War Studies

Date of Recording: 25/04/2019 Description: Speaker: Michael Talbot, University of Greenwich When we think of the Ottoman Empire, we tend to think of them as a terrestrial empire. Yet as well as being ‘sultan of the two lands’, the Ottoman sovereign was also ‘ruler of the two seas’. In part, the relative lack of attention paid to Ottoman imperial discourses over water stems from a notion that, following key naval defeats in the 16th century, the Ottomans simply withdrew from the Mediterranean, leaving it to the mercy of foreign forces, old and new. This paper will argue that in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state rejuvenated its approach to empire at sea, and instituted a number of new mechanisms to protect its subjects in the Eastern Mediterranean, often at the request of the inhabitants of its islands and coasts. Using sources from Ottoman, British, and French archives, this paper aims to demonstrate that the Ottoman state utilised a number of rhetorical, legal, and military measures to exert its au