Michael Talbot

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