Amir’s Reviews > The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe > Status Update

“Contrary to Mattingly’s claims, not only were Italian experiences in the Ottoman east critical in the construction of a new diplomacy, but resident envoys in Istanbul helped unmask (or at least temper) myths about the impenetrable Orient and the “terrible Turk,” formed during centuries of enmity and warfare. In their place were assembled concrete and realistic details about Ottoman society.”

“Just as Vienna may have represented a logistical limit for an Ottoman army whose commander and many of whose troops set out from Edirne or even Istanbul each year, so might Malta have signified a boundary for a fleet that had to embark at the Dardanelles and could move only as quickly as its slowest vessels (perhaps two nautical miles per hour)...

"I think, to conceive the early modern Ottoman world broadly as a multi-faceted entity rather than narrowly as a state embarking on a long death march, to insist that rot in some of its components did not mean consuming decay, and may even have reflected brilliance onto other features of the state and society."

“...commercial districts did tend to be variegated, a concentrated blend of tongues, attire, cultures, and especially spiritual beliefs, and western European visitors to Istanbul, Aleppo, Konya, or Edirne marveled at and usually condemned what was for them an exotic and shocking mix. Even residential quarters were not nearly as segregated as is often supposed.”

“Nevertheless, as we have seen, the early Ottoman state did seem endowed with the ability to shrug off those props that appeared not to work, to knead out the flaws of others, and to create new formations as needed. This facility helped the state survive crises of succession, jealous rivals, civil wars, even defeat, dismemberment, and other vicissitudes of fortune.”

"Equally important is that the ideologies of the nationalisms of Ottoman successor states have demanded imagined pasts that centered the identities of their own nations at the expense of rival identities such as the Ottoman one."

"In the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians constituted a Christian community to whom the government granted autonomy in religion, economic life, and even internal politics. Their religion also gave them access to the lands of Christian Europe. Thus, they moved easily in both societies."