The European tributary states of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

GABOR KARMAN and LOVRO KUNCEVIC, eds., European Tributary States of Ottoman Empire in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013). Ottoman Empire and its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy. Pp. 450. £ 146.00 cloth.This volume is fruit of a conference held in 2009 at Dubrovnik, with additional essays included by invitation. It reflects increasingly international nature of scholarship on Ottoman Empire and offers fresh insights into character of Ottoman rule, going beyond nationalist historiography of past and tendency today to view this history anachronistically. It is divided into four sections: The Legal Status of Ottoman Tributaries, The Diplomacy of Tributary States in Ottoman System, Military Cooperation between Ottoman Empire and its Tributaries, and a section of synthesis, Instead of a Conclusion: On 'Compositeness' of Empire.The editors frame argument of book from outset (1-2): theirs is a re-assessment of history of empire itself, with an emphasis on its composite state character, a re-evaluation of its activities, and identification of its inner logic of empire-building. shift of perspective from one focused on 'Ottoman yoke' to 'Pax Ottomanica'-or, rather, an emphasis on negotiation between imperial and local perspectives-has resulted in a more nuanced understanding of history of Ottoman-dominated Europe.Five essays comprise first section; they concern Wallachia and Moldavia, Crimea, Transylvania, Ragusan Republic, and Cossack Ukraine. In common with other papers in this collection, all make use of both Ottoman and European sources, and all make point that understanding these regions in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be undermined by anachronism, particularly in use of legal terms whose meaning changed dramatically over time. Thus, Viorel Panaite writes, in regard to Wallachia and Moldavia, that the notion of 'autonomy' was a creation of modern historians and jurists... (20). His argument is stated succinctly: With Islamic Ottoman terminology in mind, and in order to avoid confusion caused by using Western concepts in melange with Islamic notions, I prefer to group diverse historical and juridical terminology under a single idiom, i.e., tributaryprotected provinces (principalities), to define legal and political status of Wallachia and (32; emphasis in original).Three essays comprise second section, concerning tributary states in seventeenth century, relations between Ottomans and Republic of Dubrovnik, and military revolts against Ottoman power in Moldavia and Wallachia in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is noteworthy that although Ottomans formally had suzerainty over Dubrovnik, they permitted Dubrovnik merchants to ride horses, indicating that much of shifting relationships between Ottomans and those who paid taxes to them were determined in a pragmatic, one-time fashion, not by rigid formulas and anangements more familiar to contemporary readers. …