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A Business alla Turca? Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants in Eighteenth-Century European Commercial Literature Mathieu Grenet* This essay investigates the role business patterns played in the perception European traders had of their Ottoman counterparts in eighteenth-century Levantine trade, particularly the commercial traffic in the Eastern Mediterranean between the Ottoman Empire and Western European powers (mainly France, England, the Netherlands and the Italian states). It is based on a close reading of a wide portion of the commercial literature available at this time (with special reference to French texts), including business treatises and handbooks, as well as memoirs and correspondences of traders.1 What emerges from these readings is a picture composed on the one hand of the classical image of the Levantine trader, whose features epitomize the specificity of Ottoman business practices and the permanence of European orientalism, and, on the other, of a fragmented and subtle perception that derives from practical experiences of traders with the Ottoman Empire and its subjects. The basic assumption of this essay is that far from being opposed, these representations are two faces of the same coin, making the image of the eighteenth-century Ottoman trader both stereotypical and multifaceted. Following a brief overview of Levantine trade, consisting of a critical review of the main arguments in the abundant literature on the topic, this essay will explore how discourses on Ottoman otherness took into account a certain 37 38 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies number of “Oriental” business practices—whether real or assumed—and then analyze how patterns of trade were instrumental in the acknowledgement of differences among these business partners who were lumped together as “Levantines” or “Ottomans.” Two Worlds Made One? European–Ottoman Trade in the Eighteenth Century “De tous les commerces maritimes, il n’en est pas de plus utile, pour les François, que celui qu’ils font dans les Etats du Grand-Seigneur, considéré sous tous ses rapports.”2 There is no doubt that the Levant trade constituted a major commercial stake to eighteenth-century European states. A countless number of French, English and Italian reports and treatises set forth the need to control bits (if not all) of it, and most of them put forward three reasons to establish or consolidate a Western presence in the Levant: economic, since the Ottoman market was a very wide and rich outlet for European goods; political, for commercial interest constituted a good incentive to maintaining peace with such a fearful and terrible neighbor as the Ottoman Empire; cultural, because Levant trade provided the European market with a variety of goods that were part of a fascinating and somewhat fantasized “Orient” that raised great interest and curiosity in “the West.”3 Within the Levant trade system, the Ottoman Empire was the outlet of a variety of European goods ranging from woolen cloth to sugar and coffee. Appreciative of the almost endless quantity of European goods sent to the Ottoman market, the Chevalier d’Arvieux wrote: “Il est constant que le Grand Seigneur auroit déjà rompu avec nous s’il n’avoit pu se passer de notre commerce. Celui des Vénitiens, des Anglois, des Hollandois et des Génois fournit son Empire de tout ce qu’ils peuvent désirer, et qui n’est point dans les Etats du Grand Seigneur, comme sont les draps d’or et de laine, le papier, le plomb, l’étain et les épiceries.”4 To put it in both economic and global terms, there is little doubt that this link between European products and Ottoman market was strengthened in the eighteenth century by the increasing technological advance taken by the “West” over the “East”: as a consequence of the improvement of manufacturing techniques, the rise of productivity led European fabricants and merchants to look for new markets to sell their goods, a function that came to be performed by the large, affluent, and accessible Ottoman market. In exchange for these goods, the Empire exported to Western Europe a large variety of textile materials, from wool and hair, cotton and linen, to wax, oil and wood. But the Empire did not only sell its own products, and a significant share Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 39 of its commercial balance consisted in the income of its activity as an interface between Europe and far East Asia. Such a business was all the more profitable, especially since the two principal commodities that passed from Asia to Europe through the Middle East were namely silk and spices, two high-value products that allowed Ottoman brokers to levy high commissions on their sales. But aside from the typology of the goods exchanged, one of the most significant features of the Levant trade is that it remained unbalanced until the early nineteenth century. Generally speaking, in the eighteenth century, European demand for Eastern goods was still greater than the value of the Western goods bought by the Ottomans. As the Chevalier de Jaucourt wrote in the entry “Turquie” of the Encyclopédie, “les marchandises que les nations européennes fournissent aux Turcs, ne sont point d’un assez grand prix pour pouvoir être échangées avec les leurs, sans un retour considérable en argent comptant. Les Anglois, les François & les Vénitiens sont obligés de fournir beaucoup de comptant pour la balance.”5 Whereas the Levant trade constituted a significant share of the balance of trade of many European powers, it accounted only for a small part of the overall volume of trade carried on by the Ottomans. Much more important were the revenues of the internal commerce of the Empire, as well as of the international trade it carried out with Asia and the Indian Ocean. As Malcolm Wagstaff put it: the volume of inter-regional trade within the Levant itself during the eighteenth century points to the integrity of a trading system within the Ottoman empire at that time. Possibly only those items surplus to the Levant’s own needs were exported to Europe. It is also clear that the Levant was part of a wider trading system which was orientated towards the East, as well as the West.6 While the superiority of domestic trade constituted “perhaps the most important single fact about Ottoman trade with the world in this century,” the Ottoman Empire was nevertheless getting more and more dependent on Europe, particularly European technology and capital.7 Interestingly enough, some writings of the period already took note of the disequilibrium in the Levant trade system. For example, Elias Habesci’s Present state of the Ottoman Empire (1784) states that “there is not doubt but that the commerce of the Europeans with Turkey is injurious to the internal œconomy of the Ottoman empire, and one cause of its decline. The merchandize carried into Turkey is of great value, and what they export is not.”8 Habesci’s statement may seem clearsighted for the time, but it overemphasizes a balanced trade, whereas the real 40 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies effects on the Ottoman empire included incorporation into the capitalist world economy and the limitation of a foreign policy based on the awarding of trade privileges to allied powers, such that increasingly convergent European powers made it difficult for the Ottomans to resist new international pressures and to defend its formerly undisputed international influence and regional leadership (it is worth recalling here that the eighteenth century was for the Ottoman Empire a period of military defeats—at Karlowitz in 1699, Passarowitz in 1718 and Küçük Kaynarca in 1774). The Levant trade played a part in the process of “Westernization” that characterized Ottoman society by the end of the early modern period. If the question remains open about how early and profound this process really was, one can hardly deny that the Levant trade with Europe played a major role in it. Attempting to reassess the chronology of such Westernization, Rhoads Murphey rightly points out the influence European material culture exerted on Ottoman society, a phenomenon that also can be approached through the study of the importation to the Empire of Western commodities.9 One needs to keep in mind, however, that these encounters were mediated by institutions of trade meant to facilitate exchanges by “bridging the divide” between members of alien cultures. Such was for example the task of brokers, interpreters and consuls. The French offered the widest variety of these intermediaries of trade. In an attempt to establish a state monopoly, the French monarchy maintained an important diplomatic corps in the Levant (no fewer than thirty-three consuls, vice-consuls and secretaries in 1774). From Salonica to Alexandria and from Patras to Baghdad, these officials were in charge of controlling the French trade in the Levant. Organized into a firm hierarchy under close state surveillance, the “nations” brought together all French merchants in the Levant in accordance with the monarchy’s wish for administrative centralization. This endeavor reached its peak with the appointment of Colbert to the Ministry of Finance of King Louis XIV. Primarily concerned with the improvement of French cloth (a key commodity for the kingdom’s commercial balance), Colbert tried to establish a local network of intermediaries of trade that would protect French interests in business transactions. Among a series of other measures, he therefore decided to institute a practice of sending French youths between the ages of six and ten to Constantinople and Izmir, where they would learn Middle Eastern languages to serve as French interpreters upon graduation. Known as Jeunes de Langues, or “language youths,” these children were educated at the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand in Paris and at the Capuchin school in Constantinople, two institutions that were replaced in 1795 by the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris. Although the French case Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 41 epitomizes state-driven initiatives to control the Levant trade, the English and the Dutch also relied upon a solid network of local trade partners.10 The different strategies used by European nations to control and expand their share in the Levant trade aside, one should not fail to underline the striking “asymmetry” that existed between the Ottoman Empire and Europeans as a whole. As Voltaire himself noticed, Western nations used to send merchants and consuls to all places in the Levant, as well as ambassadors to Istanbul, whereas the Ottomans did not have consulates and embassies in European port cities and capitals before the very end of the eighteenth century (1792). Rather than a sign of Europe’s dependency on the Sublime Porte, such a feature seems to have reflected what McKay and Scott call “a basic assumption of superiority,” namely that the Ottomans considered diplomacy unnecessary in their relations with foreign powers. In the eighteenth century, though, the issue was commonly regarded as evidence of Ottoman—and in particular Muslim—indifference to commerce, a myth which became “axiomatic in Ottoman studies.”11 This “asymmetric” organization of Ottoman and European trade had its cultural consequences and counterpart. As Rhoads Murphey has put it, the “brief and artificially staged diplomatic encounters” that happened before the 1790s, “led to neither profounder knowledge about, nor better understanding and acceptance of, the West by the Ottomans.” What is more, reading of Ottoman diplomatic reports of the time illustrates another facet of this “asymmetry”: namely, that while Europeans engaged in “turcophilia,” Ottomans rarely expressed reciprocal feelings towards the Western world.12 Thus, to study the perceptions and representations of Ottoman traders by their European counterparts, one needs to keep in mind the context of intensification of the contacts between the two “worlds” and the difficulty of drawing a direct link between this phenomenon and a better understanding of the Ottomans by the Europeans—or the other way round. Encountering Worlds and the Making of the Levantine: Towards a Commercial Anthropology Though witty and half ironic, the description by Jaques Savary of a business transaction in an Egyptian bazaar illustrates the amazement experienced by European merchants while dealing with Arab colleagues: Le censal ou courtier arabe, par le ministère duquel un négociant françois veut vendre sa marchandise, porte la parole au négociant arabe qui la veut acheter, & le marché 42 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies s’en fait en peu de paroles, dans le oui ou dans le non ; mais il n’en est pas de même quand le censal porte la parole pour le négociant arabe au François auquel il voudrait bien vendre sa marchandise, car pour le persuader d’en donner davantage qu’il n’en offre, par une feinte colère, il semble en s’approchant de lui (sans pourtant le toucher) qu’il veut l’étrangler, en faisant des grimaces & des contorsions extraordinaires & ridicules, & puis d’une voix haute élevée & menaçante, il dit à ce François, n’as-tu pas perdu la raison d’offrir si peu de telle marchandise ? t’imagines-tu qu’elle ait été volée ? Et si ces paroles n’ont pas eu le succès qu’il espéroit alors, il se frappe la poitrine à grands coups de points [sic!], déchire sa chemise & ses habits, il se jette & se roule par terre comme s’il étoit possedé ; il appelle Dieu à temoin de la mésoffre que l’on fait à son patron. . . . Enfin ce censal voyant bien que tout ce qu’il a fait & dit n’a pû émouvoir le négociant françois, il revient à lui-même subitement comme si de rien n’étoit, & en se relevant lui prend la main droite, & en l’embrassant lui dit en riant, Le marché est fait au prix que tu as offert, & puis il léve les yeux au ciel en disant, halla quebar, & halla quebir, qui veut dire en Arabe, Dieu est grand, et très-grand. J’aurois eu peine à croire une manière de négocier si extraordinaire & si extravagante que celle-là, si un de mes amis qui a été dix ans Consul au Caire ne me l’avoit assuré.13 Interestingly enough, the text does not refer to any particular deal, but to Arab trade practices in general. Its prime interest therefore resides in what it shows of the way people from different cultural backgrounds came to perceive each other. In the eighteenth century, as Edhem Eldem has noted, this kind of analysis “developed into a genre of its own that, typically for the times, mixed first hand observations with an ‘anthropological’ approach . . . In that age of the Enlightenment, traders more and more frequently felt the need to pose as ‘scientific’ observers of a foreign culture, concentrating on those elements which were most familiar and critical to them.”14 Such a “commercial anthropology” had little to do with the social science we know today, but shares with it three basic features: the position of the observer (who, in the eighteenth century, was no longer a mere spectator or passerby), the critical approach of the object, and the “scientific” scope of the analysis. Its main purpose, however, was commercial: as stated in a report written around 1750, Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 43 “knowledge of the character and trade of natives, that is to say of the sellers and buyers, is necessary to the merchants who have to trade with them.”15 Primarily practical and informative, the knowledge was meant for reuse in situ by the reader. Despite the existence of such literature, establishing commercial contacts with local merchants and brokers remained challenging. Among the issues generally tackled by commercial reports and the journals and correspondences of traders, the differences in trade practices between Europe and the Levant seemed most problematic. Upon arrival to the Levant in 1812 as a representative of a Glasgow-based commercial house, trade agent Christophe Aubin wrote to the head of James Finlay & Company reports that testify for the “culture shock” he was then experiencing. Aubin’s disorientation had to do with very concrete issues, one of the most important being the discovery of a whole new business world in which he felt disoriented and vulnerable. By listing all the differences in trade practices in Glasgow and Istanbul, Aubin’s reports account for the radical otherness of the Ottoman world as a European mind perceived it. As the modern editor of his manuscript aptly summarized it, Aubin soon decided that Turkey was “a land where there was too little justice, but too much of everything else— fires, plagues, wars, rebellions, and worthless coinage.” Patterns of “Orientalism” aside, what is here at stake is a notion of “familiarity” defined as one’s capacity to get beyond otherness so as to create a social and cultural space which may be shared by people of different origins.”16 In the eighteenth century, such a view found its best expression in enlightened assumptions concerning the universality of commercial values and the art of trading, as well as celebrations of the cosmopolitan merchant. Samuel Ricard’s famous Traité général du commerce, published in Amsterdam in 1781, epitomizes it by opening with a clear profession of faith in trade as a “universal language”: “il n’y a point de science dont les règles soient plus simples & plus uniformes que celles du Commerce. .  .  . Les principes en étant partout les mêmes, on peut dire du Commerce, à en juger par ses effets, qu’il est un lien, qui, en attachant les hommes par l’intérêt, forme un seul peuple de toutes les nations de l’univers.” Far from being exceptional, such a sentiment is echoed by Kant’s belief that the spread of both republicanism and commerce would make possible the “universal cosmopolitan existence” which recognizes that the peoples of the earth have “entered in varying degrees into a universal community where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere.” To Kant, the daily experience of cultural encounters deriving from trade would make trade a “natural” incubator of values such as toleration and peace.17 44 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies Aubin’s account is radically at odds with such theoretical views. Rather, it might repeatedly underline the many actual differences that existed between European and Oriental ways of trading. Beyond the practical issues, such divergences turn out to reflect a moral gap between the two worlds. In Aubin’s words, “jealousy, and a desire of taking away other peoples business, at whatever price that can be done, a strong propensity to flattery, and not the strictest regard to truth, seem to me the leading features of the character of a Levantine Merchant.”18 In his attempt to typify the Levantine merchant, Aubin resorts to an “us-and-them” dialectic that permeates most of the literature on extra-European trade at this time. Far from being an original feature of his testimony, Aubin’s claim that Levantine merchants are corrupt was one of the topoi conveyed by treatises on trade and private correspondence alike. More than a Levantine mètis expressed through commercial craftiness, what was often underlined was the way these merchants made use of their own moral defaults in their business activities. Among these defaults, the most often mentioned are trickery, deception and fraud—all three linked to the same moral feature, namely the ability to feign, fake, and dissemble. If such qualities were often linked in popular discourse with commercial activities, the eighteenth century is also the time par excellence when the issue of the morality of trade is raised. A good example of such a concern is to be found in one of the letters sent by the Earl of Chesterfield to his son: “In business, you always play with sharpers; to whom, at least, you should give no fair advantages. It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said, ‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare’: I go still further, and say, that without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all. It is simulation that is false, mean, and criminal.” The line drawn by Lord Chesterfield between good and “criminal” commercial practices might seem thin and subtle, yet it is essential to understanding the way Western traders looked at their Levantine counterparts. Most of the time, Ottomans were regarded as people who went beyond the customary lines of what Westerners considered to be a “moral way to trade.”19 Within this context, the character of the Levantiner came to embody a form of radical otherness that stemmed both from philosophical reflections and ideas of the time, and from “anthropological” analysis based on the observation of Levantine trade practices. Ultimately, this “commercial anthropology” was embedded in the perspective of a broader human anthropology, within which the Levantine had a well-defined place. As claimed in a report from 1802, “le commerce du Levant et de Barbarie ne Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 45 peut être comparé ni à celui que les nations civilisées font les unes avec les autres, ni même à celui qu’elles exploitent dans le nouveau monde .  .  . Les nations qui les habitent tiennent un rang mitoyen entre les peuples civilisés et les nations barbares.” Quite expectedly, the practice of trade was viewed as one of the ways for the “barbarians” to transcend their primitive condition and reach a superior degree of human evolution. Such a belief is echoed in the very first lines of Samuel Ricard’s Traité général du Commerce: “L’Histoire rend au Commerce, un témoignage glorieux & vrai, en attestant qu’il a occasionné la civilisation de plusieurs nations sauvages.”20 These sentiments only partially reflect, however, the view European traders had of their Ottoman counterparts. The term “Levantine” was probably the most common in the commercial literature of the time, but it remained a vague and general label that concealed from readers the ethnic and religious divides within Ottoman society. It would be wrong to assume that all Levantines looked alike to European eyes (an assumption sometimes fostered by superficial accusations of “Orientalism”). Indeed, Western perception of Levantine reality was far more subtle and sophisticated when it came to everyday and concrete cases. European merchants also used different labels and ethno-religious categories which testify to a more refined perception of Ottoman identity. As Edhem Eldem writes, “when it came to the real actors of trade, however—local merchants, wholesalers, intermediaries—the French trading community knew better than to lump together all kinds of people. Clear distinctions were made between Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Turks [and] French traders perceived all these groups as highly differentiated, whose ‘national’ characteristics determined both their behavior and the way in which they should be approached.”21 Beyond the Levantine: Business Practices and Ethno-Religious Identities A multiethnic state concerned with its political stability and social peace, the Ottoman Empire acknowledged from early on the existence of its different ethno-religious components. A key element in the Empire’s social structure as well as political ideology, the millet system granted to the biggest nonMuslim minorities (namely the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Jews) a partial autonomy under the supreme authority of the sultan. According to an Ottoman saying, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Greeks, and Jews  were “the five fingers of the sultan’s hand.” As far as the merchants were concerned, however, a clear boundary divided Turks and minorities, the latter being in turn characterized by their belonging to the Armenian, the Greek, or the Jewish millet.22 While 46 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies the rigidity of this division remains a debated issue, it nevertheless constituted the backbone of much of the Ottoman social structure until the beginning of the Tanzimat period (1839), and therefore permeated the perception European merchants had of the Ottomans. The Turkish Merchant, between “Orientalism” and “Decline Paradigm” Studying the image Western traders had of their Ottoman counterparts, one cannot fail to notice how vague and ambiguous the term “Turks” remained until at least the mid-nineteenth century. In most European commercial literature, it bore no ethnic connotation whatsoever and designated Muslims, Turkishspeaking persons, or even Ottoman subjects in general (Muslims and nonMuslims alike). In the historiography, though, the term “Turk” is commonly used in reference to Turkish-speaking Ottoman Muslims, a working definition that is narrow by necessity, and implies a careful and critical reading of the sources and secondary literature.23 As far as Turkish merchants are concerned, very little is known about their business activities, especially their trade with European powers. Two main reasons account for such a gap. First, the fact that part of the Levant trade was left in the hands of non-Muslim Ottoman minorities (rayas) has led historians to focus their attention on those communities rather than on the Turks themselves. Second, the importance played by what Cemal Kafadar once called the “decline paradigm,” namely the belief that the decline of the Ottoman Empire was a long-lasting and irreversible process that owed much to cultural characteristics of Ottoman Turks and of the Empire’s religious and political authorities. Such a framework of analysis has permeated much of the historical research until very recently, leading historians to overlook evidence of Ottoman-Turkish dynamism (and even prosperity) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the light of archival research, though, it appears that Turkish merchants played a significant role in the Levant trade, as they controlled most of the commerce of high-value goods such as sugar, coffee, and certain textiles.24 Of all Ottoman traders, Turkish merchants embodied radical otherness, arousing considerable curiosity—as well as a good deal of suspicion, prejudice and contempt—among their European counterparts. In particular, a large number of European commercial treatises deal at length with the business practices of the Turks, most of them articulating points worth detailed analysis. One of the most common remarks about Turkish merchants has to do with their assumed reluctance to trade with foreigners, and therefore to engage in international trade. As Habesci summed it up in 1784, “The Turks Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 47 carry on scarcely any commerce beyond the confines of the Ottoman empire. [Their] principal commerce consists in transporting the commodities of the provinces of the empire, either in their natural or improved state, from one place to another: they are not willing to run any risk or hazard for greater advantages.”25 Among other reasons, authors of commercial treatises often invoke the prohibitions formulated by political or religious authorities, an issue that has been questioned by historians in absence of archival evidence. Historical research has shown, however, that although they were active in local trade, Turkish merchants (either through agents or in person) had also been involved in long-distance, transnational and cross-cultural trade from the late sixteenth century onwards in regions such as the Indian Ocean, the Black Sea, and even the Western Mediterranean. Almost an untouched field of research to date, the study of Ottoman Turkish involvement in international business ventures seems the only way to challenge seriously the aforementioned myth of Muslim lack of interest in trade.26 Another point most European commercial treatises insist on is Turkish ignorance of Western trade instruments—such as the letter of change, maritime insurance, and the commercial code and tribunal—and sophisticated business practices. Instead, Turkish merchants were assumed to entrust God with the fate of their business ventures—a superstitious behavior often interpreted as evincing yet more “backwardness.”27 Lastly, Turkish morality was also considered at odds with commercial values: quite apart from their recognized honesty and integrity, Turkish merchants were commonly regarded as idle, greedy, and haughty. Since all these features traditionally characterized the “Levantine” in Orientalist discourse, they ultimately maintained the distance between European traders and their Turkish counterparts. Such distance, initially rooted in the obvious cultural differences that existed between the two groups, can also be explained by a lack of familiarity and practical knowledge they had of each other. But as an eighteenth-century Mémoire sur le commerce françois du Levant convincingly argues, “it is not ordinarily with the Turk that we trade, it is not he who buys, it is not he who sells, it is the Jew, it is the Armenian, it is the Greek.”28 “Ottoman-ness” Reconsidered: Non-Muslim Minorities While the contribution of Turkish merchants to the Levant trade remains to be studied in depth, there is little doubt that most of the business partners and commercial intermediaries with whom the Europeans dealt on a daily basis in the Levant belonged to either the Greek, the Jewish, or the Armenian millet.29 No wonder, then, that Western commercial reports and treatises provide us with 48 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies more refined and better-informed remarks about them than about the Turks. However, these descriptions of the business practices of the minorities are also organized according to an immutable series of points. For this reason, and to find out how a certain set of features were regarded as proper to those minorities, the present paper avoids classical typology and analyzes them in a “transverse” way. The first of these features is the character of the Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, who, as opposed to the Turks, seem to possess natural talents for trade. Surprisingly enough, though, their capacity is constructed as inversely proportional to their morality, as we often find in the European commercial literature statements such as “a Greek is commonly absent-minded and treacherous, a Jew intriguing and faithless, an Armenian stingy and vulgar.” Often accused of avarice, cheating, and lying, they nevertheless remain the indispensable partners and intermediaries in the business Western merchants conduct in the Levant. The latter are completely aware of it, as they claim that “one should necessarily know the Turks to avoid them and to fear them, the Jews to use them, the Greeks to sell to them at an advantage and to render them dependent, and the Armenians to distinguish the solidity of those who deserve trust; one should keep an eye on all, for all of them join forces and form a common front against the superior nation who comes to trade with them.”30 A second frequently raised point about these minorities focuses on their specialization in certain branches of trade. For instance, while the Greeks “apply themselves to maritime affairs [and] never travel far inland, except into European Turkey,” the Jews are known for giving “themselves up to every kind of trade and to all professions,” the majority of them being agents and brokers, while the wealthiest practice usury, banking, and trade. As for the Armenians, they are mainly involved in inland trade from the Ottoman Empire to Persia and India, and practically monopolize the function of sarraf (financial backer) with the Ottoman pashas and viziers.31 Beyond this typology, what emerges is the picture of small ethno-religious groups playing a key role as intermediaries between European traders and Ottoman goods and markets. By the mideighteenth century, though, these middlemen were able to compete directly with European traders in the Levant, and Suraiya Faroqhi rightly points out that “we should view the relationship of non-Muslim Ottoman merchants to foreign traders as a complicated one, in which a single individual might play the role of both associate and competitor according to circumstances.”32 Rather than a number of “single individuals,” though, European traders saw the minorities as well-structured and well-established groups whose sense of organization enabled big business ventures. Reminiscent of concepts in network analysis, eighteenth-century commercial literature evokes the close bounds that Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 49 united the members of these groups, their sense of belonging to a single family, and the solidarity that prevailed among them. As Lady Mary Montagu noticed about the Jews in 1717, “le dernier des Israëlites est encore un personnage trop important pour qu’on ose nuire à ses intérêts. Le corps entier prendrait sa défense avec le même zèle que s’il s’agissait de ses membres les plus distingués.”33 Indeed, the settlement in Western European port cities of Greek, Jewish, and Armenian communities tightened the contacts between non-Muslim Ottoman merchants and their Western counterparts, and familiarized them with European business practices. There is little doubt that such familiarity was instrumental in their cooperation with Western traders and that it played a role in the European attribution of a specific identity to these minority groups. As a consequence of it, though, it also contributed to the myth of Turkish backwardness, and gave birth to the legend—widespread among Turkish nationalist historiography—of these minorities as the Trojan horse of the Western powers inside the Ottoman Empire.34 Both views mistakenly assume that the non-Muslim Ottoman minorities shared a common interest, namely to favor European traders at the expense of the Ottoman state. Historical research has shown that the reality was far more complex than this, and commercial records testify to the existence of patterns of cooperation between minorities and Turks, as well as of competition among the minority groups.35 Ultimately, little evidence is to be found of a rejection of Ottoman identity by the minorities in the eighteenth century. Rather, most Jewish, Greek, and Armenian merchants and brokers seemed willing to remain Ottoman subjects, as long as this did not contravene commercial interests—and, for some, political beliefs.36 More than two decades ago, Philip Curtin’s pioneering work on longdistance cross-cultural trade called for an “historical economic anthropology” that still largely remains to be written.37 Though on a small scale, one of the aims of the present paper is to show how the study of eighteenth-century commercial practices can provide a fresh insight into an old problem, namely the nature and complexity of Ottoman identities. Indeed, what emerges from a reading of the commercial literature of the time is the coexistence of identities under a variety of labels—“Levantine,” “Oriental,” “Ottoman”—that refer to a hybrid mental space and a concrete social, political, and economical context. The observation of foreign commercial practices and business techniques deeply informed the understanding European merchants had of their Ottoman counterparts. Beyond the “Oriental paradigm,” a more subtle approach to ethno-religious identities combined commercial anthropology with proto-national stereotypes, and ultimately led to a multifaceted perception of otherness—as opposed to the advice contained in the nineteenth-century parody of a letter from the Greek 50 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies pirate Macairos to Czar Nicolas: “Si l’on écoutait les capitaines marchands, ils ne seraient jamais ottomans ; quant à moi, je suis d’avis que tout ce qui vient de Turquie est turc, de même que tout ce qui s’y rend. C’est pourquoi je n’ai pas hésité un seul instant à déclarer de bonne prise tout ce qui est pris, cela simplifie les affaires, et la simplicité avant tout!”38 Notes * 1 This paper is dedicated to the loving memories of Pinelopi Stathi and Yvonne Fournier Apart from a few pioneering works, most of the major studies on the Levantine trade have been published in the last two decades. See Nicolas Svoronos, Le Commerce de Salonique au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956); Robert Paris, Jean Reynaud, and Ferréol Rebuffat, 1660–1789. Le Levant et la Barbarie, vol. 5 of Histoire du commerce de Marseille (Paris: Plon, 1957); Ralph Davis, Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1967); Katsumi Fukasawa,  Toilerie et commerce du Levant: d’Alep à Marseille (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987); Elena Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century, 1700–1820 (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992); Edhem Eldem, French Trade in Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Maurits H. van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls, and Beratlı in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Louis Chénier, Commerce des François dans les Etats du Grand-Seigneur. Présenté à l’Assemblée Nationale (Paris: chez l’Auteur, 1789), 6. Paolo Preto, “Venice and the Ottoman Empire: From War to Turcophilia,” in La Méditerranée au XVIIIe siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1987), 135–61. Robert Mantran, “Commerce, course et convois en Méditerranée orientale dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle,” in Economies méditerranéennes. Equilibres et intercommunications, XIIIe–XIXe siècles (Athens: Centre de Recherches Néohelléniques de la Fondation de la Recherche Scientifique, 1985), 1:491–504. Chevalier de Jaucourt, “Turquie,” in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert (Neuchâtel: Samuel Faulche, 1765), 755–59. Malcolm J. Wagstaff, “The Role of the Eastearn Mediterranean (Levant) for the Early Modern European World-Economy, 1500–1800,” in The Early Modern World-System in Geographical Perspective, ed. Hans-Jürgen Nitz (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993), 327–42. Bruce McGowan, “The Age of the Ayans, 1699–1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 637–758. Elias Habesci, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (London: R. Baldwin, 1784), 442; Charles Carrière and Marcel Courdurié, “Un sophisme économique . Marseille s’enrichit en n’achetant plus qu’elle ne vend (Réflexions sur les mécanismes commerciaux levantins au XVIIIe siècle),” Histoire, Economie et Société 3.1 (1984): 7–51. Rhoads Murphey, “Westernisation in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: How Far, How Fast?,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999): 116–39. Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 98; Berrak Burçak, “The Institution of the Ottoman Embassy and Eighteenth-Century Ottoman History: An Alternative to Göçek,” in Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World. A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, ed. Baki Tezcan and Karl K. Barbir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 147–51; Paul Masson, Histoire du commerce français dans le Levant 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Levantine Trade and the Representation of Ottoman Merchants 51 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1911); Almanach général des marchands, négociants, armateurs et fabricans de la France et de l’Europe, et autres parties du monde (Paris: Grangé, 1774); Charles Sigisbert Sonnini, Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie, fait par ordre de Louis XVI, et avec l’autorisation de la cour ottomane (Paris: F. Buisson, 1801), 280; François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, Questions sur le commerce des François au Levant (Marseille: Carapatria, 1755), 123–24. Cemal Kafadar, “A Death in Venice (1575): Anatolian Muslim Merchants Trading in the Serenissima,” Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (1986): 191–218; Derek McKay and Hamish M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–1815 (London and New York: Longman, 1983), 204; Voltaire, “De l’empire ottoman au XVIe siècle: ses usages, son gouvernement, ses revenus (1753),” in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Charles Lahure (Paris: L. Hachette et Cie, 1859), 8:124–29; Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Sinan Küneralp, and Frédéric Hitzel, Représentants permanents de la France en Turquie (1536–1991) et de la Turquie en France (1797–1991) (Istanbul and Paris: Isis, 1991). Stéphane Yerasimos, Deux Ottomans à Paris sous le Directoire et l’Empire. Relations d’ambassade (Arles: Actes Sud, 1998); Mehmed Efendi, Le Paradis des Indidèles. Un ambassadeur ottoman en France sous la Régence, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: La Découverte, 2004). Jacques Savary, Le parfait négociant, ou instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce des marchandises de France, & des pays étrangers (Geneva: Frères Cramer et Cl. Philibert, 1752), 1:834–35. Eldem, French Trade, 204, 218. French National Archives [hereafter A.N.], A.E. B III 241, n° 18, Caractère des gens du pays, leur commerce, c. 1750; cited in Eldem, French Trade, 219–20. Allan B. Cunningham, “The Journal of Christophe Aubin: A Report on the Levant Trade in 1812,” Archivum Ottomanicum 8 (1983): 5–131, here p. 14. Samuel Ricard, Traité général du Commerce, contenant des observations sur le commerce des principaux États de l’Europe (Amsterdam: E. van Harrenvelt and A. Soetens, 1781), 1:1; Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 107–8. The term “Levantine” did not in the eighteenth century refer to any ethno-confessional group in particular, and is still used by Europeans to designate any inhabitant of the Levant, regardless of ethnic, linguistic, or religious distinction. Cunningham, Journal, 96; Oliver Jens Schmitt, Levantiner. Lebenswelten und Identitäten einer ethnokonfessionellen Gruppe im Osmanischen Reich im langen 19. Jahrhundert (München: Oldenburg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005). Philip Doramer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (London: J. Dodsley, 1774), Letter LXXI (22 May 1749). Municipal Archive of Marseilles (France), 5 F 1, Mémoire sur le commerce du Levant et de Barbarie, et sur celui de la Mer Noire, 1802; Ricard, Traité général, 1:1. Edhem Eldem, “Les négociants français à Istanbul au XVIIIe siècle : d’une présence tolérée à une domination imposée,” in Le négoce international, XIIIe–XXe siècle, ed. François Crouzet (Paris: Economica, 1989), 181–90. Stefano Trinchese, ed., Le cinque dita del Sultano. Turchi, Armeni, Arabi, Greci ed Ebrei nel continente mediterraneo del ‘900 (L’Aquila: Textus, 2005); Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, 2 vols. (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1982). Edhem Eldem, “Capitulations and Western trade,” in The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 283–335. Michel Morineau, “Naissance d’une domination. Marchands européens, marchands et marchés du Levant aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” in Pour une histoire économique vraie (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1985), 295–326. 52 25 Global Economies, Cultural Currencies Habesci, Present State, 424–26; Eyüp Özveren and Onur Yildirim, “An Outline of Ottoman Maritime History,” in New Directions in Mediterranean Maritime History, ed. Gelina Harlaftis and Carmel Vassallo (St John’s, N. L.: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2004), 147–70. Gilles Veinstein, “Commercial Relations Between India and the Ottoman Empire (Late Fifteenth to Late Eighteenth Centuries): A Few Notes and Hypotheses,” in Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau (London: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 95–115. Alexandre de Miltitz, Manuel des Consuls, 2 vols. (London and Berlin: A. Asher, 1837– 1841), 516–28. Municipal Library of Saint-Brieuc (France), ms. 88, Mémoire sur le commerce françois du Levant, f° 230v; cited in Eldem, French Trade, 221. Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “The Economic Activities of Ottoman and Western Communities in Eighteenth-Century Izmir,” Oriente Moderno 18 (1999): 11–26. A.N., A.E. B III 241, n° 18, c. 1750. Guillaume Antoine Olivier, Travels in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Persia, undertaken by order of the Government of France, during the first six years of the Republic (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1801), 18; A.N., A.E. B III 242, Mémoire sur le commerce de Smyrne, 1820. Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 153–54. Jean-Michel Berton, Les Turcs dans la balance politique de l’Europe au dix-neuvième siècle, ou Considérations sur l’usurpation ottomane et sur l’indépendance de la Grèce, suivies d’une nouvelle traduction des lettres de Lady Montague sur la Turquie (Paris: Librairie Nationale et Etrangère, 1822), 278. Salâhi R. Sonyel, Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1993). Daniel Panzac, “International and Domestic Maritime Trade in the Ottoman Empire during the Eighteenth Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992): 189–206. Mathieu Grenet, “Entangled Allegiances. A Study in the Definition of a Civic Identity among the Ottoman Greeks in Marseilles, 1780–1840” (paper presented at the Summer Workshop of the Program in Hellenic Studies of Princeton University, Santorini, Greece, June 23–24, 2007). Mathieu Grenet, “Citizens Abroad: The Greek Community of Marseilles and Political Events in Greece, 1820–1830,” InterCultural Studies 7 (2007): 39–52. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), ix. Taxile Delord, Clément Carraguel, and Louis Huart, Messieurs les Cosaques. Relation charivaresque, comique et surtout véridique des hauts faits des Russes en Orient (Paris: Lecou, 1854), 354. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38