British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: ‘Slaves’ of the Sultan

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 1-31

3. Scattered Nations: Jews and Greeks

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 33-81

4. Eastern Christians

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 83-128

5. Viewing and Addressing Women

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 129-170

6. Free Franks and Visiting Westerners

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 171-191

7. Conclusion: ‘Sundry Sorts of Nations’

   • Eva Johanna Holmberg

   Pages 193-200

8. Back Matter

   Pages 201-228

   PDF

British travellers regarded all inhabitants of the seventeenth-century Ottoman empire as ‘slaves of the sultan’, yet they also made fine distinctions between them. This book provides the first historical account of how British travellers understood the non-Muslim peoples they encountered in Ottoman lands, and of how they perceived and described them in the mediating shadow of the Turks. In doing so it changes our perceptions of the European encounter with the Ottomans by exploring the complex identities of the subjects of the Ottoman empire in the English imagination, de-centering the image of the ‘Terrible Turk’ and Islam.

• Levant
• Ottoman minorities
• Travel writing
• Cultural history
• British history
• Ottoman empire
• Seventeenth-Century Literature
• Sultan
• Anglo-Ottoman encounter

“In her compelling account of the early modern Ottoman empire, Eva Johanna Holmberg offers a path-breaking two-fold perspective: on the religious and ethnic diversity of Ottoman subjects, and on the complexity of British representational practices in their global encounters. In its larger story of empire building and the treatment of minorities, this monograph makes a significantcontribution to travel studies.”


— Jyotsna G. Singh, Professor, Department of English, Michigan State University, USA, and Editor of A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700 (Second Edition, 2021)


“This is deeply impressive and necessary work of scholarship which offers a wideranging account of the religious and ethnic diversity within the Ottoman empire, as recorded in early modern British accounts. What emerges in the process is not just an image of the variety of “non-Turks” under Ottoman rule, but also sharply perceptive explorations of English and British articulations of nationhood, national character, and structures of difference.”


— Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Culture and Tutorial Fellow in English at Exeter College, University of Oxford, UK

• University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

  Eva Johanna Holmberg

Eva Johanna Holmberg is an Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a visiting research fellow at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London, UK. Her previous publications include Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination – A Scattered Nation (2012).

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