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Ottoman Politics through British Eyes: Paul Rycaut's "The Present State of the OttomanEmpire"Author(s): Linda T. DarlingReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 71-97Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078582 .Accessed: 01/02/2012 15:42
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Ottoman Politics through British Eyes: Paul Rycaut;s The Present State of the
Ottoman Empire *
LINDA T. DARLING
University of Arizona
The
growing trend toward teaching world history means that
classes of students will now encounter the non-European peo
ples and cultures of the world on a regular basis. This puts an
enormous burden on teachers trained in the old ethnocentric
style who have to find suitable reading materials on other cul
tures to assign to their students, not to speak of educating them
selves. Fortunately, for the early modern period one can find pri
mary texts written in English by people who were actually on the
spot. I refer, of course, to the literature of travel produced by
intrepid Europeans?explorers, merchants, or ambassadors?
who ventured to distant lands and returned to write about their
experiences there. Some of these accounts have attained classic
status; among them is Paul Rycaut's work of 1665, The Present
State of the Ottoman Empire.1 The use of this literature as a means of instant access to the
premodern world presents certain problems. Rycaut's book is not
* Earlier versions of this paper were given at the 1991 Western Conference on
British Studies and the 1991-92 Brownbag Series of the University of Arizona's Mid
dle East Center; I thank the participants for their helpful comments. I am espe
cially grateful to two British historians: Rachel Weil (University of Georgia), for
bibliographic help, and to Richard Cosgrove (University of Arizona), for reading the manuscript.
1 Parenthetical references in the text are to the following edition: Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (London: John Starkey and Henry Brome, 1668; rpt., Westmead, England: Gregg International Publishers, 1972).
Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 1 ? 1994 by University of Hawaii Press
71
72 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
just a straightforward eyewitness description of the Ottoman peo
ple and government in the seventeenth century, although it reads as if it were. In the dedication Rycaut announced that he was pre
senting his observations not merely for the purpose of education or entertainment but "as a matter worthy of the consideration, or
concernment of our Kings or our Governors" (Epistle Dedicatory). This statement seems to demand a more complex reading of the
book, one that involves the concerns of English kings and gover nors as well as Ottoman exotica.
Born in 1629, Paul Rycaut was of Huguenot extraction, the son
of a wealthy immigrant merchant.2 His father lost his property
during the Commonwealth as a consequence of royalist activities, so Paul was forced to make his own way in the world. He chose a
career in diplomacy, in the course of which he spent some time at
the court of the exiled Charles II in France. In 1660, after the Res
toration, he was granted an appointment as private secretary to
King Charles's new ambassador to the Ottoman sultan in Istan
bul, the royalist Earl of Winchilsea.3 Rycaut simultaneously served as the Levant Company's secretary in Istanbul. With the
writing of The Present State (presented to England's secretary of
state in 1665 though not published until 1668), he brought himself
to the notice of the court in an attempt to obtain further prefer ment. He was successful: in 1667, on Winchilsea's recommenda
tion, Rycaut was made consul for the Levant Company in Izmir, or
Smyrna, a position he held for eleven years.4 He later sought the
2 We say Ree-co, but Rycaut himself apparently pronounced his name Rye-coat. See Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Rycaut or Ricaut, Sir Paul. A short intro
duction to the man and his works is provided by C. J. Hey wood, "Sir Paul Rycaut, a
Seventeenth-Century Observer of the Ottoman State: Notes for a Study," in E
Kural Shaw and C. J. Heywood, English and Continental Views of the Ottoman
Empire, 1500-1800, (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1972)
pp. 31-59. Biographical details can also be found in Great Britain, Historical Manu
scripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Allan George Finch, Esq. of Bur
ley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, ?d. S. C. Lomas, 2 vols. (London: His Majesty's Stationer's
Office, 1913), i:xlv; and Harold Bowen, British Contributions to Turkish Studies
(London: Longmans, 1945), p. 20.
3 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Finch, Heneage, 2nd earl of Winchilsea;
and Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Allan
George Finch..., i:v-vii. On the ambassadorial appointment procedure and the
duties and remuneration of the ambassador and his staff, see Albert C. Wood, "The
English Embassy at Constantinople, 1660-1762," English Historical Review 40
(1925): 533-61. 4 A recent study of Rycaut's experience as the English consul in Izmir is Sonia
P. Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667-1678
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); see also a critical review by Daniel Goffman in
New Perspectives on Turkey 4 (1990): 105-10.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 73
post of ambassador to the Ottoman empire but had to be satisfied
with positions elsewhere. He nevertheless continued to write
about the Ottomans in several later works.
Thus, The Present State is a book written by a young English
royalist after the Restoration about a government that Jean Bodin
had characterized as the most absolutist of the European mon
archies.5 One might then expect the book to approve of monarchy in all its forms, but it does not. Rycaut's picture of the Ottoman
sultan is uncompromisingly negative, even more so than his facts
seem to warrant. Ascribing this hostile view to ignorance or preju dice, however, is impossible given his accurate and insightful
recounting in later chapters of the details of Turkish life and his
tory. Nor does the book present a simple contrast between bad
Ottoman despotism and good English monarchy. Contradictions
within Rycaut's view of the Ottomans are matched by equivoca tion and hesitancy in his praise of English kingship. This ambigu
ity in Rycaut's position can only be resolved by a more complex
understanding of his purpose in writing as he did.
Until the late sixteenth century, the British image of the Otto
man Empire was compounded of prejudice against Islam, fear of a powerful enemy, the lure of eastern trade, and a fair amount of
ignorance and hearsay.6 After permanent relations were estab
lished between England and the Ottomans in the 1580s, English merchants, consuls, and diplomats began to visit the Ottoman
Empire and to write home about it.7 At first their writings were
filled with notices of commercial and military import or the mar
vels of an alien culture. By the second half of the seventeenth cen
tury, however, an Englishman like Rycaut could become close
5 Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale: A Facsimile Reprint of the
English Translation of 1606, ed. Kenneth Douglas McRae (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1962), p. 201. See also Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
6 A recent compendium of the literature on European views of the Islamic
world appears in the notes to an article by Rhoads Murphey: "Bigots or Informed
Observers? A Periodization of Pre-Colonial English and European Writing on the
Middle East," Journal of the American Oriental Society no (1990): 291-303. To his list
should be added two volumes published by the Centre d'Etudes et de Documenta
tion Economique, Juridique et Sociale, Cairo, D'un orient ? Vautre: Les m?tamor
phoses successives des perceptions et connaissances, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions du Cen tre National de Recherche Scientifique, 1991).
7 For the first Englishmen in the Ottoman Empire, see Susan A. Skilliter, Wil
liam Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578-1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1977); and
Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).
74 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
enough to important officials to obtain detailed information on
the Ottoman government and the inside story on palace intrigues. The Present State contains an accurate and up-to-date report on
Ottoman political, military, and religious organization that has
been profitably used by scholars.
It is all the more startling, then, that side by side with these
knowledgeable details, Rycaut drew a picture of Ottoman despot ism straight out of the old stock of ignorance and fear. We can dis
miss the idea that he knew no better. A more reasonable hypothe sis is that he was using an old stereotype for new purposes. The
style and structure of the book support such a hypothesis.
Rycaut's comments on Ottoman political life reflect specific
aspects of his own personal and national history. Even the lan
guage he used to report on the Ottoman court gained its form and
meaning in the political vicissitudes of the English state in the
seventeenth century?the Civil War, Commonwealth, and Restora
tion. Read through these lenses, The Present State emerges as a
commentary on English politics in Turkish guise, and under
standing it becomes an exercise in both Ottoman and English his
tory.8
Rycaut's book ostensibly fits within a tradition of reporting on
the Ottoman Empire for defense purposes. This genre of works
originated in Renaissance Italy, and its products were translated
into all the major European languages.9 Such works were con
cerned with the question of how difficult it would be to defeat the
Ottomans in battle; thus, organization and morale found a place in their pages along with military and political conditions. Rycaut
met the requirements of the genre by providing exact figures on
military enrollment, naval strength, and so on. But this informa
tion is tacked onto the end of his book and occupies less than a
8 Like other works on the Ottoman Empire, Rycaut's book proved quite popu lar and was translated several times. Numerous authorities, including the trea
surer of the Levant Company during Rycaut's tenure, the secretary of the French
embassy, and the book's French translator, pointed out that the book contained
many errors; see G. F. Abbot, Under the Turk in Constantinople (London: Macmil
lan, 1920), p. 66. Apparently, it did not occur to any of these critics that some of the
"errors" might be deliberate. 9 Bibliographies of these works can be found in W. E. Conway, "Checklist of
Turcica in the Clarke Library," in Shaw and Heywood, English and Continental
Views, pp. 60-66; and Albert Howe Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1913), appendix. See also Clarence Dana Rouillard, The Turk in French History,
Thought, and Literature (1520-1660) (Paris: Boirin, 1941).
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 75
quarter of its pages. The bulk of the work is taken up with politi cal and religious matters, and politics holds pride of place. This
emphasis on politics may in part reflect the lessening of the Otto
man military threat in the seventeenth century, but it also signals the preoccupations of the author. Distant England was more
interested in trade and negotiation than in military conquest:
besides, in pursuing his own advancement, Rycaut brought his
Turkish experience to bear on the most crucial issues for En
gland's monarch: religion and politics. Rycaut's political reflec
tions are concentrated in the first four chapters of his sixty-chap ter work, which constitute the opening portion of the first of three
"Books" into which it is divided. The first and longest "Book"
(twenty-two chapters), on the governmental structure and prac tices of the Ottomans, is entitled "The Maximes of the Turkish
Politic" The second "Book" (twenty-six chapters) is entitled "Of
the Turkish Religion"; the third (twelve chapters) is "Of the Turk
ish Militia" (that is, military forces). Within Book One, the first
three chapters are composed of "maximes" or generalizations about the nature of the Turkish polity, while the fourth chapter is a narrative, compiled from eyewitness accounts, of a specific
political event that took place in 1651. In 1665, when he wrote The Present State, Rycaut had spent five
years in Istanbul. The authors of works on the state of the Otto man Empire ranged from diplomats with several years of experi ence to sedentary scholars who had never visited Turkey and
drew solely on the writings of others. As a member of the first cat
egory, Rycaut had nothing but scorn for those who wrote about
the Ottoman Empire on the basis of hearsay or simple tourism
(Epistle to the Reader). His sources for The Present State appear more reliable. For example, Rycaut stated that some of his infor
mation came from official Ottoman registers and records (Epistle to the Reader). One might wonder whether the Ottoman records
were open to him,10 or whether he could read them if they were.
The "Registers of Important Affairs" were handwritten in Otto man Turkish in a loopy scribble, while finance records were writ
ten in a script combining the characteristics of a shorthand and a
secret code.11 However, Rycaut numbered among his informants
10 As does Heywood, "Sir Paul Rycaut," p. 41. 11 The nearly indecipherable siyakat script, for which see Lajos Fekete, Die Siy
aqat-Schrift in die t?rkische Verwaltungsschreiben, 2 vols. (Budapest: Akademiai
Kiado, 1955).
76 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
at court Defterdar ?eytan Ibrahim;12 as one of the chief treasurers
of the empire, he could certainly read the government registers. If
Rycaut had informants of this caliber, he did not require access to
the written records themselves. He also obtained interviews (pos
sibly through interpreters or dragomans) with inhabitants of the
palace and with Turkish soldiers returning from the wars.13 Chap ter 4, for instance, is clearly written from eyewitness reports. The
sections of his account based on direct testimony form lively and
interesting narratives replete with circumstantial detail. Finally,
Rycaut drew conclusions from his own experience, weighing them "to the measure and test of reason and virtue" (p. 2); it was
here that he was most at liberty to reflect on the English political realities of his time.
The rich scholarship on seventeenth-century England de
scribes the Restoration of 1660 not as a simple victory for absolute
monarchy but rather a compromise between the forces of royal ism and parliamentarianism.14 This compromise aimed at fore
stalling the renewal of civil war by restoring authority to the mon
arch, while at the same time preventing tyranny by permitting the
upper classes to set limits to that authority. The political atmo
sphere in 1665 was one of retreat from the republicanism of the
Commonwealth years, 1649-60. The strength of the reaction
generated a corresponding fear over the possibility of absolutism.
Absolute rule meant different things to critics or victims of royal
policies than it did to supporters of the king.15 The connotations
12 Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey, pp. 233-34.
13 For the office of dragoman, see Allan Cunningham, "Dragomania: The Dra
gomans of the British Embassy in Turkey," in Middle Eastern Affairs, no. 2, ed.
Albert Hourani (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), pp. 81-100. 14 As a historian of the Ottoman Empire, I have found it a pleasure to consult
the many excellent studies by British historians on seventeenth-century English
government, politics, and ideas. Basic works for the Restoration period include
K. H. D. Haley, Politics in the Reign of Charles II (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985);
Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson
and Sons, 1961); J. R. Jones, ed., The Restored Monarchy, 1660-1688 (London: Mac
millan, 1979); David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955); J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal
Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Paul Seaward, The Restoration, 1660-1688 (Houndmills, England: Macmillan, 1991).
15 Scholarship on seventeenth-century political ideas, though voluminous, is
not as useful as it might be because of scholars' attempts to generalize too broadly: "The early seventeenth century considered that. . . ," but who considered, and had
he or she been fined or sent to jail recently for so considering? While experts on
the seventeenth century have managed to locate expressions of every possible
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 77
of the term "absolute" varied whether it was used in regard to the
king's making law, enforcing law, granting exceptions to existing law, raising money through taxation, administering the country,
ordering the church, putting down rebellion, or fulfilling his per sonal whims. And since to discuss absolutism is to talk about a
contest for power, its meaning also differed according to who the
contestants were perceived to be. Historically, the word "abso
lute" first referred to the ruler's freedom from any higher author
ity, in particular the pope; the ability of kings to rule without
papal appointment, merely by natural right of birth, was the essence of the divine right of kings.16 In that sense, English mon
archs became absolute rulers at the time of the Reformation, when control of the English church passed from the pope to the
king.17 A second set of definitions dealt with rule untrammeled by restraint from, and in full control over, lesser power groups, such as a nobility with an independent power base, or institutions like
free cities, the church, or the law. This second meaning of the
term?royal control over the internal powers of the realm?lay at
the root of the struggles of the seventeenth century. The political ideas of the seventeenth century fall into two
basic positions, one of ordered centeredness and one of commu
nity-based reason.18 The first position derived kingship from the divine and natural order and magnified the headship of the king over the body politic, while the second derived the king's power from the people's consent and sought to strengthen the role of at
least the uppermost layer of the people in government through
point of view in every possible period, to date they have made little or no attempt to relate people's statements on absolutism to the particular circumstances that called them forth and the attitudes of their proponents toward those circum stances or toward specific royal actions. Nor have they tried to clarify the relative
weight of opinion at any one time. Instead, they have leaped directly to the most
general level?"absolutism meant this"?and unhelpfully insulted each other for
disagreeing. Two exceptions are James Daly, "The Idea of Absolute Monarchy in
Seventeenth-Century England," Historical Journal 21 (1978): 227-50; and John Miller, "The Potential for 'Absolutism' in Later Stuart England," History 69 (1984): 187-207.
16 John Neville Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1914). 17 Brian Manning, "The Nobles, the People, and the Constitution," in Crisis in
Europe, 1550-1650, ed. Trevor Aston (New York: Basic Books, 1965), pp. 247-49. 18 Robert Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics: Theories of Absolute and
Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978), p. 18; Corrine Comstock Weston and Janelle Renfrow Greenberg, Subjects and Sovereigns: The Grand Controversy over Legal Sovereignty in Stuart England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 2-3.
78 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I994
Parliament. Both positions were present in English political
thought through the ages, but they were deployed in different
ways as circumstances changed. In the first half of the seven
teenth century, the overwhelming concern had been to prop up
government against social unrest and religious rebellion. Both
types of argument had been used in this cause.19 The idea of order,
supported by the notion of divine right, was employed to establish
royal control over religion and the social body, while the commu
nity-based view emphasized the responsibility of all to contribute to the health of the whole body, the "commonweal"; it did not
imply the right of the people to rebel against royal control.
The Civil War and Restoration shifted the conflict from one
between the state and disruptive elements in the society to an
intrastate contest between king and Parliament.20 The restoration
of the Stuart kings in 1660 seemed to be intended by some (includ
ing the Stuarts themselves, it was feared) as a step toward a
French-style absolutism. The French regime was viewed by the
English as the ultimate in tyranny, surpassed only by that of
the Turks. All the seventeenth-century French monarchs were
thought to disregard the estates of the realm, to practice what to
the English was extortionate taxation enforced by military might, and to give increasing difficulty to the Protestant cause.21 These
issues were all alive in Restoration England as well.22 Avoiding the excesses of France seemed to hinge on parliamentary control
of royal desires; king and Parliament were seen as rivals in the
task of attaining the welfare of the whole. Now community-cen tered arguments were brought forth to aggrandize the power of
Parliament over the king: the subjects' responsibility to inform
and counsel the ruler was enlarged into a right to limit his actions
and to make laws for him to carry out. On the other hand, the later
Stuarts and their supporters used order-centered language to jus
19 The clearest exposition of these arguments is in J. P. Sommerville, Politics
and Ideology in England, 1603-1640 (London: Longman, 1980), pp. 9-50; see also
Kevin Sharpe, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England: Essays and Studies (Lon don: Pinter Publishers, 1989), pp. 9-20.
20 Sharpe, Politics and Ideas, pp. 63-71.
21 A comparison between the monarchies of England and France was made by J. P. Cooper, "Differences between English and Continental Governments in the
Early Seventeenth Century," in Britain and the Netherlands, ed. J. S. Bromley and
E. H. Kossmann, 4 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, i960), 1:62-90. 22 A good discussion of the relationship between politics and religion is Mark
Goldie, "John Locke and Anglican Royalism," Political Studies 31 (1983): 61-95.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 79
tify royal action independent of Parliament. Political alignments shifted according to the issue of the day, and no one could predict
what the king would do.23 In this conflict, political commentary was a popular and prolific form of literature, in which tyranny,
despotism, and sultanic rule were associated with the absolutist
tendencies of the Stuart monarchy. Parliament passed censorship laws to check the most virulent forms of attack, but criticism
flourished under the lightest of veils.
A comparable body of research on Ottoman political culture in
the seventeenth century does not yet exist.24 Until recently schol ars tended to neglect the period except with reference to trade
and external affairs, but that is beginning to change.25 Formerly
regarded as an unremarkable interlude in the "decline era" of
Ottoman history, the seventeenth century is coming to be seen as
a critical period of transition between a centralized "feudal" pol
ity and a more decentralized, more commercialized, and less
23 The uncertainty of the time is emphasized by Tim Harris, London Crowds in
the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the
Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 61; and Jona
than Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623-1677 (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1988), pp. 165-68. 24 The best general introduction to Ottoman history and civilization is Haul
Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600, trans. Norman Itzko
witz and Colin Imber (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973), DUt it does not
cover the seventeenth century. An outline of seventeenth-century events can be
found in M. A. Cook, ed., A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976); P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard
Lewis, eds., The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1: The Central Islamic Lands
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); or Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel
Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 1: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1808 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977). All these interpretations, however, are rapidly
becoming out of date. 25 See I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman
Provincial Government, 1550-1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics
(Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1984); Abou-El-Haj, Forma
tion of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the
Levantine World, 1550-1650 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990); and Les
lie A. Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Woman and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also the recent doctoral dissertations
of Douglas Howard, "The Ottoman Timar System and Its Transformation, 1563
1656" (Indiana University, 1987); Karen Barkey, "Peasant Unrest in the Seventeenth
Century: The Ottoman Empire in Comparative Perspective" (University of Chi
cago, 1988); and Linda T. Darling, "The Ottoman Central Finance Department and
the Assessment and Collection of the Cizye and Avariz Taxes, 1560-1660" (University of Chicago, 1990).
8o JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
autocratic regime. The standard view of Ottoman history held that the Ottomans' rise from an obscure border principality to the status of a world power between 1300 and 1566 was attributable to a long series of strong and able sultans, an efficient bureaucratic
organization in the hands of slave officials completely devoted to
the ruler, and a large cavalry force reimbursed by grants of land revenues. Conversely, the decline of the empire after the death of
S?leyman the Magnificent in 1566 was seen as the result of a long series of incapable sultans ("the fish begins to stink at the head"), the abandonment of the land-based cavalry, excessive bureau
cratization, fiscal exploitation, and the unruliness of the slaves.
The inadequacy of this explanation became apparent in the course of research into the relationship of these changes to events
occurring elsewhere in the world.
Scholars have only begun to investigate the effects in the
Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth-century price revolution, the
seventeenth-century general crisis, and the military revolution, and we have virtually no information as yet on the economy of
the later seventeenth century.26 We do know that by the eigh teenth century certain provincial governments and local strong
men had emerged as regional power centers involved in the local
economies, controlling a fair amount of wealth and military resources, and entering into commercial relations with Europe ans. Over the same period the sultan, once an autocrat, became
an arbiter among factions and later the head of a faction of his own. The route to state power shifted from the cavalry ranks to
the palace service and bureaucracy, and then to the retinues of
the great men of state. Historical documents reveal that during the seventeenth century, the empire was engaged in a complex series of transformations that the notion of "decline" does little
to help us comprehend. Although the process of change is still
poorly understood, it is no longer possible to discuss the inter
nal affairs of the period using the judgments of Europeans like
Rycaut without critical analysis.
26 Specific questions related to the price revolution of the sixteenth century
and accompanying social changes have been addressed in numerous articles by
Suraiya Faroqhi and in Halil Inalcik, "Military and Fiscal Transformation in the
Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700," Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980): 283-337, DUt for the
last several decades the most influential analysis has been that of Bernard Lewis, "Some Observations of the Decline of the Ottoman Empire," Studia Isl?mica 9
(1958): 111-27.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 81
In the early 1660s when Rycaut was writing, the Ottoman
empire, like England, was in the process of recovery from a
period of turmoil in the leadership during the 1640s and 1650s. We are not well informed about contemporary political argu mentation, but we do have the basic outline of events. Sultan
Ibrahim I, who had ruled between 1640 and i648,earned his nick name "Mad Ibrahim" by, among other things, covering the walls
and ceilings of the palace with fur. He was incapable of govern
ing, and power fell into the hands of his mother and his tutor.
His son and successor, Sultan Mehmed IV, came to the throne in
1648 as a child of seven. For the next several years, his female rel
atives and their eunuch guards exercised power from the harem, aided by the commanders of the Janissaries. The military forces
were factionalized and out of control. High officials were
appointed and dismissed at a rapid rate, preventing the forma
tion of a coherent policy. Inflation was rampant, the treasury was bare, the Venetian War over Crete was going badly, and the
food distribution system suffered from Venetian naval successes
in the Dardanelles. In desperation, the sultan's mother agreed in
1656 to the appointment as grand vizier of the elderly and experi enced Mehmed K?pr?l?, the first of a powerful dynasty of grand viziers. K?pr?l? accepted office on condition that he would be
allowed a free hand and would not be undermined by the sultan, and he soon restored order to the Ottoman government. By 1665 the empire had seen nine years of stable leadership, with Ahmed
K?pr?l? now at the helm, and was soon to complete the taking of
Crete from the Venetians. The young sultan, devoted to hunting, left political and military decisions to his viziers. When Rycaut arrived in the empire, the palace staff must have been trying to
put the tumultuous past behind them. It is understandable that in their discussions with a foreigner they stressed the need for a
strong central power, even though the sultan himself was not
exercising that power. With this background in mind, we can approach Rycaut's
observations with better understanding. In chapter 1 of Book One, "The Maximes of the Turkish Politie," Rycaut defined the Otto
man government as a tyranny in the classical sense of govern ment by a severe and absolute ruler who was above the law. The
long quotation that follows contains the main elements of his
description.
82 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
But when I have considered seriously the contexture of the Turkish
government, the absoluteness of an Emperour without reason,
without virtue, whose speeches may be irrational, and yet must be
laws; whose actions irregular, and yet examples; whose sentence
and judgement, if in matters of the Imperial concernment, are most
commonly corrupt, and yet decrees irresistible: When I consider what little rewards there are for vertue, and no punishment for
profitable and thriving vice; how men are raised at once by adula
tion, chance, and the sole favor of the Prince, without any title of noble blood, or the motives of previous deserts,... to the
weightiest, the richest, and most honourable charges of the
Empire, . .. what they labour for is but as slaves for their great
Patron and Master.... In this Government, severity, violence, and
cruelty are natural to it, and it were as great an errour to begin to
loose the reins, and ease the people of that oppression to which they and their fore-fathers have since their first original been accus
tomed, as it would be in a nation free-born, and used to live under
the protection of good laws, and the clemency of a virtuous and
Christian Prince, to exercise a Tyrannical power over their estates
and lives, and change their liberty into servitude and slavery. (PP. 2-3)
The fact that this horrid picture reflected an axiom of Euro
pean tradition rendered it credible as a description of the Otto
man polity. Rycaut was not alone in such extremism; most of
those who have written about the Turks have displayed "passion ate feelings," both positive and negative.27 Five centuries of expe rience have still not been able to dispel the image of oriental des
potism that hangs over the Turks. In reality, however, Ottoman
political thought acknowledged checks on the sultan's behavior.
The Ottoman ruler was bound by Islamic law?covering social,
political, and religious questions, originating in God and unalter
able by human rulers?as well as by past customs and prior decrees.28 In addition, in the Near East the ruler's legitimacy rested on the provision of justice and order, and any subject, even
the poorest, could challenge this legitimacy through the right of
direct petition to the sultan himself.29 Further, by the seventeenth
27 Bowen, British Contributions to Turkish Studies, p. 8. For Locke's emotional
characterization of the Turks, see John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed.
Peter Laslett (New York: New American Library, 1963), pp. 182-83. 28
Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, pp. 65-71. 29
Suraiya Faroqhi, "Political Activity among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Prob
lem of Sultanic Legitimation," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the
Orient 35 (1992): 1-39. For a description of the petition process, see Faroqhi, "Politi
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 83
century the sultan was removed from the business of government, which was in the hands of officials and the great men of state.30
The sultan was not free to act on his every whim, and an Ottoman
scholar would dismiss Rycaut's rhetoric as the product of igno rance and prejudice. By virtue of his long residence in the Otto
man realm, however, Rycaut must have understood the Ottoman
political system better than the language in this passage would
suggest. Internal evidence suggests that he may have had another reason for employing the terminology of tyranny. In England the
epithet of tyrant was used by critics of royal policy to characterize a king who tried to act independently of his counselors.31 Rycaut's
description, if applied to the English political situation, raised the
specter of an absolutism more extreme than any English king or
queen had yet been able to wield.
Even though by Rycaut's time the idea was widespread that
royal power should be exercised in accord with law and tempered
by consultation with Parliament, the English still had difficulty
formulating a political theory that gave final sovereignty to any one but the king.32 New parliaments not convened by the monarch
but elected during the Commonwealth had been seen as illegiti mate, so much so that they were unable to obtain enough legiti macy to vote sufficient taxes for the Commonwealth government
to run properly.33 On the other hand, because of the monarchy's small fiscal base, lack of a standing military force, and weakness
with regard to the nobility, few rulers were ever able to exercise a
power that could be called absolute. Charles II, when he came to the throne, lacked army, courts, or treasury, and the royal domain lands were considerably reduced due to sales during the Com
monwealth. Throughout the 1660s Charles depended on Parlia ment for his income and was thus unable to rule independently,
cal Initiatives 'From the Bottom Up' in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire: Some Evidence for Their Existence," in Osmanistische Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte in Memoriam Vaneo Boskov, ed. Hans Georg
Majer (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), pp. 24-33. 30 Linda T. Darling, "The Finance Scribes and Ottoman Politics," in Decision
Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Caesar Farah (Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1993), pp. 89-100. The sultan's isolation was
graphically enacted in court ceremonial and architecture; see G?lr? Necipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Six teenth Centuries (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
31 Sharpe, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England, pp. 16-17.
32 Harris, London Crowds, p. 46; Hill, The Century of Revolution, p. 63.
33 Hill, The Century of Revolution, pp. 115-18.
84 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
although he clearly wanted to do so. The Restoration Parliament,
representing the propertied classes (both landowners and mer
chants), struggled to keep royal absolutism in check through control of the purse strings. In the eyes of many Englishmen, Par
liament without the king had proven illegitimate during the Inter
regnum, but the king without Parliament was viewed as danger ous. The Ottoman empire served as a living example of the threat
posed by monarchy unrestrained. The impulsive irrationality and
despotic cruelty Rycaut attributed to the Ottoman sultan con
trasted with "the clemency of a virtuous and Christian Prince"
who abided by "good laws." Was this only Rycaut's flattery of his
patron's patron? Was it not also a broad hint to the restored mon
arch, from a subject with proven royalist credentials, that En
gland's propertied classes would not tolerate a king who tried "to
exercise a Tyrannical power over their estates and lives"?
In chapter 2 Rycaut expanded his discussion of "the absolute ness of the Emperour" and explained why Englishmen worried
about tyrannical power over their estates. The first topic he
addressed was the system of land tenure in the Ottoman empire. To understand why he considered land tenure the crucial element
in absolutism we need to look at the seventeenth-century under
standing of the relationship between liberty and property. The
term liberty was used in the seventeenth century to refer not to
freedom in the abstract, but to the concrete ability to do whatever
you wanted with yourself and your property.34 Servants, appren
tices, salaried workers, and women were therefore not "free"
because they were under the control of the head of the household
or enterprise. Tenants and paupers were not "free" because they did not own property with which they could do as they liked.
What made an Englishman free was owning his own property. Those who were "free" had the "franchise" and voted for mem
bers of Parliament. Parliament therefore represented the "free," the property owners, and was considered the preserver of "the
people's liberties."35
By contrast, in the Ottoman empire the ownership of all prop
34 C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes
to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). The property aspect is well explained by
Hill, "The Place of the Seventeenth-Century Revolution in English History," in A
Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seven
teenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 23. 35
Seaward, The Restoration, pp. 14-17.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 85
erty was vested in the sultan (religious property excepted). Ac
cording to Rycaut, that meant that all the wealth of the empire went "to satisfy the appetite of one single person"; it was em
ployed "to the use and benefit of their Great Master," "whose will
and lusts they served" (p. 4). He used such repulsive terms for rhe
torical effect, but he knew that what he said was not literally true.
This is clear from the very next sentence, in which he explained the Ottoman system of distributing usufructory rights on the
lands of the empire to the military forces as a reward for valor
and in lieu of salary, just as was done in the English system of
knight-service. The essential difference between the two systems was that the sultan's grants were not permanent; he retained the
ownership of the land itself, and the grant of usufruct was revoca
ble at his pleasure.36 Thus, Ottoman nobles were not "free" in the
English sense: free to dispose of their own property however they willed. Nor were they free to refuse service, if they could get away with it (even common soldiers in England considered themselves
"free" in this sense, as witnessed by a 1673 complaint from a sol
dier about having to swear a "horrid oath" to obey the orders of
his officers).37 In the Ottoman system, as Rycaut had already
pointed out in the first chapter, there was no privileged noble
class with "title of blood" (p. 2). Nor did the Ottoman ruling class
have the secure power base provided by independent control of
lands and revenues from which to check the power of the ruler. In
fact, the sultans had been at pains in the early period of the
empire to eliminate such independent power bases.38 This left the Ottoman nobility and high officials dependent on the will of the
ruler for the continuation of their position and also of their social
status, livelihood, and even life itself.
What made this particularly portentous for the English was
that, legally, their lives and liberties as well as their goods and
lands were their property.39 All of these, at the time Rycaut wrote,
36 For a fuller description of the Ottoman landholding system, called the timar
system, see Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, pp. 104-18. 37
Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2:505. Property owners in England could not be forced to pay taxes on their property without their consent: Sommer
ville, Politics and Ideology in England, pp. 147-48. 38
Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, pp. 109-10; Halil Inalcik, "Ottoman Methods of
Conquest," Studia Isl?mica 2 (1954): 103-29. 39 Tim Harris, '"Lives, Liberties and Estates': Rhetorics of Liberty in the Reign
of Charles II," in The Politics of Religion in Restoration England, ed. Tim Harris, Mark Goldie, and Paul Seaward (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 219-20.
86 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
were under threat from religious persecution. English men and women outside the established church were not considered full
citizens, and so their property (goods, liberty, life) was not invio
late. If the king became absolute, such might be the fate of all
Englishmen. In fact, many members of the established church,
Rycaut's family among them, had recently suffered on this ac
count during the Civil War and Commonwealth. Ottoman officials
had likewise no security of property, since their property was lia
ble to be taken away at any time. Their lives and liberties, their
social status and livelihood, were equally insecure. How could
these men be considered fit counselors for the ruler or fit gover nors for a realm of which they were not full citizens? Rycaut could only conclude that "what they labour for is but as slaves for
their great Patron and Master" (p. 2). To the rhetoric of irrational
ity and vice he added the rhetoric of slavery. No Englishman, not
even Charles and his advisers, could miss the point: absolutism was not an acceptable form of rule in England.
A supporting point in Rycaut's condemnation of sultanic abso
lutism was that the Ottoman ruler was above the law. Although this was true only in a limited sense, the sultan, unlike the king of England, could make unilateral decisions about war and
finance.40 As a contrasting example Rycaut cited Germany, where
the Diet had to be ponderously consulted before Germany could
go to war against its Ottoman invaders (and there were occasions
when it refused to grant the funds). In England it was a disputed
question whether king or law (embodied in Parliament) was
supreme. The issue at stake was whether the king could unilater
ally levy funds from his subjects to support an army.41 An army was seen as both an unnecessary expense coming out of the sub
jects' pockets and a potential instrument for the enforcement of
absolute rule, especially with respect to religious uniformity. The
law prescribed and guaranteed the freedom of the subjects from
this and other unpopular demands.42 Charles II had quieted but
not resolved the dispute in 1660 by a written agreement to rule
within the law and not to go to war; by 1665 it was clear he was not
willing to keep the agreement.43 An Ottoman-style absolutism was
40 For limitations on the sultan's power, see Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, pp.
61, 70-75 41
Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings, p. 225. 42
Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, p. 189. 43 The Declaration of Breda: Jones, The Restored Monarchy, p. 12.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 8?
undoubtedly effective when it came to raising money or making war. "But," hinted Rycaut, in case King Charles was attracted by this effectiveness, "I confess it is a blessing and wonderful happi
ness of a people, to be Subjects of a gracious Prince, who hath pre scribed his power within the compass of wholesom Laws, ac
knowledge a right of possession and propriety of Estate as well
in his Subjects as himself, who doth not punish the innocent with
the guilty, nor oppress without distinction, nor act the part of that
King whom God gives in his wrath (p. 8)." A person who had been
out of England since 1660 might not have realized how close the
king had come to abrogating his agreement, but Rycaut was fully aware of the issues surrounding the question. As a royalist, he
could not be expected to endorse parliamentary government, but
his disapproval of arbitrary rule was plain.
Chapter 3 expanded on the image of the Ottoman ruling class
as slaves, emphasizing the implications of that status in terms of
the obedience owed to the sultan. Here Rycaut pulled out all his
rhetorical stops, playing on stereotypes of slavery as known to the
English in order to reinforce the negative image of absolutism he
was trying to convey. Later passages, however, show he knew that
Ottoman slavery was of a quite different nature.44 He began the
chapter by describing the education of an Ottoman kul, or slave, which ingrained an obedience and devotion to the sultan so
extreme that to die by the hand or command of the ruler was con
sidered the highest form of martyrdom and led directly to Para
dise (p. 8). "The whole composition of the Turkish Court," he
declared, was "a Prison and Banniard of Slaves, differing from
that where the Galley-slaves are immured, only by the ornaments
and glittering outside" (p. 9). He found the Ottoman government "such a fabrick of slavery" that it was "a wonder if any amongst them should be born of a free ingenuous spirit" (p. 9). Such a nega tive picture of service to an absolute monarch, evoking the degra dation and danger of the galleys, would surely give pause to even
the most ardent royalist of England.
Nearly a hundred years before, however, Bodin had already
explained to Europeans that the sultan ruled his slaves "much
44 Ottoman slavery was distinct from chattel slavery of the Roman type. Otto man slaves were legal persons, held the highest offices in the realm under the sul
tanate, and accumulated great wealth. For a fuller discussion of how the institu
tion operated, see Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, pp. 76-88; Halil Inalcik, "Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Economic History 19 (1969): 97-140.
88 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
more courteously and freely, then doth a good householder his servants . . . whom the prince useth no otherwise to instruct, then
if they were his children."45 Rycaut himself pointed out that any one who received wages from the government bore (proudly) the
title of the sultan's kul (p. 8). By Rycaut's time very few of these were actually purchased slaves or members of the child levy (dev
shirme), and the term kul had become nearly equivalent to "ser
vant" or "employee." The palace educational system he described was reserved for candidates destined for top governmental offices
(p. 8); most kul were not indoctrinated in that fashion. In any case, household service in either the sultan's palace or the retinue of one of the great men of state was the quickest and surest way to
climb the ladder of political success.46 A similar situation, of
course, prevailed in Stuart England, where offices were filled by the retinues and favorites of the king and the great men. In early
modern England, as in the Ottoman Empire, successful men
retained households modeled on the king's; members of these
households often did the work of the posts to which such men
were appointed.47 By the seventeenth century, most offices were
filled by newly made nobles, courtiers, and favorites rather than
the old nobility.48 If the king were as absolute as the sultan, would
these men be as abject as slaves?
In connection with officeholding, Rycaut could point out a
dangerous Ottoman parallel to the Stuart kings' penchant for lis
tening only to their favorites: "the flattery used in the Seraglio
45 Bodin, The Six Books of a Commonweale, p. 201. The Turkish palace slave
system has also been seen in Dewey-like terms as an educational system designed for training according to aptitudes and promotion according to merit: Lybyer, The
Government of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 71-73. 46 The Ottoman elite's dependency on the sultan and lack of a landed power
base are often cited as a reason for Ottoman corruption and decline; see, for exam
ple, Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans le seconde moiti? du XVIIe si?cle (Paris: Librairie Adrien Maisonneuve, 1962), p. 102. One should note that modem salaried
political bureaucrats are in very much the same position as the Ottoman kul, with
the exception of the threat to life itself. Of course, the idea of "employee" can now
be qualified by the concepts of "wage slavery" and "white-collar proletariat." For
the political role of household service in the Ottoman Empire, see Kunt, The Sul
tan's Servants; and Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj, "The Ottoman Vezir and Pa?a House
holds," Journal of the American Oriental Society 94 (1947): 438-47. 47 Sir John Craig, A History of Red Tape: An Account of the Origin and Develop
ment of the Civil Service (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1955), pp. 50-63. See also
Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion, p. 9 and n. 25. 48 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1965), pp. 468-69, 500.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 89
towards the Prince by those that are near his person," and the
"condescension abroad to all the lusts and evil inclinations of
their Master" (p. 9). His advice to the ruler was "to seek other
counsel and means to inform himself of the true state of his own
and other Kings Dominions, then such as proceed from men unex
perienced in any other Court or Country then that they live in." An
astute courtier could surely see a personal application in such
advice.
Rycaut then attempted to explain "how it comes to pass, that
there are so many mutinies and rebellions as are seen and known
amongst the Turks," if abject submission to authority was so care
fully instilled. "Brave and wise Emperours," he said, made use of
this "immoderate subjection" for "the advancement of noble
exploits, and enlargement of their Empire," while under "Effemi
nate Princes" it became "the cause of the decay of the Turkish dis
cipline" (p. 9). His explanation harks back once again to the situa
tion in England: rebellions happen "when two powerful parties
aspiring both to greatness and authority, allure the Souldiers to
their respective factions, and engage them in a civil war amongst themselves; and hence proceed seditions, destruction of Empires, the overthrow of Common-wealths, and the violent death of great
Ministers of State" (p. 10). In chapter 4, Rycaut related an actual historical event that
illustrated the process by which, in an absolutist state, the "pas sions and animosities" of those in high position could generate
military disturbances and factional war.49 He narrated, from
information gained from members of the palace staff, the story of
the rivalry for power between the mother and the grandmother of
the sultan. He told how they drew the great men of state and the
military corps into their rivalry, and how the rivalry turned into an armed uprising that permitted the members of the mother's
faction, which had control of the sultan, to proscribe and execute
the leaders of the grandmother's faction along with the grand mother herself. The ill effects of "the decay of discipline" were
thus made perfectly clear.
The episode may be summarized as follows. The previous sul
tan, Ibrahim, had been mentally unfit to rule the empire, and
power had passed into the hands of his mother, K?sem, first lady
49 This kind of factionalism and the resulting possibility of explosion was a
constant problem in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England; see Stone, Crisis
of the Aristocracy, p. 481.
90 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I994
of the harem. When Ibrahim died, his eldest son and successor, Mehmed IV, was only seven years old, and his grandmother K?sem continued to function as the power behind the throne.
Mehmed's mother, Turhan, thought that she should be wielding this power and that K?sem should have gone into retirement on
the death of Ibrahim. Turhan was also aware that K?sem was ulti
mately responsible for Ibrahim's death, and fearing for the life of her son as well, she determined to wrest power from K?sem.
K?sem exercised her power through the Janissary military corps, so Turhan allied herself with the Sipahis or Cavalry of the Porte,
who were longtime rivals of the Janissaries. Eventually she suc
ceeded in instigating the Sipahis as a group to rise against the
Janissaries. The great statesmen of the empire took sides with one
or the other faction, and the two military corps took to fighting in
the streets of the city. Some time passed in this state of anarchy, and finally K?sem proposed to bring an end to the impasse by
deposing Mehmed and replacing him with his half brother, whose
mother, naive and pious, could be more easily dominated. This
suggestion alienated her chief supporter, the grand vizier, who
informed Turhan and her allies, as well as the sultan, of K?sem's
plan. The sultan's supporters armed the palace guards and wrote
decrees condemning K?sem to death for the young sultan to sign. On the strength of these decrees, the palace guards entered the
harem in search of K?sem. Discovering her hidden in a clothes
chest under some quilts, they dragged her out and executed her. To regain the allegiance of the Janissaries, the grand vizier dis
played the Banner of Muhammad, to which all Muslims were
obliged to rally. This religious appeal was reinforced by the
approach of the Sipahi corps, fully armed, as well as by a written
command from the sultan, and the Janissaries yielded. Their lead ers were executed, and "for a long time after they kept themselves
within the bounds of humility and obedience" (p. 23).
Rycaut's comment on this event was that although absolute
rulers like the Ottomans, dependent on military power to main
tain their control, were fully exposed to the dangers of military revolt, at the same time no usurper or "Rebellious slave" could
command the loyalty of the military forces as could a member of
the royal line. This time he made the parallel to England explicit: "None can more experimentally preach this Doctrine [of devotion to the royal line] to the World than England, who no sooner threw
off her Obedience and Religion to her Prince, but. . . she was
deprived of all her other Ecclesiastical and Civil Rights, and in all
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 91
capacities and relations deflowred and prophaned by impious and
unhallowed hands" (p. 24). Civil war, sedition, "overthrow of Com
mon-wealths, and the violent death of great Ministers of State"?
not to mention that of the ruler himself in 1649?followed in due course.
Considered in connection with England, Rycaut's comments in
these four chapters about sultanic tyranny, noble slavery, disre
gard of law, and factional war, reveal that he supported the monar
chy and disapproved of rebellion against it, but feared the possibil
ity of absolutism and worried about the status of English property and law. He was by no means alone in this ambivalent position; in
the 1660s a majority of his countrymen probably shared his atti
tude. In this book Rycaut appealed to an England that was in the
process of inventing constitutional monarchy, searching for a way to retain the majesty of kingship while limiting royal sovereignty.
At the same time, he addressed a monarch who was unsure
whether he was willing to accept such a compromise of his position and power. Rycaut's description of the Ottoman system conveyed a
double warning, cautioning against both the adverse effects of
excessive absolutism and the dangers of rebellion against legiti mate authority. His work cannot be read as straightforward repor
tage, the naive reflection of an observer of the Ottoman scene. A
description of observable reality that both concealed and conveyed other (usually political) ideas was a standard feature in the lit erature of the period.50 A book on any subject written by an
Englishman in 1665 that on the first page mentioned "intestine and civil revolutions" and commonwealths "supported with Reason
and with Religion" was undoubtedly about English politics, what ever its ostensible subject. Rycaut's work must be understood as
veiled advice to the English monarch.51
The tactic Rycaut employed to make his point was to depict Ottoman rule as the negative ideal, an extreme form of absolut ism that England should strive not to emulate. The attributes of
50 Since Rycaut's book was not a work of history, religion, or science, it
escaped the censor's eye. Those three fields were under censorship in the 1660s; see Hill, The Century of Revolution, p. 248. As a consequence, political criticism
was often written in the form of allegory or the history of foreign lands; see Chris
topher Hill, "Political Discourse in Early Seventeenth-Century England," in A
Nation of Change and Novelty, pp. 42-44. 51
Hey wood in 1972 mentioned his feeling that Rycaut in his work always had
England in mind: "Sir Paul Rycaut," p. 54. Rycaut said as much himself, but nei
ther Heywood nor anyone else who has written on Rycaut has paid sufficient attention to his own statements about the political import of his observations.
92 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
the Ottoman system that he emphasized?the dependence of sul
tanic absolutism on the absence of a nobility holding private prop
erty and the slave status of the Ottomans' high officials?were those
that contrasted most effectively with England's efforts to establish
values of commonwealth and liberty within a monarchical system. Other aspects of his description, whether true or not?the absolute ness of the Turkish sultan's edicts, his arbitrary bestowal of lands
and goods, the violence and cruelty of the Turkish system, and the
sultan's being above the law?represented for Rycaut just those
traits that the English sovereign should not possess. The Ottoman empire was perhaps the most appropriate nega
tive image Rycaut could have employed. For early modern
Europe, the Islamic world was "the central instance of cultural
otherness."52 Travelers' literature of the time emphasized the
Turks' "strangeness," the fact that they lived by other standards
than those of Christian Europe.53 The Ottoman system was con
sidered abhorrent by definition, while any admirable qualities discovered in it were customarily held up as a reproach to Euro
peans lacking these virtues.54 England's diplomatic and commer
cial dealings with the Ottomans after the late sixteenth century conflicted with the age-old construction of Islam as the enemy of
Christendom and its opposite in every respect. Rycaut's critique of English politics used this tradition to good effect, depicting the
horrors of a fully absolutist system as viciousness on the part of
the ruler, abject slavery for everyone else, and the threat of rape and murder if the system were overthrown. Such a system, "natu
ral" as it may have been to the Turks, would never work in "a
nation free-born."
52 This lovely phrase is from Jonathan Haynes, The Humanist as Traveler:
George Sandy's Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610 (Rutherford, N.J.: Fair
leigh Dickinson University Press, 1986), p. 13. 53 Orhan Burian, "The Interest of the English in Turkey as Reflected in the Lit
erature of the Renaissance," Oriens 5 (1952): 209-29. 54 For the construction of the European image of Islam, see Daniel Norman,
Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, i960); and Robert S. Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renais
sance Image of the Turk (1453-1517) (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967). For studies
of the English view of Islam and the Turks, see Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and
the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937); and Brandon H. Beck, From the Rising of the Sun: English Images of the Ottoman Empires to 1715 (New York: Peter Lang, 1987). Use of this tradition for
other purposes was a commonplace. Thomas Browne used the Battle of Lepanto between Europe and the Ottomans as a metaphor for his own inner battles
between reason and passion or "faith against the Devil" (Sharpe, Politics and
Ideas, p. 21).
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 93
But Rycaut's work did more than provide a negative ideal for
English politics. His vivid depiction of political events in chapter
4 exposed, perhaps unintentionally, the vast distance between the
idealized empire whose "maximes" he expounded and the real
empire he actually saw. As already noted, Rycaut knew that the
Ottoman landholding system spread its benefits far beyond the
sultan's pocket. In the episode of the Janissary rebellion he
revealed that the sultan was anything but a "Tyrannical power": he was really only a twelve-year-old child who was led around the
palace by the hand and who sobbed with fear when the rebellion
broke out. His "slaves" appeared as the real holders of power,
writing decrees for the sultan to sign and deciding who would
be promoted and who executed. These "slaves" were scarcely re
signed to the martyrdom supposedly proper to their station. The
Janissary officers fled Istanbul in disguise after their defeat, and
K?sem's struggles at her execution betrayed her reluctance to die at the command of the sultan and go directly to Paradise. All
"maximes" to the contrary, the Ottoman Empire did not actually function as the theories proclaimed it did.
Unfortunately, modern scholarship has generally not noticed
this discrepancy or taken advantage of Rycaut's inside knowledge of the system. Authorities have used Rycaut's maxims as a
description of Ottoman governmental realities while dismissing his account of real Ottoman politics as an aberration or, worse, a
corruption of reality. One example is this comment on sultanic
patrimonialism: "If some Grand Vezirs seemed to have some ini
tiative, this was a de facto situation, and was due to the passivity of some sultans."55 Another is the use of the "maximes" in chapter 3 to support the "central importance of slavery" in the Ottoman
system, ignoring the information in chapter 4 about the actual
role of slavery.56 Chapter 4 has even been called "digressive," included merely "for the record," while the first three chapters
were labeled "impartial."57 True, the lively air and intimate detail
with which Rycaut related the events detailed in chapter 4 marked a descent from the lofty and judgmental tone of the first
three chapters, but the chapter was no digression, since it served
55 Metin Heper, "Patrimonialism in the Ottoman Turkish Bureaucracy," Asian
and African Studies 13 (1979): 8. 56 Paul Coles, The Ottoman Impact on Europe (London: Thames and Hudson,
1968), pp. 162-63. 57
Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey, p. 239. For Anderson's evaluation of
Rycaut's view of Ottoman politics, see pages 243-44.
94 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
to support Rycaut's argument in the first three?far from im
partial?chapters about the dangers of both absolutism and
rebellion.
Rycaut's picture in chapter 4 of Ottoman political life is vivid
enough to permit us to use his work in revising the stereotype. If ever the Ottoman government had matched the theoretical model, it is clear from Rycaut's information that a change had taken
place, a devolution of power from the ruler similar in certain
ways to what was occurring at the same time in England. The
mechanism of this process is still to be explored, but its outlines seem clear. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Otto
man empire had undergone a crisis from which it had emerged "no longer its old self."58 Population growth, inflation, economic
distress, and internal rebellion created a "time of troubles," while
advances in military technology and practice simultaneously put unbearable demands on the treasury and on military discipline.
When sultanic leadership faltered in this crisis, female members
of the royal family, palace personnel, and Janissary commanders
took over the responsibility of government. The bureaucracy and
the households (including the palace), the avenues of recruitment
and training for those positions, supplanted in importance the old
path of advancement to power through the landholding cavalry ranks. The new leadership finally began to master the troubles
that beset the empire with Mehmed K?pr?l?'s centralization of
power in the office of grand vizier. This was no restoration but a
"glorious revolution": the center of government shifted from the
sultan's palace to the grand vizier's residence, and the grand vizier acted no longer as the sultan's right arm but as the real
decision maker. Although not quite a figurehead, the sultan was
no longer an autocrat. In the following century the empire was
run by coalitions of officials with no military background, and
factional politics became the order of the day, as in contemporary
England. The institutional developments accompanying these shifts in
power relations became permanent features of the Ottoman gov ernment. In a study of another Ottoman political incident late in
the seventeenth century, one historian has called attention to how
?in the Ottoman Empire as in England?political "substructures
58 Halil Inalcik, "The Heyday and Decline of the Ottoman Empire," in Holt,
Lambton, and Lewis, eds., The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. i: The Central
Islamic Lands, p. 342.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 95
that evolved over the years came to supplement the personal rule
of the sultans."59 Like the English Parliament and the ministries, these Ottoman substructures?notably the bureaucracy and the
personal households of the great men of state?provided continu
ity over changes of rule and worked to control the ruler's exercise
of power.60 But in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire, in
contrast to England, the idealized maxims of state were not
replaced even though the government was now operating quite
differently. Ottomans continued to talk and write as if sultanic
absolutism were still in place. No Turkish Locke ever arose to
legitimize the new political system that was taking shape around
the grand vizier.
Behind the facade of contrasting political rhetoric, however, there were certain similarities in the direction of development of
the Ottoman Empire and England that have gone almost unno
ticed through the centuries. Rycaut's images of loathsome Otto man tyranny both stemmed from and reinforced an orientalism
founded on the contrary assumption of a vast distinction, even
alienation, between East and West.61 The use he made of these
images highlighted the opposition between the two. But the oppo sition was at least in part a false one; out of Rycaut's own observa
tions we can fashion new images of likeness. In both countries a
leadership vacuum in the monarchy resulted in the strengthening of a lower tier of governmental structures and processes. In both, the transfer of power from the ruler to his subordinates was
routinized and the patronage of the great men of state became the
normal means of advancement, while the bureaucracy increased
in independence and importance. The orientalism that still imbues modern scholarship would
suggest the dismissal of these similarities as sheer coincidence.
The theory of "decline" denies to the Ottomans even the possibil
ity of structural change. But if every alteration in the organiza
59 Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion, p. 12.
60 It is true that the Ottoman substructures did not have an independent power base in landownership. But it has been argued that in the Ottoman system it was
not ownership of the means of production but control over distribution of its reve
nues that conferred power: ?aglar Keyder, "The Dissolution of the Asiatic Mode of
Production," Economy and Society 5 (1976): 178-96. 61 The standard text on orientalism is Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York:
Random House, 1979). Said stresses the political use that was and is made of cul
tural differences; the corollary is the suppression from consciousness of similari
ties and likenesses.
96 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994
tion and expression of Ottoman power after the mid-sixteenth
century is to be characterized as decline, then we must explain how what we call progressive trends in seventeenth-century Eng land were manifestations of decline in the Ottoman Empire. We should take the simultaneous occurrence of these trends in such different countries as the starting point of a new agenda for research and reconceptualization. It is possible that events in
England and the Ottoman Empire were not just superficially sim
ilar but structurally linked.
Economic and social historians between 1955 and 1975 estab lished that across the whole Eurasian continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, states were undergoing similar crises or political transformations connected to a common set of eco
nomic difficulties.62 The debate over the nature of the crisis?
essentially economic or political in origin?together with nearly all scholarship on the problem halted without resolution after the
publication of a synthesis concluding bluntly that two decades of
research had not demonstrated the correctness of either posi tion.63 Recently, however, the debate was reopened with the the
ory that "state breakdown" in the first half of the seventeenth cen
tury in England, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Ming China was the result of a conjuncture of fiscal distress, elite fragmenta tion, and popular discontent all driven by population growth.64 In
most cases, economic dislocation and state breakdown were fol
62 The debate on the general crisis of the seventeenth century began in 1954 in
the journal Past and Present and inspired voluminous research in the following two and a half decades. Important contributions were collected in Trevor Aston,
ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660 (New York: Basic Books, 1965); and Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M. Smith, eds., The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). On the crisis in non-Western lands, see S. A. M.
Adshead, "The Seventeenth-Century General Crisis in China," France/Asie 24 (1970):
251-65; William S. Atwell, "Ming Observers of Ming Decline: Some Chinese Views on the 'Seventeenth-Century Crisis' in Comparative Perspective," Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society (1988): 316-48; and Jack A. Goldstone, "East and West in the
Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey, and
Ming China," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1988): 103-42. A differ
ent explanation for the connectedness of economic and political changes across
the globe was given by Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 3 vols.
(New York: Academic Press, 1974-89). 63 Theodore Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 64 Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1991). Although his analysis can be faulted on a
number of counts, he is to be commended for creating a structure that draws
together so much disparate information and makes it meaningful.
Darling: Ottoman Politics through British Eyes 97
lowed by reconsolidation, reform, and the danger of absolutism.
Cultural and ideological differences were significant factors in
determining the direction of the outcome.
Rycaut's observations would support an argument along the
lines of this model. In both England and the Ottoman Empire the
resolution of crisis encouraged the development of new and
tighter political controls. Those who had wielded power when the
monarchy was weak or absent sought to retain it in some form
when the monarchy was restored. And as the increasing scope and
penetration of bureaucratic and fiscal administration enhanced
the importance of the bureaucracy and of government functiona
ries generally, the ruler's authority gave way to that of subordi nate governmental institutions. The model accounts for the
divergence between England's reform ideology and Ottoman tra
ditionalism by cultural differences in the two countries' views of
history. The validity of the model itself must still be tested and
examined, and there are problems with the historical reconstruc
tions based on it. Its value, however, is already apparent in its
ability to explain Rycaut's contradictory accounts of the Otto
mans, to raise new questions for research, and to stimulate the
investigation of the links between apparently disparate cultures.
Rycaut's work is useful today not because it feeds a comfort able sense of Western uniqueness, but because it sharpens our
awareness of the complexity that lies beneath the rhetoric people have used to label and categorize each other. Perhaps there actu
ally is a world history, a series of developmental rhythms that
transcend cultural and civilizational divisions. But uncovering it
demands that we read the European reports on distant lands with a careful and critical eye.