The available literature dealing with contacts between the Ottoman Empire and its European counterparts has generally focused on periods before the eighteenth and nineteenth century mostly because of a consensus among historians that the political, military, and trade relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe were at their strongest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Besides, the volume of sources which have been produced so far and focused on the next centuries have consumedly concentrated on the relations allegedly built by non-Muslim communities– particularly Orthodox merchants. Nor the importance or the contribution of such studies to the relevant historiography are to be questioned or denied here. However, these diaspora-focused studies bring along a history writing perspective of "us" embodied in the "nation" unit by emphasizing community bonds, and thereby ignoring both any kind of interaction and interdependency between different communities. Employing three voluminous books, which are sort of population records, kept by the Habsburg authorities on Ottoman subjects who were within the Habsburg borders between 1823 and 1825, this study aims at revealing a more representative picture of late-modern political and socio-economic phenomena which brought people from different societies into interaction with a specific focal point to include in the scope all Ottoman subjects, regardless of ethnic origin or religion.
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Last update: Apr 05, 2022