Michael Talbot

Protecting the Mediterranean: Ottoman Responses to Maritime Violence, 1718-1770

This article examines the evolving role of the Ottoman navy in the mid-eighteenth century in protecting Ottoman seas from maritime violence. Despite enjoying a general peace with its European neighbors, merchant shipping in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and coastal settlements were frequently subject to seaborne violence from European privateers, Maltese corsairs, and domestic pirates. Based on extensive research in the Ottoman archives, this article analyzes the development of the policy of protection (muḥāfaẓa) through defensive naval patrols, which occurred in conjunction with a strengthening of coastal fortifications and the implementation of innovative legal measures. The aims of this protective policy were to protect domestic and international trade, and to demonstrate imperial authority in Ottoman waters both in response to a demand for protection from subjects in the provinces from local and foreign violence, and as part of strengthening and consolidating Ottoman maritime territoriality in the Mediterranean.

Accessing the shadow of God: Spatial and performative ceremonial at the Ottoman Court

This paper examines Ottoman notions of access to the sultan at the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing primarily on the British experience, this paper examines Ottoman court ritual surrounding ambassadorial audiences with the sultan through two main questions. The first will examine the essential role of gift-giving in enabling access to the Ottoman court, and argues that these were a central aspect of Ottoman court patronage networks. The second considers the ceremonial and spatial elements of access, from the laying on of feasts demonstrating imperial benevolence to the humiliation of ambassadors in the audience chamber as they were forced to the ground before the sultan. Movement between public and private spaces were determined by participation in particular events and rituals, conformity to which demonstrated the universalism of Ottoman monarchy. In discerning the rationale for these particular practices that were designed to include foreign ambassadors in Ottoman notions of patronage and social hierarchy, it is argued that that these ceremonials formed a crucial part in articulating the Ottoman world-view to Christian allies and enemies. Moreover, these Ottoman court practices demonstrate the heterodox nature of the Ottoman court and monarchy in borrowing from earlier Islamic, Byzantine, and Turkic customs.

The Exalted Column, the Hejaz Railway and imperial legitimation in late Ottoman Haifa

This article examines the political and social tensions of late Ottoman Haifa through the history of the Hejaz Railway and a particular monument, the ‘Exalted Column’ (Sutūn-u ʿĀlī), a monument erected in 1903 to commemorate the beginning of Ottoman construction on the Haifa railway branch. By first establishing the use of railways and railway architecture as a means of exerting state power in a comparative and local perspective, the railway structures in Haifa are analysed in the context of that citys other monumental buildings. This then leads to a discussion of the Sutūn-u ʿĀlī as a celebration of Ottoman authority and modernity, and of the developing Ottoman–German alliance. The symbolism of the columns iconography is shown to reflect a variety of problems that the Ottoman state faced in Haifa at the turn of the twentieth century.

Divine Imperialism: The British in Palestine, 1753–1842

Religion was, for many centuries, a central part of British identity. Reformed Christianity, through its establishment and its dissenters, influenced and developed Britain’s society, economy and politics in profound ways that are perhaps difficult for a largely non-religious twenty-first century audience to comprehend. Even more difficult to appreciate are the less tangible elements of religious belief — that is, the ‘religious mind’. The blurred boundaries between the temporal and spiritual realms produced a particularly deterministic outlook on how the universe functioned. For many, daily events, from the rise of a mighty empire to the failure of a farmer’s crops, was part of an intricate and often unfathomable divine plan for the world. It would be problematic to argue for a homogenous mentalite common to all eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Christians, yet for many there was a fundamental understanding that God was not simply a celestial observer but a constantly active force in every aspect of life on Earth. The writings produced by theologians, preachers, pamphleteers, self-proclaimed prophets and missionaries all sought, via interpretation of revealed scripture, to understand, examine and explain the various elements of these divine workings and thus discover the fate of humanity.