With the exception of relations between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, the links between the German-speaking lands and the Ottomans have been underexplored. Irena Fliter's study of the Ottoman diplomatic missions to Berlin in the half-century between 1763 and 1808 is thus a welcome and much needed addition to the field. Although Prussia was late to establish an embassy in Istanbul in 1755, Sultan Mustafa III (r. 1757–1774) quickly reciprocated by sending an embassy of his own led by Ahmed Resmi Efendi in 1763–1764 to negotiate a defensive alliance against the Habsburgs. Another mission followed in 1791–1792 and in 1797 Berlin was among the first European capitals to receive a permanent Ottoman diplomatic presence.
Ottomans in Eighteenth-Century Prussia charts the establishment, development, and normalization of diplomatic relations between the two courts, taking into account not just the top-level diplomats (ambassadors and chargés d'affaires) but also secretaries, dragomans and informal intermediaries, whom Fliter together calls delegates, preferring the term to the narrower and, in her opinion, potentially anachronistic diplomats (3). The subtitle Delegates to diplomats refers to developments on the level of the individual actors and their perception by their Prussian hosts as well as Ottoman diplomatic representation more generally, which, Fliter argues, “move[d] towards more institutionalized and specialized diplomacy” (208) in the period under discussion. The author draws chiefly on archival sources from Istanbul and Berlin as well as contemporary reports in newspapers (primarily from Munich). While the book is divided into thematic chapters, most subchapters follow a roughly chronological order.
Opening with a brief overview of Prusso–Ottoman diplomatic relations, Chapter 1 examines the education and careers of each of the delegates. For the top-level diplomats, diplomatic appointments were simply “another step on the bureaucratic career ladder” (29) rather than a distinct career. This applied to the first three ambassadors as much as to the later chargés d'affaires, who, from 1804, belonged to a prominent Phanariot family. By far the most varied group were the dragomans. Alongside Ottoman Greeks, the former included the Jewish Ottoman merchant Abraham Salomon Camondo (41–2) and the Istanbul-based Prussian merchant Christian Ludwig Gross (44–5) whose commercial contacts were useful assets.
Chapter 2 focuses on negotiations of protocol regarding diplomatic rank, ceremony, and funding in three main areas: payments for the upkeep of the embassy (tayin in Ottoman Turkish), the logistics and funding of the embassies’ journeys to Prussia through third-party countries, and the ceremonies and gifts granted to each delegate. Over time, both parties moved towards a more pragmatic and functional approach to diplomacy in which ceremonies were reduced. This was a factor in the switch from full ambassadors to chargés d'affaires—alongside a mutual desire to cut cost (48, 97–8). Indeed, financial concerns are at the heart of the majority of the disputes between Ottomans and Prussians discussed in Fliter's book, even as financial responsibility for the upkeep of the Ottoman delegates in Berlin increasingly, and in 1797 definitively, shifted to the Ottoman treasury in line with the European diplomatic custom.
Chapter 3 is devoted to the practical challenges of transferring funds and messages for which both parties relied heavily on a shared set of informal actors. As the regular postal service was controlled by the Habsburgs, communication was notoriously insecure. Attempts at improving security and reliability included the adoption of ciphers by the nineteenth-century chargés d'affairs (137–8) and Prussian proposals to establish a regular courier service (134–6). Fliter's discussion of credit networks (106–21), which reveals the extent to which Jewish commercial networks organized money transfers and provided loans, is especially noteworthy. In addition to the dragoman Camondo, Fliter singles out the Prussian Jewish company of Ephraim & Söhne and the merchant Mendel Oppenheim. Members of the Ephraim family also acted as informal translators and guides for the Ottoman delegates, while Ali Aziz rented the Ephraim Palais for his embassy (108). This section is an important contribution to the study of commercial links between the north German kingdom and the Ottoman Empire.
Chapter 4 turns to the question of the Ottoman delegates’ diplomatic status through the lens of interactions with Berlin's population. The sources record these mostly as disputes over money, as in the case of the chargé d'affaires Mehmed Esad Bey's (in Berlin 1800–1804) legal battle with a Prussian surgeon over the latter's honorarium. That a prostitute accused of tax evasion in 1797 was exempt from prosecution because her income was generated in the Ottoman embassy, sheds an amusing light on the practical implications of extraterritoriality and diplomatic immunity (158–9). The enforcement of Prussian laws on Ottoman diplomatic personnel, Fliter notes, depended on their “ability to convincingly argue their rank and status by employing the terminology of Enlightenment and rationality,” although, on the whole, “the Prussians […] treated them similar to other foreign delegates” (165). Nonetheless, their attempts to provide consular support and intervene on behalf of Ottoman merchants were invariably blocked (165–74).
Finally, Chapter 5 investigates instances of transculturation and knowledge transfer. Fliter shows that the Prussian government initially went to great lengths to ensure that interiors of the buildings assigned to the Ottoman delegates would be suitable in both function and design, drawing on “Orientalist” expectations as well as the input of Ottomans delegates themselves (182–4). Nevertheless, the latter commissioned changes after their arrival and, as financial responsibility shifted to the Ottoman treasury, they arranged accommodation and their furnishings themselves. In both instances, Fliter emphasizes, the “modifications of the embassy's residences resulted in a transcultural living space” (185) which provided Prussians an opportunity to observe ‘Turkish’ customs during as well as outside of strictly diplomatic contexts. Other areas of contact included music and the theatre. Janissary bands accompanied the delegations and performed on various occasions while delegates were able to learn about Germany and German literature from dramatic performances, which likely familiarized them with Enlightenment ideas. Mehmed Esad, in particular, purchased French books in Berlin, among them several pornographic works that Fliter identifies as key Enlightenment prints. Her case for viewing possession as evidence that “the delegate was also interested in the work's [sic] philosophical message” (205) is not implausible but contentious in the absence of evidence of how Mehmed Esad engaged with them.
Tracing the careers and activities of those delegates who returned to Istanbul, the Epilogue highlights the continued importance of their diplomatic experience and their contacts to diplomatic milieux. Ahmed Resmi, for example, negotiated the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1794) that ended the Russo–Turkish War of 1768–1774 (209), while his dragoman Frangopoulo worked for the Prussian embassy (211–12). Jacques Argyropoulo, who had been chargé d'affaires from 1804 to 1806, became grand dragoman in 1812 and translated French texts—notably Mahmud Raif's famous report of his embassy to France (sefaretname, 213–15). His brother Jean, his successor in Berlin, was also appointed chargé d'affaires in Vienna (215). Against this background, Fliter concludes that the Ottoman delegates “left Istanbul as bureaucrats, merchants or dragomans but returned from their missions to Prussia as diplomatic actors” (215).
The present study provides fascinating insights into a wide range of aspects of early Prusso–Ottoman relations. Particular strengths are the extensive source work in Ottoman Turkish and German, the detailed explorations of Ottoman and European contexts, the perspective on second-rank actors, and the important analysis of financial channels. Yet I am skeptical about the book's more wide-ranging conclusions, most importantly Fliter's claim that the Ottoman delegates engaged with Enlightenment concepts and employed them in their arguments with their Prussian counterparts. Her conclusion may well be accurate—and if it is, it deserves general attention. However, I find that it is not convincingly supported, least of all by verbatim quotations from primary sources, which are kept to an unfortunate minimum throughout the book.
I am also surprised that the ambivalent opinions of Prussian officials noted by Joseph Croitoru in the Prussian documents are not discussed more extensively beyond financial concerns. King Frederick II, for instance, dismissively referred to Ahmed Resmi as “Mamamouchi” in his private correspondence, invoking Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (Croitoru, Die Deutschen und der Orient [2018], 41). Fliter was apparently unaware of Croitoru's work at the time of writing, even though there is significant overlap between the two books. Since they are complementary, they are now best read together.
Irrespective of the criticism above, I consider Fliter's monograph essential reading for anyone interested in Prusso–Ottoman relations and the history of eighteenth-century diplomacy. Historians of commercial links between Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire, too, should take note of the discussion of credit and trade networks. Ottomans in Eighteenth-Century Prussia paves the way for future research and deserves attention.
