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FIRST FOREWORD
Sir Peter Laurence
It was on 14 January 1583 that the first English Ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan, William Harborne, set sail from England to take up his appointment. Four hundred years later I was his sixty-eighth successor, although one Ambassador, Stratford Canning, later Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, held the appointment on three separate occasions and so far holds the record for length of ambassadorial stay. It did not seem right to let the fourth centenary of this auspicious event pass without some appropriate celebration. A seminar on Anglo-Turkish relations held on 14 January 1983 in Hacettepe University in Ankara was a central part of this celebration, and the purpose of this book is to publish the papers presented at it by four Turkish and four British scholars in collected form.
The seminar was preceded by a lecture (included in these studies) which was given the evening before, 13January 1983, by Dr. Susan Skilliter of Cambridge University in the lecture hall of the Turkish Historical Association on William Harborne himself.
The idea of the seminar was conceived in the Embassy. Its realisation required the co-operation of a great many others, and it gives me great pleasure to record that this was enthusiastically given when we approached them. First, of course, comes Hacettepe University, in the person of its Rector, Professor Yüksel Bozer, and the Vice-Rector, Professor Ahsen Orhon. Without hesitation they offered the use of their excellent seminar room and placed their guest-house at the disposal of the visiting British participants. Professor Emel Doğramacı, Dean of the Faculty of Letters, gave her full support and shared the chairmanship of the seminar with Dr. Skilliter. Professor Ercüment Kuran, of the Department of History, with whom I was able to collaborate very closely, did all the hard work over the practical details and organised the Turkish participation.
Secondly, our thanks are due to the scholars on both sides who undertook the time and trouble to prepare papers, and some of whom came a long way to attend the seminar. On the Turkish side were Dr. Ali Ihsan Bagi§ of Hacettepe University, who has done much work on British economic policy; Professor Miibahat Kiitiikoglu of Hacettepe University; Professor Omer Kürkçüoğlu of the Middle East Technical University, who has studied the recent history of Anglo-Turkish relations; and Professor Osman Okyar, whose father was a close friend of Atatürk and his special envoy and later Ambassador in London. On the British side we had contributions from Dr William Hale of the Department of Politics of the University of Durham; Dr. Geoffrey Lewis of the Oriental Institute of Oxford University; and Dr. Colin Heywood of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. We also enjoyed the active presence of Professor Clement Dodd from the University of Hull and Dr. Andrew Mango of the B.B.C. External Services.
Thirdly, we are grateful to the British Academy and the British Council who generously met between them the travel expenses of the British participants.
In a one-day seminar it is not possible to review four whole centuries of Turco-British relations. We had therefore to be selective and concentrate on a few short periods or on some specific aspect which could be illuminated. Since trade was the reason for William Harborne’s appointment in the first place, and remained our principal interest for the next 150 years or so, we started the proceedings by looking at our commercial and economic relations. Just as, however, the political strategic importance of our relationship increased and in the nineteenth century predominated, so we moved on to consider certain aspects of this relationship, concluding with two papers on the Republican period.
We found it particularly gratifying that our celebrations on 13 and 14January had an academic and cultural theme, because this has been one of the most fruitful sides of Turco-British relations, particularly in recent years. Each nation has derived great benefit from the study of the rich culture, history and language of the other, and has valued the tradition of close academic co-operation between two countries.
Over the whole board Turco-British relations are as healthy today as they have ever been. Turks and Britons have acquired a good understanding of each other. Their interests in the world largely coincide. And on those points where from time to time they may not, we do try honestly to resolve our differences with respect for the other’s point of view. I hope and believe that this seminar has made its modest contribution to mutual understanding.
The Contributors
Dr. William Hale is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Durham University. His publications include The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (1981, repr. 1984) as well as several articles on modern Turkish history and politics.
Dr. Susan Skilliter is Lecturer in Turkish at Cambridge University. She is author of William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578-1582 (1977) besides numerous articles on Ottoman diplomacy in the sixteenth century. She has also carried out research on Ottoman costume and court life at the time.
Dr. Colin Heywood has taught at several U.S. universities and is now Lecturer in the history of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Dr. Ali İhsan Bağıș Associate Professor of Economic and Diplomatic History in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Hacettepe University, Ankara. He has published several articles and his two recent books are Britain and the Struggle for the Integrity of the Ottoman Empire and, in Turkish, The Non-Muslims’ Role in the Commerical Life of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1839.
Professor Mübahat Kütükoğlu is Professor of Ottoman History at the Faculty of Letters, Department of History, the University of Istanbul. She has published many articles; her two books are on economic relations between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain.
Professor Osman Okyar is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, University of Hacettepe, Ankara. He founded the Department in 1969 and has been its chairman until recently. A member of the Board of the Foreign Policy Institute, Ankara, he has written extensively in Turkish and foreign periodicals on Turkish applied economics, Turkish economic history and foreign policy.
Professor Omer Kürkçüoğlu is Professor of Diplomatic History and Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Previously a member of the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Ankara, he has also taught and undertaken research at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. A specialist in twentieth-century Turkish and Middle Eastern diplomatic history, his main publications are Turkey’s Policy Towards The Arab Middle East, 1945-1970 (1972, in Turkish), Anglo-Turkish Relations, 1919-1926 (1978, in Turkish), and The Arab Independence Movement Against the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1981 (1982, in Turkish).
Dr. Geoffrey Lewis is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St. Antony’s College and Senior Lecturer in Turkish at the University of Oxford. His publications include Modern
Turkey (1974), The Book of Dede Korkut (1974) and The Atatürk I Knew (1981).
INTRODUCTION THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
William Hale
Britain’s diplomatic relations with Turkey began in January 1583, when her first Ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan Murad III, William Harborne, set sail for Istanbul. This collection of papers was prepared to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of what was to prove a difficult but politically momentous journey. Though it cannot claim to offer a complete or detailed survey of the totality of Turco- British relations over such a long period, it is hoped that it will provide a sketch of some of the currents which have affected their course.
There was some political motivation for the English desire to strike up relations with the Ottoman Empire in the late sixteenth century. Protestant England was at this time locked in a struggle with Catholic Spain. Friendship with the Ottoman ruler could represent a counterpoise to the naval power of the Spanish King Philip II, the ‘head of the idol- worshippers’, as the English described him to the Sultan.1 As Susan Skilliter explains in her opening contribution, one of William Harborne’s major achievements at the Ottoman court was to help prevent the renewal of the Hispano-Ottoman armistice in 1587. A second reason for this initiative was the anxiety of English merchants to gain a share of the important trade between the Ottoman dominions and Western Europe. Such was the predominance of commercial interests in the early Anglo-Turkish connection that the payment of the ...
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