid Francis I of France against their common enemy, Charles V. Hayreddin commanded the official Ottoman fleet, which was financed by the Sultan. Corsairs also accompanied the fleet during parts of this campaign and participated in some of the military actions. Despite the fact that they were not part of the official navy, they were nevertheless part of the effective naval military force. Although, the official fleet wintered at Toulon at the expense of the Ottoman and French governments, the corsairs had to fend for themselves and spent the winter in North Africa. This paper will analyze the composition of the Ottoman naval forces during this expedition to delineate the relationship between the official and unofficial naval forces of the Ottoman Empire that contributed to the development of effective Ottoman naval power during the sixteenth century. In addition to this expedition, other comparable campaigns will be analyzed to determine the corsair contribution to Ottoman naval forces. The campaign of 1543-44 will be studied using Ottoman chronicles such as the Tarih-i Feth-i ?iklo? ve Estergon ve ?stunibelgrad by Nasuh Matrakç? and Gazavat-? Hayreddin Pa?a by Muradi, which includes documents. In addition, western sources that recount the size and composition of the fleet will also be analyzed such as Jérome Maurand, Itinéraire de Jérome Maurand d’Antibes à Constantinople 1544 and Henry, “Documents relatifs au séjour de la flotte turque de Barberousse à Toulon, pendant l’hiver de 1543 a 1544.” By analyzing Ottoman naval campaigns of the first half of the sixteenth century this paper will determine the extent to which Ottoman naval power relied on the recruitment of non-state forces, as well as compare this to similar practices by European powers during this period.

Historians have addressed early-modern (1600-1800) globalization as a largely European-centered phenomenon, shaped by the economic links and cultural encounters that came with the expansion of Europe overseas into the Americas and Asia. This paper tells a related but different globalization story, one that brings connections among the Ottoman Empire, the western Mediterranean, and colonial North America to center-stage by telling the story of “Selim the Algerine,” a hapless victim of early-modern globalization. The paper briefly narrates the life of the historical Selim (as he came to be known), son of an Ottoman official from Algiers, who was captured by Spanish pirates in the western Mediterranean in the mid-eighteenth century, sold into slavery, and transported to Louisiana, from where he escaped and ultimately found shelter in English settler society in Williamsburg, Virginia. His life story brings globalization into a different focus, as merchants, slavers, and settlers operate their new networks far from Europe. I am concerned not only with demonstrating how globalization connected disparate areas of the globe through the movement of goods, people, and ideas (all of which we find in Selim’s story), but also with how a figure like Selim was understood as he crossed a number of cultural borders. What did Selim represent for those who interacted with him? As a “face” of globalization, what kinds of reflections and reactions did his presence provoke, both at the time of his adventures and subsequently when his story achieved quasi-mythic standing in local culture? I rely primarily on contemporary accounts of Selim preserved in memoirs and letters from the period, housed in the College of William and Mary Special Collections and the Rockefeller Library in Williamsburg. There are, in addition, a number of local tales and legends collected in Tidewater and Appalachian lore. As a historian of the Middle East, I place this material very much in the context of the Ottoman/Algerian educational and broader cultural practices of the time that produced Selim and the patterns of trade and piracy that launched him on his journey.

One of the most prominent and challenging works left by the Ottoman scholar and polymath Katip Çelebi is his massive geographical work, the Cihânnümâ, which was never completed. The noted Ottoman founder of its first printing-press, Ibrâhîm Müteferrika, considered it important enough to expand upon its foundations and print the work in 1732. The development of the Cihânnümâ is remarkable, at least in part, because Katip Çelebi recognized the utility of several treatises of European geographical literature that had been emerging in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Having had these works translated by intermediaries, he was in the process of rewriting the work with the input from this foreign literature when he died in 1657. While the work has since attracted the attention of a number of German scholars, interest in it has otherwise languished in favor of Katip Çelebi's other, more accessible works, such as _The Balance of Truth_ or his catalogue of medieval and early modern works of Islamic civilization. The goal of this paper is to examine how Katip Çelebi interpolated discussions of European expansion throughout the world into the structure of the Cihânnümâ. In particular, this paper hopes to focus on the author's discussion of Spanish exploratory and expansion-based missions into the regions of the Western hemisphere. Specifically, the printed text of the Cihânnümâ focuses on the figures of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan as critical figures in this process. Through an examination of these chapters of the work, and perhaps others, the paper will address the question of the extent to which an Ottoman intellectual like Katip Çelebi appreciated the impact and importance of European maritime expansion on the global history of his times.