The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

62 ~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
As to the interests of the non-Muslim traders themselves, which often have
received rather short shrift, it must not be forgotten that limited central control
over the provinces tended to make traders and artisans, Muslim as well as non-
Muslim, vulnerable to overcharging by notables and tax farmers. Given these
conditions of sauve qui peut, it made sense for Ottoman Christians to protect the
family fortunes by changing their religious denominations from Orthodox or
Gregorian to Catholic, by becoming a foreign protégé, and if possible, by forming
marriage alliances with foreign merchants long established on Ottoman
territory.
Conquest and trade as sources of regional instabilities before
1718/1130–1
Due to the unsettled situation on the western and eastern frontiers, controlling the
involvement of foreigners in eighteenth-century Ottoman provincial life evidently
became much more difficult than it had been in the sixteenth or early seventeenth
century. This was partly due to the fact that certain areas, such as the Peloponnese
or the region of Belgrade became Venetian or else Habsburg territory for one or
two decades. Thereafter, it was not possible to govern these regions as if nothing
had intervened. Reintegration into the Ottoman state might only be possible at the
price of considerable socio-political tensions on the local level.
But in addition we will see that in certain regions – such as, for instance, the
Izmir area – where European merchants had long been active, this presence
became more intrusive in the course of the eighteenth century. As the Aegean
seaboard of Anatolia or coastal Macedonia became more and more exportoriented,
the traders engaged in this business came to exercise at least indirect
political influence through the connections they established with local grandees
offering agricultural products for sale. 142 This was true especially of French merchants,
who not only exported but also carried in their ships a substantial amount
of the goods transported within the Empire proper. However, this economic and
political impact did not necessarily mean that the French or English merchants
active on Ottoman territory were doing well commercially. For the competition
offered by traders subject to the sultans, particularly seafaring Greeks and Serbian
or Bulgarian organizers of mule caravans, might be rather effective,
especially in wartime. 143 In addition, although French exchanges with the Levant
had grown in absolute figures throughout the period following 1740/1152–3, by
the time our story ends, the relative share of this branch of trade within French
commerce as a whole was no more than 5 per cent. 144 The Mediterranean clearly
had lost its dominant position in world trade, and French merchants still active in
this region had good reason to worry about their Atlantic competitors.
These overall developments will become more intelligible when discussed on
the basis of three examples we have already encountered in other contexts,
namely Morea, the Izmir region and the borderland Serbs. As we have seen, in
1718/1130–1 the Ottomans reorganized the Peloponnese as a ‘new’ conquest. 145