#历史开讲 #
In the 16th and 17th centuries, how would the Ottoman view of British travelers be influenced? First of all, before answering this question, we need to know that compared with Durf and Durham, travelers represented by Henry Blunt and Peter Mundy observe the Ottoman Empire with a more objective and rational attitude, and record what they see and hear in the Ottoman Empire with less prejudice. In their writing, the Ottoman Empire mostly appears as a positive imperial image. In general, their descriptions of the Ottoman Empire have the following commonalities. First, their description of the Ottoman Empire is objective and rational.
Positive Ottoman outlook
Blunt described the religion, social life, and military conditions of the Ottoman Empire from both positive and negative sides, not only analyzing the advantages of the Ottoman Empire, but also pointing out the shortcomings of the Ottoman Empire, presenting us with a real image of the Ottoman Empire. Mundy recorded what he saw and heard in the Ottoman Empire in the form of a diary, without making any subjective evaluations. Second, in their writing, the image of the Ottoman Empire is mostly positive.
In Blunt's eyes, the Ottoman Empire was powerful, prosperous, and had its own characteristics, and Blunt evaluated the Ottoman system from the perspective of the Ottoman Empire, acknowledging its unique imperial characteristics, and realizing that each system played a pivotal role in maintaining the Ottoman Empire, rather than subjective moral judgments on it.
As a merchant living in Istanbul, unlike Bidurf and Durham who wanted to return to their homeland urgently, Moody lived here for 3 years and was very satisfied with the life here, saying that British merchants could enjoy joy, love and friendship here, in addition to pointing out the dominant position of the major cities of the Ottoman Empire in trade. In the eyes of Blunt and Mundy, the Ottoman Empire was a prosperous country with its own characteristic culture.
In general, the Ottoman views of these four most representative travelers have undergone a transformation from traditional to pluralistic to rational and objective, and their views of the Ottoman Empire have been influenced by the context of their time. Compared to the Middle Ages, Britain had substantial contact with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, and during this period, more British traveled to the Ottoman Empire, including travelers who for different reasons traveled to the Ottoman Empire, who recorded their experiences and showed the true situation of the Ottoman Empire.
The reason for this is that Durham and Bidulf were in the early stages of economic exchanges between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, and their knowledge of the Ottoman Empire was more influenced by the Middle Ages; After the trade between Britain and the Ottoman Empire was formally established, the British were eager to learn about the real Ottoman Empire, so travelers such as Blunt and Mundy, who traveled and studied the Ottoman Empire decades later, showed the British a more authentic Ottoman Empire.
Perception of the Turkish nation
Blunt argues that "experience promotes human knowledge, and he believes that knowledge will increase in proportion to the degree of novelty and the degree of difference in experience." In the opening chapter of Journey to the Levant, Blunt distinguishes himself from writers who have never been to Turkey. For them, "Turk" is synonymous with Islam, a terrible enemy, and wants to destroy it in a just way.
By acting as a "passer-by," Blunt keeps an open mind as much as possible during his travels to experience things that generate knowledge that travelers who regularly read false records cannot.
Blunt is eager to learn about the Turkish nation, but he will not sit down and read the knowledge in books, but must see for himself to avoid any "fog of feelings, prejudices or education", all of which are necessarily "one-sided ideas" that can be "deceived". While travelers may know less than local residents, local residents can provide travelers with some reliable local information – such as "residents" who have lived in Cairo for 25 years.
"Told me many very positive things," illustrating that travelers learn more than those who stay home and read books full of authorial biases and opinions. With the rise of the Levantine trade, travelogues of this period were published in large numbers, such as those of William Bidulf, Thomas Corryat, George Santis, Fiennes Morrison, William Lisgaard, Henry Blunt.
It is worth noting that in the 17th-century Travelogues about the Ottoman Empire, the travelers did not show superiority, but rather disturbed them that the Turks seemed to have similar civilizational characteristics to the British, and had large and well-equipped military and maritime power, which could be potentially dangerous for them. But the British traveler's portrayal of the Turks is largely positive.
As Henry Blunt wrote, the Turks are "the only modern people, a great people, and those who want to witness this great era cannot find a better place than Turkey." ”
Even travelers who criticized the Turks, such as Fiennes Morrison, acknowledged the benefits of Turkish civilization. Most travelers are impressed by the great city of Istanbul, which in 1600 probably had a population well over 1 million, while London had a population of just 250,000. In the 17th century, Turkey was a very powerful empire, and despite being defeated by Spain in 1571, they still had the ability to invade Europe in the 80s of the 17th century, as far as Vienna.
In short, the British view of the Ottoman Empire in this period has the characteristics of the transition between the old and the new: on the one hand, it is still influenced by the medieval view of the Islamic world; On the other hand, due to the interaction between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, the view of the Ottoman Empire in this period was more realistic and objective, which also had a further impact on British society and Britain's interaction with the Ottoman Empire.
Influenced the British view of the Ottoman Empire
Writings on the Ottoman Empire, especially travelers' travelogues, influenced British perceptions of the Ottoman Empire and further influenced British dealings with the Ottoman Empire. As with the views of several travelers we analysed about the Ottoman Empire, the British view of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries gradually shifted from a traditional medieval idea to a more rational, positive, and profound view of the early modern period.
The experiences of British travelers in the early modern period in the Ottoman Empire led the British to form different views of the Ottoman Empire. Early modern British travel texts have had an equal or more profound impact on shaping and changing British perceptions of Ottoman civilization and lifestyle. Through their narrations, travelers not only show the British what the Ottoman Empire is now like, but some travelogue writers also give us a detailed insight into the lives of our fellow diasporas who made a living in the Ottoman Empire.
England started relatively late in travel writing, nearly 80 years behind Spain and Portugal, which explains why Richard Hackluit's collection of seafaring essays published in 1589 was groundbreaking. Although some of these travel reports were top-secret proprietary documents, the published works quickly captured an avid audience in the British print market.
Travel works were the best-selling books in the relatively limited book market of the times of Queen Elizabeth and Stuart, and as literacy rates and the number of authors rose, travel books continued to dominate the market throughout the 18th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was also a travel manual that provided advice to travelers.
For example, Sir Thomas Palmer wrote a detailed travel manual that included an introduction to how to travel, including how not to offend the locals, how to assess different people, what duties needed to be performed, what skills needed to be developed, he also listed who was not suitable to travel, such as women, madmen, babies and the elderly, etc., and provided targeted advice for different types of travellers, from ambassadors to spies, merchants, exiles, etc.
This travel manual for the British is one of the means of acquiring knowledge from the outside world. The travelogues of some of these travellers were reprinted many times throughout the 17th century, and there were several different editions, a clear indication of the great interest of the British public in these stories about the Far East. Different travelers describe the Ottoman Empire differently. Some travelers described the Ottomans as savage, dangerous, and enemies of Christendom, while others, on the contrary, expressed admiration for the Turks, calling them trustworthy, polite and tolerant.
Contradictory reports by travelers about the Ottomans sparked different attitudes towards new things in the Islamic world, further influencing the British view of the Ottoman Empire. In travelers' travelogues, we often see something that attracts the attention of all travelers and originated in the Ottoman Empire - coffee.
Here, we analyze the impact of coffee on the British view of the Ottoman Empire from the descriptions of different travelers. In the 50s of the 17th century, coffee and cafes appeared in England. Like coffee itself, English cafes are imported from the Ottoman Empire, and drinking coffee in public places is a cultural feature of the Ottoman Empire. Reading pamphlets and discussing current events is usually done in a café.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, cafes became common in English cities. When Edison and Steele launched their journals Atlas and Spectrometer in the first two decades of the 18th century, they hoped that these journals would be read aloud in cafes and publicly debated. Many British people name their cafes like "Turk's Head", and even coffee shop owners dress up as Turks or Arabs. It is not uncommon for some of these cafés to be owned by Levantines themselves, and it is not uncommon for even British café patrons to wear headscarves.
In general, for a period of time, the Ottoman headscarf even became a fashionable thing, replacing the wigs that were popular after the Restoration. Many writers and artists wear turbans in their portraits, such as Samuel Pepys, Alexander Pope and William Hogas.