An Interview with Giancarlo Casale

Rosita D’Amora

doi:10.36253/cromohs-12587

Abstract

Giancarlo Casale is Chair of Early Modern Mediterranean History at the European University Institute in Florence, as well as a permanent member of the history faculty at the University of Minnesota. His new book, Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth-Century Europe will be released in summer 2021 from the University of California Press. Casale is also the author of award-winning Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford, 2011), and since 2010 has served as executive editor of the Journal of Early Modern History.

Highlights

Giancarlo Casale is Chair of Early Modern Mediterranean History at the European University Institute in Florence, as well as a permanent member of the history faculty at the University of Minnesota
Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in SeventeenthCentury Europe will be released in summer 2021 from the University of California Press
How did you get interested in Ottoman history and what have been the encounters, influences, personal choices and fortuitous events that have shaped your intellectual and personal itinerary? Being an Ottoman historian, was it your ‘kismet’?

Summary

Introduction

As you know as well as I, over the course of our careers there has been a complete transformation in the way that people think about history in the part of the world that used to be the Ottoman Empire. This makes a certain amount of sense, because if you’re trying to get attention, the obvious way to do that is to sacrifice accuracy for entertainment value, to tell people a good story without worrying about whether it’s true or not.

Results

Conclusion