the early modern mediterranean 103
or should find its beginning in Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 (the conventional
starting-point of modern Middle-Eastern history) is, I think, still an open question.
This uncertainty derives from the fact that a comprehensive reckoning of the
Napoleonic era in the Mediterranean has yet to be undertaken.
Endnotes
1 “In 1600 no European consuls were resident in Izmir; by 1620 the Dutch, English, French
and Venetians all had consular representation there” (Goffman, 1990: 139).
2 Customs dues were levied at 5% for foreigners, 4% for Ottoman subjects (Inalcık, 1978: 83
and 107).
3 See Valérian, this volume, where he speaks of the long-term evolution of domination, away
from the east and the south to the north and the west. Braudel makes a similar point
(1972–3: 615–642).
4 Rice and coffee were, of course, luxury goods as well (Panzac, 2004: 20).
5 The significance of Ottoman merchants in Italy was remarked upon years ago by Peter
Earle (1970: 40):
This development marks a stage in the resurgence of the commercial vitality of Islam and
indeed of the eastern Mediterranean as a whole, which lies between the late medieval pattern
of Italian and Catalan domination of eastern Mediterranean commerce and the pattern from
1600 onwards of domination by the new maritime powers of the Atlantic and the North Sea.
6 Iorga (1935: 121), and see Braudel (1972–3: 193): “In Moscow there were Greek, Tartar,
Wallachian, Armenian, Persian and Turkish merchants.”
7 Braudel (1972–3: 199), and Inalcık (1960: 139): “in Lwow, the center of the Levant trade
in Poland, the Italians were replaced by Armenians, Greeks and Jews coming from the
Ottoman Empire.”
8 Stoianovich (1960: 266): “Greek, Macedo-Vlach and Serbian merchants, together with
Jews and Armenians, came to control not only the commerce of Wallachia and Moldavia,
but of Hungary, Vojvodina, Croatia-Slavonia, and part of Transylvania and Moravia.” See
this article for a very thorough discussion of the development of this new north-south
route in the eighteenth century.
9 “The over-hasty inclination to proclaim the demise of Cairo as a center of international
trade shows the persistence of a Eurocentric bias, which renders economic activities not
responding to European needs or demands all but invisible” (Faroqhi, 1994: 507).
10 In 1635, the Venetian bailiff in Istanbul writes
the English devote their attention to depriving our people of the little trade that remains to
them in the mart of Constantinople, as they imitate Venetian cloth and make borders after the
Venetian manner; they also have plates and wheels sent from their country, and although there
is no market for these it shows that they are trying to imitate everything and despoil our
merchants of all the trade they have left. (Rapp, 1975: 510)11 Ginio (2006: 95). Tabak is misleading in his implication that colonial crops conquered the
Mediterranean much earlier than they in fact did.
12 The external trade of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the eighteenth century was about
the same in terms of value as it had been a century earlier. But in the meantime, the value of
total world trade had increased steadily. Thus the Levant trade now counted for less as a
percentage of world trade than it had two centuries earlier (McGowan, 1994: 725 and 724).
13 Tabak (2008). Tabak raises numerous other issues, such as the Little Ice Age, and the
effect of maize and potatoes on Ottoman population trends, but space constraints dictate
that they must fall outside the scope of this chapter.