‘Going to Constantinople’: English wager-journeys to the Ottoman world in the early-modern period

Abstract

The expansion of tourism and trade links in the sixteenth century brought the Ottoman dominions within the reach of an increasing number of European travellers, and in the process several of the most renowned centres became a focus for the practice of ‘putting out’, a form of wager upon a journey in which the traveller laid out a stake to be repaid at an agreed rate of multiplication if he returned safely having met a particular set of conditions. ‘Going to Constantinople’ was originally a call to arms from the crusading era, though one that Elizabethan foreign policy rejected as it sought to encourage commercial relations with the Porte. Following a brief survey of the origins of ‘putting out’ in pilgrimage arrangements and courtly culture, this essay argues that the wager on travel into the Ottoman dominions transposes that military challenge into a new kind of ordeal, one that is used to structure and facilitate the experience of secular travel to ancient centres.