Michael Talbot

University of Greenwich, History, Politics and Social Sciences, Faculty Member

SOAS University of London, History, Alumnus

University of Cambridge, Jesus College, Alumnus

University of St Andrews, History, Former Teaching Fellow

Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, History, Former Postdoc

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I am a Lecturer in History at the University of Greenwich, specialising in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Previously I was an ERC Postdoctoral Fellow as part of the 'Mediterranean Reconfigurations' project at Université Paris 1, Teaching Fellow in Ottoman History at the University of St Andrews, and a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I have also served as a visiting lecturer at St Mary's University, Twickenham, and the University of Warwick.

My Ph.D. thesis used the case study of the British embassy in Istanbul in a "long" eighteenth century (1660-1807) to demonstrate the intimate links between mercantile interests, provision of finance, cultural convention, and diplomatic practice. I have consulted a large range of material in the British and Ottoman archives, from a wide variety of archival and printed documents and financial records in English, Italian, and Ottoman Turkish, and incorporating a number of material sources, including paintings, maps, and museum artefacts (timepieces, textiles, etc). My postdocotral research examined intercultural trade and commercial litigation involving Ottoman Algiers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

My current research projects include Ottoman maritime space and law in the eighteenth century and beyond, and a number of studies relating to Ottoman diplomacy and Ottoman Palestine.

I have taught a number of courses on the Ottomans and the wider Middle East and Islamic world, including on the urban history of the early modern Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, on the Hamidian period of the Ottoman Empire, and on early modern North Africa.
Supervisors: Benjamin Fortna

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Papers by Michael Talbot

Gifts of Time: Watches and Clocks in Ottoman-British Diplomacy, 1693–1803

Gift-giving was a crucial part of the regulation and practice of relations between European ambas... more Gift-giving was a crucial part of the regulation and practice of relations between European ambassadors and Ottoman state officials in Istanbul. Although largely dominated by textiles, timepieces played a crucial role in gift-giving practices on a number of levels. Taking the example of the British embassy in Istan-bul in the eighteenth century and examining the detailed financial records of that institution, this article considers the significance of watches and clocks gifted by the British to different Ottoman officials on different occasions. By considering timepieces as social gifts to build individual relationships, as ceremonial gifts conforming to Ottoman expectations and practices, and as objects used to stimulate commercial interest, this article emphasises the importance of financial records and material objects as sources for reconstructing the practice of diplomacy, and demonstrates the shifting role of time pieces in British-Ottoman relations in the eighteenth century.

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"Jews, Be Ottomans! " Zionism, Ottomanism, and Ottomanisation in the Hebrew-Language Press, 1890–1914

In recent years the study of national and civic identities in the later Ottoman period has reveal... more In recent years the study of national and civic identities in the later Ottoman period has revealed huge degrees of complexity among previously homogenised groups, none more so that the Jewish population of the Sublime State. Those Jews who moved to the Ottoman Empire from the 1880s as part of a burgeoning expression of Jewish nationalism developed a complex relationship with an Ottomanist identity that requires further consideration. Through an examination of the Hebrew-language press in Palestine, run largely by immigrant Zionist Jews, complemented by the archival records of the Ottoman state and parliament, this paper aims to show the complexities of the engagement between Ottoman and Jewish national identities. The development of Jewish nationalism by largely foreign Jews came with an increase in suspicion from the Ottoman elites, sometimes manifesting itself in outright anti-Semitism, and strong expressions of nationalism in the Hebrew press were denounced both by Ottoman and non- and anti-nationalist Jewish populations. The controversy over immigrant Jewish land purchases in Palestine from the 1890s led to a number of discussions over how far foreign Jews could and should embrace an Ottoman cultural and political identity, with cultural, labour, and political Zionists taking different positions. The issue of Ottomanisation should also be taken in the context of the post-1908 political landscape in the Ottoman Empire, with separatist nationalisms increasingly under the spotlight, and the debates among the different forms of Jewish nationalism increasingly focusing on the limits of performative and civic Ottoman nationalism.

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Contacts, encounters, practices: Ottoman-European diplomacy, 1500-1800 (Introduction)

Introduction to a special section in Osmanlı Araştırmaları / The Journal of Ottoman Studies, issu... more

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A treaty of narratives: Friendship, gifts, and diplomatic history in the British Capitulations of 1641

Abstract This article examines the hitherto unexamined Ottoman Turkish text of the Capitulation... more Abstract This article examines the hitherto unexamined Ottoman Turkish text of the Capitulations granted to the British in 1641. As well as containing the articles governing Ottoman-British trade and diplomatic jurisdiction, the Capitulations con- tained a historical narrative that provided a formal record of diplomatic encounters and practices. By emphasising the importance of bringing tributary gifts and royal letters as a precondition for receiving the friendship of the sultans, the inclusion of the historical narrative within the treaty text presented an Ottoman worldview that saw the sultan at the top of a hierarchy of monarchical power, but also created a layered narrative of precedent that strengthened the rhetoric of alliance through an ancient friendship. In examining the text of the Ottoman Turkish and English versions of this treaty, including full translations of the historical narratives in an appendix, this article makes the case for viewing the Ottoman Capitulations not just as historical treaties, but as historical texts.

Keywords: Capitulations, Ahdname, Ottoman-British relations, historical narrative, diplomacy

Bu makale şimdiye kadar incelenmemiş 1641 yılında İngilizlere verilen ahdname-i hümayunun Osmanlıca metn ini incelenmektedir. Osmanlı-İngiliz tica-reti ve diplomatik nüfuz alanlarını düzenleyen maddeleri içermenin yanısıra, kapi-tülasyonlar diplomatik karşılaşmaların ve uygulamaların resmi kaydını ortaya koyan bir anlatıyı da barındırmaktaydı. Sultan'ın dostluğundan yararlanmak için hediyeler ve kraldan mektup getirmenin öneminin altını çizmek suretiyle, tarihsel anlatının ahdname metnine dahil edilmesi, Sultan'ı saltanat hiyerarşisinin tepesinde konum-landıran Osmanlı dünya görüşünü göstermekle kalmamakta, aynı zamanda kadim dostluk yoluyla ittifak retoriğini güçlendiren katmanlı bir öncelik anlatısı yaratmak-tadır. Tarihsel anlatıların tam tercümelerini zeylde vermek suretiyle bu ahdnamenin Osmanlıca ve Türkçe versiyonlarını inceleyen makalemiz, Osmanlı ahdnamelerini sadece tarihsel antlaşmalar değil, aynı zamanda tarihsel metinler olarak da görmek gerektiğini savunmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Kapitülasyonlar, Ahdname, Osmanlı-İngiliz ilişkileri, tarihsel anlatılar, diplomasi

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Tarih için Metodoloji Kitabı (İçindekiler ve Önsöz)

by Ahmet Şimşek, Nurcan ABACI, ZAFER TOPRAK, Yunus KOÇ, Mehmet Salih Erkek, Ahmet Ozcan, Michael Talbot, Nedim Yalansız, and Cenk Reyhan

2015

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Petitions of the Supplicant Ambassador: British Commercial Representations to the Ottoman State in the Eighteenth Century

This article examines the body of takrirs ¬– written representations – from the British ambassado... more This article examines the body of takrirs ¬– written representations – from the British ambassadors in Istanbul to the Ottoman government in the mid- and late eighteenth century, aiming to place these diplomatic representations within the wider Ottoman petitionary framework, and to illustrate the role of the ambassador in providing consular functions. It discusses the form and linguistic style of these documents, before analysing the two main types of cases found. The first concerns the freedom of movement and freedom from harassment requested by British travellers on land and at sea, in accordance with the rules of the Capitulations and custom. The second group of cases dealt with more complex legal disputes between British merchants and Ottoman subjects and officials involving the Capitulations and other sorts of legal practices. Examining these documents permits a view of the practice of diplomacy, and demonstrates how text and custom combined through the fluid interpretation of the Capitulations in order to regulate the rights and freedoms of British merchants through the Ottoman petitionary system.

Bu makale, 18. yüzyılın ortalarında ve sonlarında İngiliz elçisi tarafından Osmanlı hükümetine sunulan takrirleri, bunları Osmanlı dilekçe sistemi çerçevesinde incelemek ve elçinin konsolosluk görevlerine ışık tutmak amacıyla inceleyecektir. Bu belgelerin şekil ve dili değerlendirildikten sonra, iki tip vaka analiz edilecektir. İlk gruptaki vakalar kapitülasyonlar ve diplomatik gelenekler uyarınca İngiliz tüccarlar ve seyyahlar tarafından talep edilen karada ve denizde seyahat özgürlüğü ve mal güvenliğini konu almaktadır. İkinci grup ise kapitülasyonlar ile diğer hukuki uygulamalara konu olan ve İngiliz ve Osmanlı tabileri arasında gerçekleşen daha karmaşık davaları içermektedir. Bu belgelerin incelenmesi diplomasinin uygulamasını görmemize imkan sağlamanın yanısıra, metin ve geleneğin, kapitulasyonların esnek bir yorumu üzerinden İngiliz tüccarlarının hak ve özgürlüklerini Osmanlı dilekçe sistemi üzerinden nasıl düzenlendiğini göstermektedir.

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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... more 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’ (Sütun-u Ali), 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 city's other monumental buildings. This then leads to a discussion of the Sütūn-u Ali as a celebration of Ottoman authority and modernity, and of the developing Ottoman–German alliance. The symbolism of the column's iconography is shown to reflect a variety of problems that the Ottoman state faced in Haifa at the turn of the twentieth century.

Ottoman Seas and British Privateers: Defining Maritime Territoriality in the Eighteenth-Century Levant

Well-Connected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History, 2014

This chapter investigates the impact of British privateering on Ottoman maritime territoriality f... more This chapter investigates the impact of British privateering on Ottoman maritime territoriality from 1690 to 1790 to examine the discourse concerning rule over the sea on the part of the Ottoman state. It examines the theoretical framework found in European and Islamic traditions of maritime territoriality, and then demonstrates the Ottoman response to violations by British privateers, showing that the Ottoman Empire was able to assert legal authority over the waters it claimed.

Divine Imperialism: The British in Palestine, 1753-1842

The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century. Volume 2: Experiencing Imperialism, 2013

This chapter examines the establishment of a British ecclesiastical and political presence in Ott... more This chapter examines the establishment of a British ecclesiastical and political presence in Ottoman Palestine by the 1840s through the religious ideology of 'Restorationism', the idea that the Jews had to be returned to Palestine to enable the Second Coming. With roots in seventeenth-century apocalyptic theology and British biblical self-identification, this concept saw two major stages of development, both heavily influenced by British travellers to the Holy Land. It considers British religious travellers in Palestine in the eighteenth century, and how their accounts of an 'empty land' – almost entirely imagined – helped to support biblical prophecy concerning the End of Days: that the land would be barren awaiting the Israelites' return. It then demonstrates that the British missionaries created a mass movement in support of British-led Restorationism in the early nineteenth century, and in many ways this was fuelled by their accounts from their visits to Palestine. These missionaries and their organisations greatly influenced the British political establishment, leading to the setting up of a British Consulate in Jerusalem and the Anglican Church in the Holy Land. In essence, this chapter shows how religiously motivated travel accounts had a profound effect on Britain's relationship with the Holy Land, the effects of which are felt in the Middle East to this day.

A Jacobite Lady in Constantinople: the story of Lady Mary Gerard of Gerard's Bromley

Podcasts by Michael Talbot

Interview with the Ottoman History Podcast

by Antonis Hadjikyriacou and Michael Talbot

Nationality and Citizenship in Mandate Palestine

The 1925 Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council, passed by the British government and implemented... more The 1925 Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council, passed by the British government and implemented in the Palestine Mandate, was the first piece of mandate legislation to officially recognize Palestine's Arab community as citizens of Palestine rather than 'ex-enemy Ottoman subjects.' This marked a change in the legal position of Palestine's Arab residents, and a confirmation of the de facto status of Palestine's Jewish residents. But as our guest Lauren Banko explains in this episode, the reality on the ground for the Arab inhabitants of Palestine and emigrants settled outside of the former Ottoman realms did not reflect the British mandatory understanding of citizenship. In line with a communitarian understanding of nationality and civic belonging, the Palestinian Arabs reacted to the order-in-council and its subsequent amendments through actions, behaviours, and discourses which emphasized their understanding of Ottoman-era jus sanguinis and jus soli provisions of nationality and citizenship. This contrasted sharply with the order's provisions for Jewish citizenship and immigrant naturalization policy, and its denial of Palestinian citizenship to Arabs who emigrated temporarily or habitually abroad. In the mandate decades, nationality and citizenship became less like abstract or ideological concepts for Palestine's Arab community both inside and outside of Palestine as these legal statuses were integrated into most aspects of social, civic, and political life as markers of a new (and often contested) identity in a changing quasi-colonial, political, national, and social landscape. For Palestine's indigenous population, the Ottoman markers of citizenship and identity remained essential components of the opposition to, and negotiation with, the apolitical status imposed by Great Britain in the territory during the interwar period.

Ottoman Encounters with Global Capital

by Michael Talbot and Taylan Gungor

The period from the 1870s to 1914 was the peak of the nineteenth-century globalisation characteri... more The period from the 1870s to 1914 was the peak of the nineteenth-century globalisation characterised by increased movement of capital across the world. In this podcast, Coşkun Tuncer discusses his recent book on ‘Sovereign Debt and the International Financial Control: the Middle East and the Balkans, 1870-1914’, the role of banks as intermediaries between the Ottoman government and international financial markets, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration and the cases of sovereign debt in Egypt, Serbia and Greece.

German Expatriates in Late Ottoman Istanbul

by Michael Talbot, Philipp Wirtz, and Taylan Gungor

Ottoman-German relations have usually been studied in the context of great-power politics, imperi... more Ottoman-German relations have usually been studied in the context of great-power politics, imperialism both hard and soft, or the military and economic spheres. In this podcast Philipp Wirtz presents some initial findings of a larger research project focusing on personal networks and experiences of Germans residing in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic and two German expatriates in particular: the journalist Friedrich Schrader and the academic Martin Hartmann. As theatre-goers, buyers of books and writers of literary reviews, both took an active part in the cultural life of the Ottoman capital in the years following the Young Turk Revolution. Using their local knowledge and fluency in Ottoman Turkish, both were able to gain unique insights at odds with the popular portrayal of Ottoman affairs in the western media. On the other hand, neither of these authors was immune to the biases of their times, constantly questioning the extent to which Ottoman literary expression, and in particular the emerging “Turkish national literature” were “original” or “civilised".

British-Ottoman Diplomacy and the Making of Maritime Law

by Michael Talbot, Arianne Sedef Urus, and Sam Dolbee

British-Ottoman Diplomacy and the Making of Maritime Law

Ottoman History Podcast, Aug 22, 2015

This podcast explores murky boundaries in two senses. The first has to do with Anglo-Ottoman comm... more This podcast explores murky boundaries in two senses. The first has to do with Anglo-Ottoman commerce and diplomacy in the early modern period. Like the more well-known case of the the British East India Company in South Asia, British diplomatic representation in Constantinople was also controlled by a corporate entity. Known as the Levant Company, the institution ensured that from the late 16th to the early 19th century there was little distinction between merchants and statesmen when it came to British diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire. The blurred lines gave way to what might be called a “cycle of necessity,” in which British diplomats gave gifts to secure commercial privileges for British merchants who would then fund the diplomats to provide gifts again. Yet the cycle did not always proceed smoothly, and discrepancies between translations of agreements often played a key role in hitches, in the process raising basic yet profound questions about what treaty-making meant. The second part of the podcast considers Ottoman maritime space and legal order more broadly. With respect to this theme, murkiness makes another appearance, this time as it related to the ability to possess or control the sea. What did it mean to draw a line across the waves, to differentiate between su and derya? Particularly in an age of imprecise mapmaking technologies, these efforts at delineation often were accompanied by a good deal of ambiguity, pointing to the complexity - if not always plurality - of legal cultures and claims to sovereignty that existed in the Ottoman maritime space and, indeed, that extended even ashore the well-protected domains as well.

Blogposts by Michael Talbot

An Augur of Bloodshed: The Weeping Mary of Nevrokop in 1902

This blogpost examines reports of a miracle in late Ottoman Macedonia, and considers its place in... more

Insularities and littoralities connected: New trends in research from the Moray Firth to the Mediterranean

Firths and Fjords: Comparative Historical Perspectives on Adjacent Coasts, Jun 14, 2016

A blogpost for the Firths & Fjords Blog on the innovative approaches to coastal and island histor... more A blogpost for the Firths & Fjords Blog on the innovative approaches to coastal and island history showcased at 'Firths and Fjords: A Coastal History Conference' hosted by the University of the Highlands and Islands, Dornoch, Scotland, and 'Insularities Connected: Bridging Seascapes from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and Beyond' held at Rethymno, Crete.

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The New Bureaucracy in Town: An Ottoman Widow in British-Occupied Baghdad, 1918

This blogpost examines an Arabic petition from an Ottoman widow to the British authorities in Bag... more

Ali Naci Goes to Greenwich: The Education of a Late Ottoman Naval Officer

This docblog examines the career of Ali Naci Bey, an Ottoman naval officer who studied astronomy ... more This docblog examines the career of Ali Naci Bey, an Ottoman naval officer who studied astronomy and other navigational techniques at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, at the end of the 19th century, and who rose in the ranks at the Ottoman Imperial Naval School and Naval Staff despite a family scandal. For more, please click the link to visit Tozsuz Evrak.

Michael Talbot

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