D'ohsson's Ottoman-French-Swedish Triangle

Chapter 1 Introduction: D’Ohsson’s Ottoman-French-Swedish Triangle

Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson (1740–1807) gave the improvement during the mid-1700s, and greater prosper- Enlightenment its most-authoritative, best-illustrated ity animated social and cultural life. Re-emergence from account of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. A half- the seventeenth-century ecological and climatic crisis French Ottoman Armenian Catholic born and educated helped to launch this upturn.2 Developments after 1700 in Istanbul, professionally serving the Swedish legation further stimulated it. Dynamic social change occurred in Istanbul, he also inhabited a cosmopolitan world in all three states, challenging established concepts of anchored in Istanbul, Paris, and Stockholm. stratification. Given still-limited opportunities for other His well-being depended on the state of the triangu- uses of capital, investment in state finance—specifically lar relationship with the Ottoman Empire, France, and tax farming—formed a key point where forces of social Sweden at its corners. This triangle was also important and economic change grated together. to many of his contemporaries. Understanding what Culturally, this was remembered as the century of follows requires understanding developments in each Enlightenment—le siècle des lumières. While it certainly of these environments, at least as they affected him. bore a French—more precisely francophone—stamp, Although he spent little time there, Sweden was particu- its cosmopolitan spirit stimulated cultural creativity larly important to d’Ohsson. The intricacy of Sweden’s in other languages including Swedish and in time also connections, both to the Ottoman Empire and to him Ottoman Turkish. Not all the trends of the period con- personally, warrants special attention to that country. verged in a homogeneous “enlightenment,” and even Its history is not well known to non-specialists and was, those most identified with it only became revolution- objectively, hard to understand in his later years. ary after 1789. Rationalism and occultism, piety and Tectonic forces shaping world history—for example, impiety, all marked the age. The new trends in thought ecological and climatic change, the rhythms of the world found outlets in distinctive sociabilities. Parisian salons economy—affected all three monarchies. All three also had their counterparts in Istanbul’s learned gatherings shared the structural and functional limitations of the (meclis). Masonic and other brotherhoods prolifer- polities of the early modern period, traits that French ated across Europe, sending out offshoots as far as the commentators looked back on after 1789 as those of the Ottoman Empire, where many Europeans saw affini- ancien régime. In French, ancien means not so much ties in the dervish orders, and some dervishes thought “ancient” as “old” or “former,” and the last meaning is the so too. In time, Ottomans in Europe also encountered pertinent one. Before 1789, no one knew they were living Freemasonry there.3 under an ancien régime.1 It took the advent of a new, rev- olutionary way of doing things to make the former way look old and different. That upheaval overtook d’Ohsson 2 Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and as he approached the age of fifty. Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale Until then, all three states had monarchs who claimed University Press, 2013), 1–109, 185–210, 219–35, 291–323. divine sanction for absolute rule and maintained an 3 Thierry Zarcone, “French Pre-Masonic Fraternities, Freemasonry established religion. All three states had experienced and Dervish Orders in the Muslim World,” in Freemasonry and greater, more effective rulers and greater power in Fraternalism in the Middle East, ed. Andreas Önnerfors and the past. That said, all three experienced economic Dorothe Sommer (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 2009), 15–52; W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006), 214–15, painting of ceremony 1 William Doyle, The Ancien Regime, 2d ed. (Houndmills, UK: at England’s Royal Masonic School for Girls, with spectators Palgrave, 2001), 1–5; Colin Jones, The Great Nation, France from including three in Ottoman dress, probably from the embassy. Louis XV to Napoleon 1715–99 (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Two men have the Ottoman elites’ beards and turbans; the last Press, 2002), 420. wears a non-Muslim interpreter’s moustache and fur cap.

In the Ottoman Empire, the non-Muslim elites were spared them the challenge to keep up with military early adopters of westernizing innovation. That brings innovations that occurred far from their frontiers, cre- us back to Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson (1740–1807), the ating gaps that proved catastrophic when war broke half-French Ottoman Armenian Catholic, working for a out with Russia in 1768. That war ended with the Treaty European government, the citizen of the francophone of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), far worse than Karlowitz in République des lettres who gave the Enlightenment its costing the Ottomans a significant loss of Muslim ter- great work on Islam and the Ottomans. ritory, the Crimea. That set off shock waves across the Despite the resemblances at all three corners of our Muslim world. Less obvious but more insidious, other triangle, the balance or imbalance among forces at each treaty clauses undermined Ottoman sovereignty sys- corner could produce startlingly different outcomes. tematically.7 Ottoman attempts to regain the Crimea Obviously, the three states differed to the utmost degree continued with an unsuccessful war with Austria and in size, resources, power, and influence. Even events Russia (1788–1792). that looked identical—killing the monarch, to pick a For the Ottomans, there would never be another random example—could result from different align- Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566), but the reign of ments of forces and produce different meanings readily Ahmed III (1703–1730) began this century with what one misinterpreted from afar. In d’Ohsson’s lifetime, the scholar termed the “silhouette of a Renaissance.”8 New destabilization of the triangular relationship on which dynamism appeared especially under his long-serving he depended magnified all such problems, leaving his grand vezir Nevşehirli İbrahim Paşa (1718–1730). One masterpiece unfinished until his son completed it. notable example was the embassy to France (1720–1721) headed by Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi, accompanied by his son Said. Ottoman envoys were still sent out only on The Ottoman Empire, from the “Tulip Period” to the temporary missions, not for permanent representation. “New Order” All ambassadors wrote embassy narratives after return- ing, but Mehmed Çelebi’s account of Regency France The empire emerged after 1700 from a particularly bru- was the first to convey positive, detailed information tal experience of the climatic crisis of the preceding about the host country, everything from the quarantine century.4 Hints of revitalization appeared late in the to the opera, the royal factories, the observatory, and 1600s, above all in the launching of a new coinage the printing press.9 Symptomatic of the times, a flores- based on the silver kuruş, which heralded an economic cence of worldly culture characterized what Ottomans expansion that lasted until about 1780.5 A less success- remembered as the Tulip Period (Lâle Devri), symbolized ful attempt at reassertion began with the second siege in gardens and pleasure pavilions (köşk), the Ottoman of Vienna (1683), opening the war that lasted until the baroque architectural style, and the last great Ottoman Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), which inflicted the first major illustrated manuscript, Levni’s Surname, commemorat- territorial losses on the Ottomans in Europe and opened ing the festivities surrounding the circumcision of four the age when Russia would join Austria in enmity to the sons of Ahmed III in 1720. Other innovations included Ottomans. a translation program and the introduction of printing Other wars ensued for several decades, but with less in Arabic characters. That was primarily the work of dire consequences, and the Ottomans even regained some territories.6 After 1739, the Ottomans enjoyed 7 Carter Vaughn Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: nearly thirty years of peace. A mixed blessing, peace A History, 1789–2007 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 25–26 and sources cited there. 8 Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: 4 Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman McGill University Press, 1964), 23–50. Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 9 Mehmed efendi, Le paradis des infidèles: Relation de Yirmisekiz 5 Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Çelebi Mehmed efendi, ambassadeur ottoman en France sous la (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2000), 160–71. Régence, trans. Julien-Claude Galland, introduction and notes 6 Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Wars 1700–1870, An Empire Besieged Gilles Veinstein (Paris: François Maspero, 1981), 41–42, 126 and (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2007), 83–179. passim.