Faroqhi S.N. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839
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sources will require them to deal with a patchwork of imperial edicts, selected
entries from court records, occasional surveys of customs activity and notes
and memoranda addressed to and by the representatives of foreign powers
in the Ottoman lands. Harsh as this statement may sound, it appears that
although Western sources may be responsible for a number of biases in the
perception of the history of Western trade in the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman
sources, on their own, will simply not allow for such a history to be written.
These differences between European and Ottoman documentation have a
logic of their own. From the perspective of most European states, the conduct
of trade in the Levant was a matter of crucial importance that was managed
by either a department of state or some corporate body such as a trading
company or chamber of commerce. The concentration of documentation
witnessed in the archives therefore only reflects the manner in which this
trade was conducted. In similar fashion, the abundance of statistically and
economically minded documents has to be understood within the logic of
the aggressively mercantilist position of the European states of the time, for
whom the tracing of the quantitative evolution of their foreign trade and the
use of methods of accounting compatible with the simplistic logic of the bal-
ance of trade were top priorities. In the Ottoman case, on the contrary, a
dominantly fiscalist view of trade justified the neglect of commercial record
keeping, replacing it with the much more useful – from the state’s perspective –
tracking down of fiscal revenues generated by this trade. Nor could one expect
a state with no real mercantilist concerns, or even conceptions, to draw a clear
line between different types of trade; from the Ottoman state’s perspective,
Western trade never deserved any ‘special’ treatment that would have justi-
fied the constitution of a separate bureaucratic entity and of a parallel effort
at record-keeping. Diverging state policies regarding trade, different record-
keeping traditions, variations in the nature and degree of involvement in, and
perception of, economic matters were altogether responsible for major dif-
ferences in the image produced by the two parties of the same commercial
reality, with the Ottoman vision remaining far more sketchy and incomplete
than the Western one.
It appears then that the weakest point of Western documentation is not its
distortion of the reality it describes, even though some inherent biases may
be traced in the ways figures are handled and interpretations are made of the
daily practice of commerce. On the contrary, European sources provide an
unrivalled and rather accurate vision of Levantine trade during most of the
period. However, there is no denying that this documentation is responsible
for a major, yet indirect, distortion, due to the illusion it may create of an
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Capitulations and Western trade
exhaustive coverage of commercial activity in the empire. The near perfec-
tion of the description these sources give of Western trade in the region has
tended to blot out the notion that the trading activity of the empire may
have consisted of more than just the exchange of commodities with European
traders.
True, an increasing number of studies based on Ottoman documentation
have shown, albeit with much less detail and precision than European sources
on the Levant trade, the extent to which domestic and Eastern networks of
trade by far exceeded the importance of trade with the West. With respect to
this particular branch of trade, however, Ottoman sources still remain compar-
atively silent, providing little more than a broader and more ‘local’ perspective
to an already well-established scenario. This is not to imply that this widening
of the scope of study is insignificant or marginal, or that the future exploitation
of Ottoman sources – a great quantity of which still remain untapped – will not
yield a precious complement of information to a still unbalanced narrative.
However, for the moment one may argue that the relative silence of Ottoman
sources on the issue is in itself one of the major counter-arguments against
an exaggerated and distorted vision of the incidence of the Levant trade on
the Ottoman economy. In other words, even if one has to allow for the exis-
tence of a different and somewhat less clear perception of this trade from an
Ottoman perspective, the dispersion and marginality of local sources on the
subject clearly convey the message that what to European cabinets and trading
companies was a major issue took, at the Ottoman level, the proportions of a
rather small fish in a considerably larger pond.
The early seventeenth century: the scramble
for capitulations
One of the most remarkable developments of the end of the sixteenth and of the
beginning of the seventeenth centuries was the gradual ‘internationalisation’
of the Levant trade with the official entry of the English and the Dutch into
the eastern Mediterranean. What had until then remained a Mediterranean
matter was thus widened to include the two foremost representatives of the
rising maritime and trading powers of a changing Europe. Genoa had been the
first nation to be granted a capitulation, as early as 1352, followed by Venice in
the late 1380s. Throughout the fifteenth century, the capitulatory regime had
remained an Italian affair, with successive confirmations of the documents
granted to the Genoese and the Venetians, and their eventual extension to
the Florentines under Mehmed II (r. 1451–81), and to the Neapolitans under
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Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512). The sixteenth century had witnessed the entry onto
the Levantine scene of the first ‘outsiders’ – the French, who, as early as 1517,
had obtained the confirmation of the capitulation they had previously obtained
from the Mamluk state. The development of a Franco-Ottoman alliance under
the reigns of Francis I and S
¨
uleyman I had almost led to the issuing of an
independent capitulation in 1536; however, this document, long thought to be
the first French capitulation, was never ratified, and it was only in 1569 that
Claude du Bourg, treasurer of the king and ambassador to the Porte, obtained
the first capitulation of eighteen articles granted to the French state. This grant
came as a useful confirmation of a de facto establishment of a few French
traders and consuls in a handful of Ottoman ports which went back to the
1540s. However, what really triggered the development of French commercial
interests was the war with Venice (1570–3) which left a considerable vacuum
in trade that could be filled by the newcomers.
2
At about the same time,
England, an even more distant ‘outsider’, was investigating the possibilities
of trading directly with the Levant. Indeed, Venice had long served as a relay
between the eastern Mediterranean and England, sending its ships laden with
oriental goods to English ports until the late 1580s. However, the vicissitudes
of the sixteenth century had impeded the Serenissima from fulfilling its role
to the full satisfaction of its northern client. By the 1510s, English ships had
started to sail in the eastern Mediterranean, calling at ports in Sicily, Crete and
Chios. An Englishman by the name of Jenkinson had even ventured into the
Ottoman domains in 1553, settling in Aleppo, and succeeding in obtaining, so it
seems, equal treatment with Venetian and French traders. Nevertheless, these
attempts had remained of a sporadic nature, until two English merchants, Sir
Edward Osborne and Richard Staper, obtained a safe conduct for their factor,
William Harborne, with the intention of securing capitulatory privileges for
English traders. Arriving in Istanbul in 1578, Harborne finally obtained this
document in 1580, thus inaugurating the competitive context of Western trade
that would characterise the seventeenth century.
3
Competitive indeed, since from then on, Western European nations, most
particularly the French and the English, would literally enter a race for capit-
ulations, trying to secure the most advantageous terms, preferably to the
exclusion of their rivals. No sooner had Harborne left the Ottoman capital
than the French ambassador obtained, through influence and persuasion, the
repeal and cancellation of the English privileges. Harborne did not yield; he
2 Paul Masson, Histoire du commerce franc¸ais dans le Levant au XVIIe si
`
ecle (Paris, 1896),
pp. xiii–xvi.
3 Mortimer Epstein, The Early History of the Levant Company (London, 1908), pp. 1–12.
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Capitulations and Western trade
came back in 1583, armed with credentials from Elizabeth I appointing him
ambassador to the Porte, and obtained the renewal of the precious document.
Parallel efforts in England had led to the creation of the Turkey Company and
of the Venice Company, in 1581 and 1583, respectively. These two monopolistic
companies aimed at the exploitation of the Mediterranean trade within the
respective domains of the Serenissima and of the Ottoman Empire. Their char-
ters having expired in 1588 and 1589, respectively, they were finally united in
January 1592, under the name of the Levant Company. Dealing mostly in the
rich currant trade of Patras, Zante and Cephalonia, the company prospered;
but as it did so it also attracted the wrath of its opponents, who obtained its
dissolution in 1600. It was, however, revived at the very end of 1601, and in 1605
received from James I its first perpetual charter. The document clearly spoke
of the relation between the capitulations and the Levant trade: ‘especiallye for
that those Islands havens Portes creekes and other places of marchandizing
have theire peaceable and safe trafique against the Turkes Galleyes by reason
of the capitulacion of intercourse holden by us with the Graund Signior and
by the residence of our Ambassador within his Domynions’.
4
The rivalry between the French and the English had by then reached its
peak. In 1581, just after he had obtained the cancellation of the English capit-
ulation, the French ambassador, Baron de Germigny, had been granted a
new capitulation that confirmed previous privileges, including the precious
advantage of forcing other nations to sail under the French flag. The English,
however, did not respect this clause, and obtained a renewed capitulation in
1583.In1597, it was again the turn of the French to negotiate a renewal, with
additions such as the right to export previously prohibited commodities such
as hides and cotton yarn. However, the sultan had refused this time to force
the English and Venetians to sail under the French flag. The only advantage
the French were left with was that neither could give their own protection to
other ships. In 1601 the English obtained a reduction of customs dues from 5 to
3 per cent. In 1603 the French struck back, finally obtaining the confirmation
of their old right to extend their protection to all other nations, even though
the English never abided by this obligation. During this first decade of the
seventeenth century, the French and English had reached a sort of stalemate
that had an undertone of a division of labour. While the former had obtained
a number of political privileges, including protection from the Barbary pirates
and, most importantly, the protection of pilgrims and settlement of monks
in the Holy Land, the latter had obtained a series of commercial advantages
4 Ibid., pp. 156–7.
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which most of their rivals would not be able to match before the end of the
century.
5
It was obvious that the gradual attraction exerted by the Ottoman lands on
western Europe wouldnot be complete without the participation of the newest
and most enterprising trading nation of the time, the Dutch Provinces. Dutch
traders had already been in contact with the Ottoman economy through the
Genoese outpost of Chios and, in the north, through the Polish port of Lw
´
ow.
From the 1570s on, theyhad started establishing directcontacts with the empire,
sailing and residing under the protection of either the French or the English.
Following the truce signed with Spain and the birth of the Dutch Provinces,
the time had come for the establishment of more permanent relations through
a capitulatory agreement. In 1612 Cornelius Haga, ambassador extraordinary,
was sent out to Istanbul to negotiate such a capitulation. Despite obvious
opposition from the French, English and Venetian ambassadors, Haga was
able to achieve his goal. The political expectations of the Porte from a powerful
and staunchly anti-Catholic nation of Europe had played an important role in
the process. The Dutch capitulation put the traders of this nation on equal
footing with their French and English rivals, including the 3 per cent customs
rate, which the French and Venetians had still not been able to obtain.
6
The capitulations: nature and purpose
Within a period of some fifty years, a genuine ‘rush’ for capitulations had taken
place, with no less than eight being granted to the ambassadors and envoys
of the three rising economic and political powers of western Europe. The
phenomenon was evidently a sign of a growing interest in the region and in
the commercial and diplomatic advantages that could be derived from a closer
relationship with the Ottoman Empire. In particular, this series of Western
attempts at securing privileges and advantages seems to signal the beginning
of a long process of integration through which the Ottoman lands would be
gradually sucked into the ever-widening network of trade dominated by west-
ern Europe. However, one should not be too hasty in equating the granting of
capitulations with a proto-colonial process of commercial expansion or, from
5 Masson, Histoire du commerce franc¸ais au XVIIe si
`
ecle, pp. xviii–xxi; Linda T. Darling,
‘Capitulations’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, 4. vols., ed. John
L. Esposito (Oxford, 1995), vol. I, pp. 257–60,atp.258.
6 Halil Inalcik, ‘The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600’, in An Economic and
Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert
(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 9–409,atpp.372–6.
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Capitulations and Western trade
an Ottoman perspective, of gradual subservience. The undeniable fact that
the capitulations did eventually develop into instruments of domination is in
itself the cause for an a posteriori reading of their true intent and context. The
most common error is to assume that these were commercial treaties through
which the Ottoman state surrendered a number of its rights and prerogatives,
thus yielding to the desire of the nation that made the request, which would
in effect place its subjects above the law. In actual fact, the capitulations were
not treaties;
7
they were not commercial in essence; and the rights that they
gave to their beneficiaries were not a form of exclusion from the law but, on
the contrary, an attempt at bringing them into a manageable legal structure.
A proper understanding of the logic behind the capitulations requires some
technical references to the Islamic legal notion of the aman (pardon, amnesty,
or safe-conduct), and to the consequent practice of the ahidname (pledge or
covenant). The concept of aman is applied to describe a safe conduct granted to
any individual living in a land not under Islamic rule wishing to pass through
or temporarily reside in an Islamic country. It could be granted to an individual
or to a group, by any member of the Islamic community or by its rulers, and
was, in theory, limited to a lunar year, after which the m
¨
uste’min (beneficiary
of an aman) would have either to leave the territory or accept the status
of zimmi (Arabic, dhimm
¯
ı) (non-Muslim living under Islamic rule).
8
The real
problem behind the issue had to do with the legal status of the m
¨
uste’mins.
The law of an Islamic state being religious in essence, it could not be applied
to them unless they converted to Islam. In other words, if one is to compare
the situation with that of Roman law, Islamic states – including the Ottoman
Empire – had a jus quiritium for their Muslim subjects, but no equivalent of
the jus gentium to regulate the life of non-Muslims.
9
In the case of subject
non-Muslims, the solution found was the zimmet (Arabic, dhimma), which,
in return for the acceptance of a status of allegiance and subjection, granted
these communities the right to administer themselves according to their own
7 One notable exception is the 1536 French ‘capitulation’, which, although never ratified,
was designed as a bilateral treaty between S
¨
uleyman I and Francis I, and dependent upon
mutual ratification: ‘Premi
`
erement, ont trait
´
e, fait et conclu bonne et s
ˆ
ure paix et sinc
`
ere
concorde aux noms des susdits grand seigneur et roi de France, durant la vie de chacun
d’eux Item, que le grand-seigneur et roi de France manderont l’un
`
a l’autre, dans six
mois, la confirmation du pr
´
esent trait
´
e en bonne et due forme,’ quoted in Ignace de
Testa, Recueil des trait
´
es de la Porte ottomane avec les puissances
´
etrang
`
eres depuis le premier
trait
´
e conclu, en 1536, entre Suleyman I et Franc¸ois I jusqu’
`
a nos jours, vol. I (Paris, 1864), pp. 16,
20.
8 For a detailed discussion of the aman, see Joseph Schacht, ‘Am
¯
an’, EI 2.
9 For a detailed discussion of the origins and legal nature of the capitulations, see G. P
´
elissi
´
e
du Rausas, Le r
´
egime des capitulations dans l’Empire ottoman (Paris, 1902), pp. 1–23.
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legal practice. When it came to foreigners, however, the only solution, other
than assimilation into the status of zimmi, was to transform the temporary
status of m
¨
uste’min into a more permanent one through a secular legal device.
This device, whose origin can be traced back to the Crusades, was that of the
ahidname or pledge, generally referred to by Ottomans as ahidname-i h
¨
umayun
(imperial pledge). It was thus possible to apply the status of m
¨
uste’min to non-
Muslim foreigners of a specific subjection who wished to settle in the empire.
For those foreigners whose state and/or ruler did not have any such pledge
from the sultan, protection by a ruler who did became a sufficient condition
to obtain the same status.
These ahidnames known in the West as capitulations, were not bilateral
treaties, since they did not require the signature of the receiving party. They
were simply granted unilaterally, in an effort to provide a legal framework
to the individuals covered by this pledge or collective safe conduct. Nor did
they include any explicit reference to reciprocity, even though such a meaning
can be ascribed to the systematic reference to ‘mutual friendship and good-
will’. However, more importantly, these documents were not commercial in
essence, since they provided legal coverage for all subjects of a certain ruler,
regardless of their occupation. Thus the first Ottoman capitulations dealt
with trade and traders only in very general terms of freedom and protec-
tion, without any specific reference to customs, duties, commodities or any
other specific issue that one would expect to find in a typical commercial
treaty. In fact, one may well argue that the initial format of the capitulations
lay somewhere between a recognition of the legal status of foreign residents
in the empire and their gradual assimilation into the status of zimmi sub-
jects of the sultan. Thus, the ahidname, dated 1 June 1453, which was granted
to the Genoese colony of Galata, following their peaceful surrender to the
Ottomans, consisted of a formal pledge of the sultan to respect the property
and lives of all the residents of Galata, to guarantee their right to trade and
travel, the preservation of their fortress, churches and rites, to exempt them
from extraordinary taxes, from the levy of children for the janissary corps and
from forced conversion, and to confirm their autonomy under the leadership
and administration of their own elected bodies. However, this document also
stated explicitly that they would be submitted to the cizye (poll-tax) ‘as other
non-Muslims do’. It appears, therefore, that the Genoese of Galata were in
fact assimilated to the status of zimmis, or ordinary tribute-paying subjects of
the empire. As a matter of fact, this situation was due to the confusion, in
the text, of two distinct categories of Genoese subjects: the residents of the
city, labelled as ‘the people of Galata’ who were actually incorporated into a
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zimmi status similar to that of the other non-Muslim subjects of the empire,
and the Genoese merchants, described as such, who did not reside in Galata
but came and went between Galata and Genoa for purposes of trade.
10
The
distinction made between the resident and non-resident Genoese suggests that
the status of m
¨
uste’min was linked to the temporary nature of the aman, and
that, whenever permanency of residence was involved, foreign subjection was
disregardedand obliterated by the imposition of a status of zimmi. The Venetian
capitulation of 1454 confirms this attitude, by evoking the protection of the sub-
jects of the Serenissima only within the context of trade and navigation, i.e. as
linked to the temporary status of m
¨
uste’mins.
11
In fact, it was not before the first
draft treaty with France, in 1536, that some progress was made in the matter –
at least in theory – as French subjects were exempted from being reduced to
the status of zimmis during the first ten years of their residence.
12
Full status of
m
¨
uste’min, regardless of the length of residence, was obtained by Europeans
for the first time in 1569, through the capitulation granted, again to the French,
by Selim II.
13
The general belief that these documents were essentially commercial in
nature stems from the fact that traders had always held a prominent posi-
tion among the beneficiaries of the capitulations and that, consequently, their
commercial content and scope increased in the following centuries, as a result
of the European courts’ growing concerns about the development of trading
activity in the Levant. In actual fact, and from the viewpoint of the authority
that issued them, these ahidnames were first and foremost legal devices of
integration, which had evolved from a marked tendency to assimilation to a
gradual recognition of a form of extraterritoriality. That the capitulations were
primarily designed as a legal framework does not, however, exclude the fact
that they were also used by the Ottoman state as a political instrument. The
notion of a reward for past services or, even more frequently, of an incentive
10 For a detailed analysis of this document, see Halil Inalcik, ‘Ottoman Galata, 1453–1553’, in
Premi
`
ere rencontre internationale sur l’Empire ottoman et la Turquie moderne, Institut National
des Langues et Civilisations Orientales; Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 18–22 janvier 1985.I:
Recherches sur la ville ottomane: le cas du quartier de Galata. II: La vie politique,
´
economique
et socio-culturelle de l’Empire ottoman
`
al’
´
epoque jeune-turque, ed. Edhem Eldem (Istanbul,
1991), pp. 17–116 at 17–31.
11 Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau g
´
en
´
eral de l’empire othoman, 7 vols., (Paris, 1787–
1824), vol. VII, p. 446.
12 Ibid., p. 470; Testa, Recueil,p.20: ‘Qu’aucun des sujets du roi, qui n’aura habit
´
e dix ans
entiers et continus
`
es-pays dudit grand-seigneur, ne doive ni ne puisse
ˆ
etre contraint
`
a
payer tribut, kharadj, awari, khassab’ye.’
13 Testa, Recueil,p.94:‘Art.9. De France et des lieux
`
a elle soumis, les hommes qui habitent
nosdits pays et cit
´
es, mari
´
es ou non mari
´
es, faisant trafic de marchandises ou autre
exercice, de ceux-l
`
a ne sera demand
´
e tribut.’
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for future cooperation was inherent to the logic behind the granting of these
‘privileges’. This aspect of the question can be traced back to the first such
document granted by the Ottomans to the Genoese in 1352 as a common move
against Venice, and to the way in which, during the fifteenth century Ottoman
rulers kept alternating between Venice and competing Italian states (mostly
Genoa and Florence) in their granting of trading privileges.
There is no doubt, then, that the ‘scramble’ for capitulations of the end of
the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries was due to a combi-
nation of pull and push factors, the Ottoman state promoting the capitulations
as a diplomatic instrument in the forging of alliances and in the securing of
political sympathies from Western powers, while European states tended to
view them as a tool for commercial implantation and expansion, alongside the
obvious diplomatic advantages they presented. The Ottomans certainly were
not impervious to the same commercial dimension: promoting the develop-
ment of the East–West trade transiting through the Ottoman dominions had
always been a major concern of the Ottoman state, which clearly saw the fiscal
advantages it could derive from the development of this commercial activity.
Nevertheless, there is no denying that Ottoman motivation in this respect
lagged far behind the trade-consciousness of their western European partners
whose diplomatic moves were almost always coupled with some explicit con-
cern for things commercial, or with the direct participation of traders.
14
In
that respect, the position of the distant nations of the West, whose dealings
with the Ottoman Empire were much less tainted with military and political
concerns than those of Venice and other Italian states, was partly respon-
sible for a gradual ‘commercialisation’ of the capitulations, at least from a
Western perspective. This evolution explains, therefore, that these documents
should have been dominantly perceived by historians as ‘commercial treaties’,
while they preserved, from an Ottoman perspective, their legal and diplomatic
essence.
14 A case in point is that of the English, whose first ambassador, William Harborne, was
a factor representing the interests of a group of merchants. In the same vein, the royal
charter granted to the Levant Company made a clear connection between the possible
impact of the discovery of the new trade routes on the Levant trade and the political
alliances sought with the Ottomans:
The late discovery of the trade of the East Indies wherby manie spices druggs silks and
marchandize which formerlie weare brought into this realme of England and the Domynions
thereof by the trade of Turkey that therefore for the repayre of the said trade it weare
convenient that all the Islandes havens ports creekes and all other places of trade and traffique
within the Levant or Mediterranean Seas should be annexed and united unto the Priviledges
and gouvernement of this trade of the Signiory of Venice and the Domynions of the graund
Signior.
Epstein, Early History,p.156
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Capitulations and Western trade
Perhaps the most pervasive clich
´
e that still clings to the capitulations is
the general notion of domination and privilege that is associated to it. True,
these were privileges, in the sense that they offered a ‘normal’ treatment to
individuals who, under other circumstances, would hardly have been toler-
ated. Moreover, it is also true that the status granted by the capitulations
did guarantee to the m
¨
uste’mins certain elements of extraterritoriality and
quasi-immunity that were unavailable to Ottoman subjects, especially to non-
Muslims. Nevertheless, one cannot help but notice that the notion of privilege
associated with the capitulations is often perceived as a form of proto-colonial
status of exception. The very word used to describe them in Western languages
is probably not unrelated to this misconception. Indeed, the temptation is great
to read in the word ‘capitulation’ the meaning of ‘surrendering’. In fact, the
real etymology of the term is linked to the Latin capitulum (chapter), simply
because these documents were divided into articles or chapters.
15
There is
more, however, to this misinterpretation than a simple misunderstanding of
its meaning. What really dominates this misconception is the fact that, at least
from the eighteenth century on, the capitulationshad clearly become an instru-
ment of commercial penetration imposed on the empire through political and
military pressure and leverage. Thus a posteriori knowledge is responsible for
this interpretation, and has eventually led to a renaming of these documents
in Ottoman Turkish in the late-nineteenth century as imtiyazat (privileges)
or imtiyazat-ı ecnebiye (foreign privileges). Thus, when the capitulations were
unilaterally abolished in 1914 by the Young Turk government, the event was
publicised as imtiyazat-ı ecnebiyenin la
˘
gvı (the abolition of foreign privileges).
What seems more surprising, though, is that traces of a political reality of the
end of the empire should have survived in some scholarly works which use
the term imtiyazat instead of the original term of ahidname, even in reference
to a pre-nineteenth-century situation.
16
Western trade in the seventeenth century:
general trends
Compared to the wealth of information available for the eighteenth century,
there is very little on which any substantial analysis of trade can be built for
the end of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. In this ‘pre-
statistical’ age of the Levant trade, one has therefore to rely on scanty, patchy
15 Testa, Recueil,p.6;P
´
elissi
´
eduRausas,Capitulations, vol. I, pp. 1–23.
16 Halil
˙
Inalcık, ‘Imtiy
¯
az
¯
at: The Ottoman Empire’, EI 2; Darling, ‘Capitulations’, p. 257.
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