Among historians dismantling Ottoman-Greek barriers, Philliou deserves a place of honor. One cannot study diplomatic correspondence from nineteenth-century Istanbul without encountering Stephanos Vogorides (1770–1859), Prince of Samos, Istefanaki Bey to Turks, an enigmatic figure until now. One also cannot study Ottoman history without realizing that the Greek Revolution, although a catastrophe for the Greek Orthodox (Rum) elite identified with the Phanar quarter of Istanbul, did not end Orthodox Christians' role in Ottoman governance. That raises questions about their loyalties, a hypersensitive issue for Orthodox Christians, once both Greece and Russia offered alternative poles of attraction. For Ottoman non-Muslims generally, determining how much loyalty they had to the Ottoman sultanate or how they understood such loyalty is difficult. There are signs that at least some non-Muslims did have such loyalties. Philliou's most startling finding is probably Vogorides' eloquent articulation of his Ottoman loyalties, hidden in an encrypted manuscript that she publishes for the first time (xix, 1–4).

Vogorides was born into a Hellenizing Bulgarian family and acquired a Greek education in Bucharest. Comparable to the strategies by which many non-Turkish Muslims made their way into the Ottoman elites, this trajectory launched Vogorides toward membership in the Phenariot elite, whose far-flung “empire within the empire” included not only Orthodox church institutions but also four high offices, the translatorships of the Imperial Fleet and the Imperial Divan and the principalities (voyvodaships) of Wallachia and Moldavia. All these power centers had large networks of retainers and rich resources attached to them.

Philliou's readers will learn much from her six chapters interspersed with discussions focused on Vogorides. Her account of what she calls the Phanariot “house” (their imperium in imperio) is especially informative. Her analysis of its linkages to the Janissary “house” enables her to clarify for the first time how a palace favorite as powerful as Halet Efendi could fall in 1822 amid rumors that he was “pro-Greek” (74–76). The Greek Revolution forced disruptive change in Ottoman governance, affecting all four of the key Phanariot offices. This provides the occasion for Philliou to re-examine Ottoman diplomacy of the 1820s and 1830s and its institutional bases: the replacement of the Greek translators of the Imperial Divan by the Tranlslation Office of the Sublime Porte, the organization of the Foreign Ministry, and the revival of permanent diplomatic and consular representation abroad. Outlasting the Greek Revolution in Ottoman service, Vogorides acquired his “princely” role from the fact that Samos remained under Ottoman rule; that was only one of the interests he retained throughout the empire. Nothing reveals more about his world than the impact on it of the Holy Places controversy that provoked the Crimean War. For Ottoman statesmen, Orthodox–Catholic controversy in Palestine signified a diplomatic choice between France as protector of the Catholics and Russia as protector of the Orthodox, not a choice over which to hesitate. For Vogorides, in contrast, favoring the Catholics, a small community in the empire, was an unbelievable affront to the Orthodox Christians – 16 million, he reckoned – whose real protector to Vogorides' thinking was the Ottoman state (163–166).

Compelling in argument, the book is not without error. Philliou dates the founding of the Translation Office of the Sublime Porte first to 1833 (7), then correctly to 1821 (93). Too many assertions are footnoted to whole books without specific page references. Asserting that the Ottomans appointed Phanariots as ambassadors by the early 1800s (30), she cites my books, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1980) and Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton, 1989) without page citations; I cannot find mention of such appointments in my sources. The original of Dante's Divine Comedy was in Italian, not Latin (170). The French ambassador did not refer to the Ottoman government as that of “Her Highness” (127). Diplomatic convention ascribed princely rank to the grand vezir, making him “Son Altesse.” French-language correspondence redounds with feminine terms (Altesse, Excellence, pronominally Elle) that refer to male dignitaries. Philliou's Ottoman Turkish also errs. “Holiday gifts” (26) would not have been ‘aidiye but ‘idiye; tevarid (105) should be tevarüd; killeri hümayunum (195, n. 60), should be kiler-i hümayunum. She quotes an original Ottoman document without identifying the source (220, n. 35). Most historians date the Tanzimat to 1839; Philliou treats it as beginning in 1856 (139). Ottomans admitted non-Muslims into official service after 1856; I have seen no evidence of the quotas Philliou mentions (168, 173).

As with some photographs, the focus of this book is not altogether exact, but the picture is memorable.