Port cities and their transnational trade networks have recently been the subject of great attention and scholarship ( Goffman, Frangakis- Syrett, Greene, Mazower, Clancy- Smith). But there is still a division of labor between scholars who work on port cities in North Africa, the Western and the Eastern Mediterranean world. My paper will first examine the legal framework created by Capitulations first granted to the Genoese community in Galata ( Istanbul) in 1453 and Western European countries later from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, that led to the creation of free trade zones ( with lower tariffs), multiple legal jurisdictions and transnational trading communities across the Mediterranean ( Levantines), and the Eurasian networks of trade ( Armenians). I will examine the commercial possibilities (expansion of trade) as well as co-existence, competition and conflicts that resulted from an expansion in commercial life, multiple legal jurisdictions and the movement of traders and goods across these boundaries and between port cities. For a long time, it has been assumed that Muslims were absent from these networks. My study will revise this paradigm and will shed light on the cross-confessional commercial networks as well as conversion as a way of joining these transnational networks and benefitting from the privileges spelled out in the Capitulations. My study will be based on European consular reports available in the Basbakanlik archives, narrative accounts as well as Galata court records.

This paper examines the complexity of identity and loyalty of a family of non-Muslim intermediaries and translators, historically known as ‘dragomans,’ in the service of the British embassy in the early to mid 19th century. It focuses on the Pisanis, a Latin, or Catholic family of Italian origin who were among the family dynasties of dragomans employed by foreign embassies, and prominent members in the Levantine community of Istanbul. They maintained this position not only through their diplomatic work at the embassy, but also through intermarriage with other important members of that community, and their attachment and activity in the Catholic churches in the district of Pera. Yet, some members of this family did not identify themselves as being wholly or partially Levantine, Ottoman, or European. Their sense of ‘self,’ therefore, contrasts with our present analytical categories of non-Muslim residents in the Ottoman Empire, including geopolitical (Levantine and European), in-betweenness (Ottoman born, but viewed as Levantine because of their heritage), and foreign vs. local (European vs. Ottoman), to list a few. By focusing on the Pisanis, this paper has two aims. The first is to provide a glimpse into how members of this family legitimized their own sense of self, found in consular records from the British National Archives and the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives. Their identity claims can be linked to their positions as dragomans in the British embassy, and the diplomatic protection and benefits that they received through the Capitulatory agreement between the British and the Ottomans. The second is to consider how their own self-fashioning may have had an impact on their work as important intermediaries between the British and the Ottomans, calling into question the uncertainty of loyalty, an all too important requisite for employees of foreign embassies, and handlers of information between the British and the Ottomans. Doing so, tells a story through the perspective of ‘history from below,’ and suggests a refined understanding of the category of ‘identity’ of non-Muslims born in the Ottoman Empire, and their activity in the diplomatic community of Istanbul.

The subject of "religious" slavery in the early modern Mediterranean has received considerable attention by both European and Middle Eastern specialists. While research has focused on the actions of slaving states and the conditions of life for the enslaved, historians have paid relatively little attention to the role that status and bi-lateral treaties played in the ransom and release of individual captives. This paper explores inter-state negotiations around the captivity of the Ottoman governor of Rhodes, Mustafa Pasha, who had fallen captive when his Christian galley slaves succeeded in overwhelming his Muslim crew and sailed his ship from the Aegean to La Valletta. The paper documents the role of French diplomats as representatives of Ottoman interests in Catholic lands as well as the increasing importance of treaty obligations, trade, and principles of reciprocity in protecting high ranking persons and their property under the most adverse political circumstances.

Scholars of dragomans in the Ottoman Empire have underscored the danger of studying these actors from a national perspective, emphasizing their ‘cosmopolitan’ life styles, multiple identities and specific role as political and cultural intermediaries. While this might stand true for the early modern period, the nineteenth century however offers a less clear cut picture. By then some of the Great Powers had moved towards instituting ‘national’ drogmanat’s, recruiting from among their own nationals (e.g. France, Austria), while others started plans to establish a similar system (e.g. Great Britain). The emergence of nationalism and, closely related to this, a growing contempt towards the supposedly ‘untrustworthy’ Levantines, are some of the reasons that can explain this change. Yet, many other foreign capitulatory states still relied heavily on Ottoman Christians (Greeks, Armenians, Levantines) to fill in the crucial positions of dragomans in their Embassies or Legations. To complicate the matter further, many of these dragomans, especially from the second half of the nineteenth century onward, obtained foreign citizenship. Whereas before these men only had the status of protégé of a European state (and technically still were Ottoman subjects) now they fully escaped Ottoman authority. This paper proposes to look at the case of Belgian diplomatic representation in Istanbul. The drago-mans working for this secondary state were mostly of Greek extraction. As in other European Mis-sions, they also were becoming gradually naturalized. Consequently we find for instance an Armenian-Greek dragoman writing about his loyalty to “la patrie”, referring to his new adoptive state, Belgium. While they clearly tried to position themselves as ‘Belgian’, they were never fully considered as such by their colleagues within the Belgian Legation, nor by their superiors in Brussels; instances of implicit racism are noticeable. The same goes for the Ottoman authorities, which still viewed these ‘Belgian’ dragomans as Ottomans. This paper aims to uncover this seemingly paradoxical dynamic, by taking a closer look at the individual careers of Belgian dragomans for the period 1838-1914. The archives of the Belgian Foreign Ministry (official correspondence, personnel files), supplemented with private papers of Belgian diplomats stationed in Istanbul, provide excellent source materials for this undertaking. By asking how these ‘Belgian’ dragomans negotiated conflicting identities (national, religious, ethnic) and what kind of strategies of self-fashioning they employed (and for what purposes), this paper will address broader questions about cultural hybridity, national belonging and Ottoman-European encounters during the long nineteenth century.