The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

6 ~ Trade and foreigners
In the early modern world, war and its political results including conquest and
subjection, together with trade and pilgrimage, can be identified as the three
major modes in which the inhabitants of any principality or empire related to the
world outside the frontiers of the relevant polity. In the previous chapters, we
have discussed modes of conquest and subjection first, followed by the wars that
had brought about these relationships. But while the model of the ‘warfare state’
(compare Chapter 1) did and perhaps does encourage scholars to think in terms
of an Ottoman elite that was unconcerned about trade, research during the last
thirty years or so has shown that this is not a realistic notion. 1 To the contrary,
customs duties formed a substantial share of state income, and the Ottoman governing
apparatus was quite aware of this basic fact. In addition, trade generated
rental income from khans and covered markets, and thus contributed to the functioning
of the pious foundations that made the reputations of so many members
of the Ottoman elite. All these considerations meant that some high-level personages
within the governing apparatus were induced to engage in trade themselves.
But even those who did not, were in one way or another concerned with the maximization
of revenues generated by commerce. 2
In the present chapter there will be more information on foreign merchants
who came to the Empire to do business, than on Ottoman subjects who went
abroad for reasons of trade. The reason for this choice is fairly trivial. While
there is by now a significant body of research on the activities of foreign merchants
in the Empire, ‘Ottomans abroad’, as we have seen, have generated a
much more limited secondary literature. 3 Moreover, to date there is not very
much evidence available on the attitudes of the Ottoman elite towards those
among their subjects who left the Empire in order to market their goods. However,
limited evidence does not mean that there was total indifference: at least in
the late 1500s and early 1600s, sultans and viziers went out of their way to protect
their Anatolian or Bosnian subjects who had been robbed by Uskoks and
other pirates while on their way to Venice. 4 We will have to wait for more
research on specific groups at particular points in time before we can draw a
comprehensive picture of the Ottoman elite’s attitudes on this important issue.
But in the meantime it is appropriate to balance our long discussion of war, conquest
and modes of political integration by a closer look at the trade nexus.