Recently it has become fashionable to collapse the barriers that separate Ottoman and European history by importing the latter’s paradigms and concepts into the former. Giancarlo Casale’s The Ottoman Age of Exploration may be a fine example. It argues that in spite of Western academia’s disregard, the Ottomans participated in the age of exploration. In his chronologically organized book, Casale not only seeks to introduce the Ottomans as global players engaged in geographical explorations, but by closely linking domestic factional politics with imperial strategy in the international arena, he also seeks to demonstrate how the “Indian Ocean faction” that supported a belligerent and expansionist policy in the Indian Ocean steered Ottoman foreign policy as well as military and commercial strategy.
While the virtues of this work in terms of reconceptualizing the early modern Ottoman Empire and raising exciting new questions are evident, it is necessary to highlight its significant shortcomings. Casale’s limited source base and his failure to use all the information available to him constitute the major problem surrounding this work. His main Ottoman archival source, the mühimme registers, were heavily exploited before and not nearly as novel as he suggests; moreover, contrary to Casale’s claim, they are neither “day-do-day” nor “verbatim records of the sultans’ outgoing correspondence” (xvii), but rather summaries a few paragraphs in length. Furthermore, entries regarding the Indian Ocean in these sources are extremely scant when compared with those regarding other frontiers of the empire such as Hungary, Persia, the Western Mediterranean, and the Kipchack steppes.
As Casale also acknowledges, sparse Ottoman sources should be backed by European ones. Here he mainly relies on Portuguese sources, which provide him with extensive information regarding Ottoman activity in the Indian Ocean but less detail about what was going on in the Ottoman capital. Documentation in the Venetian archives, especially the letters regularly dispatched by the Venetian baili, the dispacci, could have filled that gap. In addition, Spanish archives in Simancas are full of references to Ottoman activity in the Indian Ocean; those produced by the extensive Habsburg intelligence network in Constantinople could be particularly useful. Finally, Ernest Charrière’s four-volume compilation of French diplomatic correspondence in the Eastern Mediterranean, in print since the nineteenth century, provides key information regarding not only the negotiations between the Ottomans, the Portuguese, and the Sultanate of Ache, but also the imperial dynamics of the empire and its Indian Ocean faction.
The strength of Casale’s hypotheses is limited by his thinly stretched source base, especially with regard to issues of Ottoman decision making and factional politics in Constantinople. For instance, almost all of the clientage relationships in the Ottoman capital that constitute the basis of his faction-focused analysis are insufficiently substantiated. Much of his narrative is driven by circumstantial evidence and speculation rather than thick documentation. In a book with too many perhapses, “we may never know for sure, but the most likely answer seems to be yes” (147) when it comes to Casale’s hypotheses. He also occasionally falls into a trap of teleology through a backward reading of political events and attributing intent to Ottoman decision makers based on the military and political outcomes. Any Ottoman political decision or military move is considered as part of a worldwide strategy, a blueprint never mentioned in the sources. In addition, this global vision recognizes no physical boundaries as the author goes to great lengths to synchronize unrelated decisions made in faraway political and military centers (Lisbon, Paris, Istanbul, Cairo, Goa) and uncoordinated military expeditions undertaken simultaneously in the four corners of the world. Finally, his depiction of a smooth cooperation between the Ottoman Empire and the Rumis, mercenaries of Ottoman origin operating in the Indian Ocean, and his reading of the latter’s activity within the sphere of Ottoman strategy are misleading. The relations between the two were mostly tense rather than harmonious and thus a line between state action and individual entrepreneurship should have been drawn.
The originality of Casale’s work lies in his tendency to study Ottoman history within the general trends of world history, his emphasis on a faction that operated both in the capital and the provinces, his mercantilist vision of the Ottoman Empire, his highly criticized study of contemporary Ottoman maps and manuscripts in comparison with their European counterparts, and his experimentation with new concepts such as “soft empire.” His interesting arguments could have yielded groundbreaking conclusions if substantiated with proper handling of the evidence and based on a larger corpus of documentation. The best they can do as they are now is to foster academic debate.
Even though his book contains errors discussed here and elsewhere, and his source base is limited and his handling of the historical sources problematic, his work is an easy and enjoyable read. Casale is a gifted writer who knows how to make his well-illustrated text more appealing to the reader with an engaging narrative, imaginative terminology, and catchy titles. In this regard, his narrative has much to offer the notoriously dry Ottoman historiography, and given that his book raises more questions than it answers, he has left some work to do as well.
