Mediterranean encounters : trade and pluralism in early modern Galata /
Fariba Zarinebaf.
- Oakland, California : University of California Press, (c)2017.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
A layered history : from a Genoese colony to an Ottoman port -- The rise of Pera : from a necropolis to diplomatic and commercial hub -- Ottoman ahdmanes, origins and development in the early modern period -- War, diplomacy and trade in the seventeethy and eighteenth centuries -- Feeding Istanbul : the merchants of Galata and the provisioning trade -- Between Galata and Marseille : from silks and spices to colonial sugar and coffee -- Sexual and cultural encounters in private and public spaces -- Epilogue : the unraveling of the French Revolution in Pera -- Appendix : Ottoman documents in English translation.
"Mediterranean Encounters traces the layered history of Galata--a Mediterranean and Black Sea port--to the Ottoman conquest, and its transformation into a hub of European trade and diplomacy as well as a pluralist society of the early modern period. Framing the history of Ottoman-European encounters within the institution of ahdnames (commercial and diplomatic treaties), this thoughtful book offers a critical perspective on the existing scholarship. For too long, the Ottoman empire has been defined as an absolutist military power driven by religious conviction, culturally and politically apart from the rest of Europe, and devoid of a commercial policy. By taking a close look at Galata, Fariba Zarinebaf provides a different approach based on a history of commerce, coexistence, competition, and collaboration through the lens of Ottoman legal records, diplomatic correspondence, and petitions. She shows that this port was just as cosmopolitan and pluralist as any large European port and argues that the Ottoman world was not peripheral to European modernity but very much part of it"--Provided by publisher.