Diplomacy and commerce in composite empires: British-Ottoman imperial encounters in the eighteenth century

Ilban, Hasan (2024). Diplomacy and commerce in composite empires: British-Ottoman imperial encounters in the eighteenth century. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Ilban2024PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only until 31 December 2025.
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (3MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

This dissertation explores the nature of British-Ottoman imperial relations between 1675 and 1809, a crucial period for Ottoman state formation and British imperial expansion. It situates British commercial and diplomatic activities within the context of wide-ranging geo-political, administrative-fiscal, and socio-economic changes unfolding in the Ottoman lands that shaped the Ottoman imperial systems, the British imperial enterprise, and inter-imperial power dynamics in the eastern Mediterranean.

In this period, British ambassadors, consuls, and merchants participated in Ottoman conventions of diplomacy, commerce, and finance to accrue the benefits of overseas commerce and obviate hindrances. By examining British activities in Aleppo, Izmir, and Cyprus, this dissertation reveals that the conditions of politics, trade, and finance tied British engagements to the workings of Ottoman bureaucratic-legal, administrative-fiscal, and socio-economic structures. Consequently, the British became entangled in complex relationships and situations in these places. These entanglements were constitutive of the Ottoman Empire and the British imperial enterprise.

In examining British engagements and entanglements in the empire, this dissertation shows fluid imperial boundaries and volatile socio-political and commercial dynamics that rendered trans-imperial relationships essential for the functioning of Ottoman and British imperial structures. Those relationships created overlapping imperial systems that shaped the dynamism of Ottoman administrative and fiscal capacity and forms. They moreover conditioned the power relations between British officials and merchants and the Ottomans, and thus shaped the contours of the British imperial enterprise in the eastern Mediterranean. As such the dissertation proposes a more dynamic approach to imperial history writing through the concept of composite empires.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):