Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Casale

Review by: Emrah Safa Gürkan
Source: Renaissance Quarterly , Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 998-1000
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of
America
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/678820

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998 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Giancarlo Casale. The Ottoman Age of Exploration.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. xx + 282 pp. $74. ISBN: 978-0-19-537782-8.
Recently it has become fashionable to collapse the barriers that separate
Ottoman and European history by importing the latter’s paradigms and concepts
into the former. Giancarlo Casale’s The Ottoman Age of Exploration may be a fine
example. It argues that in spite of Western academia’s disregard, the Ottomans
participated in the age of exploration. In his chronologically organized book, Casale
not only seeks to introduce the Ottomans as global players engaged in geographical
explorations, but by closely linking domestic factional politics with imperial
strategy in the international arena, he also seeks to demonstrate how the ‘‘Indian
Ocean faction’’ that supported a belligerent and expansionist policy in the Indian
Ocean steered Ottoman foreign policy as well as military and commercial strategy.
While the virtues of this work in terms of reconceptualizing the early modern
Ottoman Empire and raising exciting new questions are evident, it is necessary to
highlight its significant shortcomings. Casale’s limited source base and his failure to
use all the information available to him constitute the major problem surrounding
€
this work. His main Ottoman archival source, the muhimme registers, were heavily
exploited before and not nearly as novel as he suggests; moreover, contrary to
Casale’s claim, they are neither ‘‘day-do-day’’ nor ‘‘verbatim records of the sultans’

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 REVIEWS 999

outgoing correspondence’’ (xvii), but rather summaries a few paragraphs in length.

Furthermore, entries regarding the Indian Ocean in these sources are extremely
scant when compared with those regarding other frontiers of the empire such as
Hungary, Persia, the Western Mediterranean, and the Kipchack steppes.
As Casale also acknowledges, sparse Ottoman sources should be backed by
European ones. Here he mainly relies on Portuguese sources, which provide him
with extensive information regarding Ottoman activity in the Indian Ocean but less
detail about what was going on in the Ottoman capital. Documentation in the
Venetian archives, especially the letters regularly dispatched by the Venetian baili,
the dispacci, could have filled that gap. In addition, Spanish archives in Simancas are
full of references to Ottoman activity in the Indian Ocean; those produced by the
extensive Habsburg intelligence network in Constantinople could be particularly
useful. Finally, Ernest Charriere’s four-volume compilation of French diplomatic
correspondence in the Eastern Mediterranean, in print since the nineteenth century,
provides key information regarding not only the negotiations between the
Ottomans, the Portuguese, and the Sultanate of Ache, but also the imperial
dynamics of the empire and its Indian Ocean faction.
The strength of Casale’s hypotheses is limited by his thinly stretched source base,
especially with regard to issues of Ottoman decision making and factional politics in
Constantinople. For instance, almost all of the clientage relationships in the Ottoman
capital that constitute the basis of his faction-focused analysis are insufficiently
substantiated. Much of his narrative is driven by circumstantial evidence and
speculation rather than thick documentation. In a book with too many perhapses,
‘‘we may never know for sure, but the most likely answer seems to be yes’’ (147) when
it comes to Casale’s hypotheses. He also occasionally falls into a trap of teleology
through a backward reading of political events and attributing intent to Ottoman
decision makers based on the military and political outcomes. Any Ottoman political
decision or military move is considered as part of a worldwide strategy, a blueprint
never mentioned in the sources. In addition, this global vision recognizes no physical
boundaries as the author goes to great lengths to synchronize unrelated decisions
made in faraway political and military centers (Lisbon, Paris, Istanbul, Cairo, Goa)
and uncoordinated military expeditions undertaken simultaneously in the four
corners of the world. Finally, his depiction of a smooth cooperation between the
Ottoman Empire and the Rumis, mercenaries of Ottoman origin operating in the
Indian Ocean, and his reading of the latter’s activity within the sphere of Ottoman
strategy are misleading. The relations between the two were mostly tense rather than
harmonious and thus a line between state action and individual entrepreneurship
should have been drawn.
The originality of Casale’s work lies in his tendency to study Ottoman history
within the general trends of world history, his emphasis on a faction that operated
both in the capital and the provinces, his mercantilist vision of the Ottoman
Empire, his highly criticized study of contemporary Ottoman maps and manuscripts
in comparison with their European counterparts, and his experimentation with new
concepts such as ‘‘soft empire.’’ His interesting arguments could have yielded

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1000 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

groundbreaking conclusions if substantiated with proper handling of the evidence

and based on a larger corpus of documentation. The best they can do as they are now
is to foster academic debate.
Even though his book contains errors discussed here and elsewhere, and his
source base is limited and his handling of the historical sources problematic, his
work is an easy and enjoyable read. Casale is a gifted writer who knows how to make
his well-illustrated text more appealing to the reader with an engaging narrative,
imaginative terminology, and catchy titles. In this regard, his narrative has much to
offer the notoriously dry Ottoman historiography, and given that his book raises
more questions than it answers, he has left some work to do as well.
€ RKAN
EMRAH SAFA GU
Istanbul 29 Mayis University

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