210 | Leaving France, “Turning Turk,” Becoming Ottoman
was under orders from the French government to ignore the situation. Bon-
neval, his plea unanswered, then performed the unthinkable: in the European
parlance of the time he “turned Turk.” Converting let him claim protection from
the Ottoman sultan against the Hapsburgs. In 1731 he moved to Istanbul, became
a military and political authority at the court of Sultan Mahmud I (r. 1730–1754),
and until his death in 1747 remained a diplomatic problem for every French am-
bassador assigned to the Ottoman Empire.
Although voluntary Christian converts to Islam were not uncommon, Bon-
neval was unique in rank and motivation. His conversion and life in the Ottoman
Empire made him famous, alternately reviled and celebrated via fake memoirs
seeking to explain his history (Voltaire wittily styled him the “count-pasha” de
Bonneval). His transformation from French nobleman to Ottoman dignitary
generated significant debates about the effects of mobility, politics, and religion
on national identity when the concept was in its infancy. Eighteenth-century
conceptions of the self increasingly included a sense of national identity, but it
was not yet clear whether one’s national identity derived from birth or political
allegiance or whether acquiring or losing it affected one’s personality. Moreover,
national identity did not exist equally everywhere. The pluralistic Ottoman and
Hapsburg Empires’ subjects had multiple political, ethnic, and religious identi-
ties but no unifying national identity. In France, where the idea was beginning
to matter, collective identity initially coalesced around the monarch. This dynas -
tic patriotism, bound up with blood and nobility, defined Bonneval’s notion of
Frenchness. But by the 1720s his compatriots were emphasizing the centrality of
everyone’s national character and replacing allegiance to the king with loyalty
to the state. Here was Bonneval’s quandary: although he believed he had a stable
national identity, his politicoreligious boundary crossings left him vulnerable to
others’ interpretations. This chapter examines Bonneval’s conversion in light of
French reactions. Bonneval and the French public sparred over the role of un-
certainties, such as national and religious affiliations, and perceived certainties,
such as his body and clothing, in constructing his new identity. Through the
resulting sources, we can trace the conscious creation of an accidental Ottoman.
The future Janissary pasha was born in Limousin, France, in 1675, the third
son of a noble family related to the reigning Bourbon kings. He spent his youth
in search of a career, trying in turn Jesuit school, from which he was expelled
for insolence; the navy, from which he had to resign after dueling with his com-
mander; and the army, where he finally found his calling, excelling as a strategist
and battlefield commander by his midtwenties during the War of the Spanish
Succession. But in 1704 he again quarreled with a superior officer and lost his
army commission. Furious at this challenge to his honor, he offered his services
to France’s leading enemy, the Austrian Hapsburgs. During the next two decades