Contract
reste à expliquer à Tîrgoviște, dans l’église des saints Xxxxxxxxxx et Xxxxxx (« les Saints Empereurs »), le saint Xxxxxxxxxx représenté comme militaire cynocéphale, donc selon une tradition qui vient de la Macédoine. Il faudrait savoir si c’est la peinture originale de 1650 ou l’effet de la restauration de 1753. Quant à la Moldavie, où le saint est peint à Moldovița, au milieu du XVIe siècle, avec la tête d’agneau dans les bras, ce n’est pas en Russie qu’il faut chercher la source de cette représentation, mais chez les orthodoxes de Pologne.
Ne pouvant, dans le cadre étroit de ce compte-rendu, donner une idée complète de cette publication, nous nous sommes borné à en relever l’intérêt.
Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Xxxxx XXXXXX, Xxxxx XXXXXXXX (eds.), The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2013, 449 p.
Among the increasing burden of problems with which the historians of South-Eastern Europe grapple nowadays is the ambiguous statute of some provinces or countries that were somehow dependent of the Ottoman Empire, being beyond its borders or even inside them, but benefited of an autonomy. There are many disputed questions fundamental to an understanding of that particular situation. A conference in Dubrovnik in 2009 has extensively examined them and the result is this volume published in the well-known collection ‘The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage’. The need to reconsider some assumptions that have been made persisted, as it will be seen through the works of another conference, on the similarities and differences created in the Balkans and further North by the first Ottoman conquest – an investigation of policies, of institutions and of historical trends which will be soon in print. What was already provided at the earlier meeting constitutes a material of great value; the reader who will find here only a brief account of these articles must be convinced of the necessity to acquire the book.
The image of a mosaic comes to mind seeing the distribution of the matter: the legal status of the Ottoman tributaries, the place of these tributary states within the diplomatic system of the Ottoman Empire (including also the occult conditions which produced reactions against the imperial government in the Romanian Principalities), the military cooperation between the Turks and those regional powers which were under their domineering protection, all these sections leading to a demonstration of the composite character of the Empire. It could have been a commonplace handed down from Iorga, but his Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches had been forgotten and, until recently, not even translated into Turkish. The best formulations of this way of interpreting the problem are offered here by Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx (pp. 117 and 121) and, in his final chapter, by Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
The method followed requires returning to the same collocation according to the different themes treated by the authors. For instance, Wallachia and Moldavia are studied by Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx for the legal aspect, and by Xxxx X. Xxxx who investigates the context of the Romanian revolts against the Turks. Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx adds a chapter on the cooperation of the Romanians to Ottoman campaigns. The local conditions of Crimea are described by Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx, who is interested in the legal status of the Khanate, and by Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, referring to its military association with the Ottomans during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Xxxxxx turns out to be a very important case, not only for its defensive system between 1580 and 1620, as it was investigated by Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx, but especially for the valuable account by Xxxxx Xxxxxx of Dubrovnik’s ideal condition of neutrality in international affairs. In his basic study on the diplomatic condition of the Ragusan Republic from 1458 to 1806, Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx emphasizes the self-governance of the city-state, as it was perceived by Western observers. The ambivalence of the situation becomes clear from the confrontation of close contemporary views from the Muslim and Christian sides. About Xxxxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxx Xxxxxx points to the place taken by this principality in the negotiations between Constantinople and Vienna during the period 1570–1619, while Xxxxx Xxxxx has collected useful evidence till 1688 regarding the
cooperation of Transylvanian troops with the Porte, but also with Wallachia and Moldavia. Another parallel suggested is that of Ukraine, where the Cossacks participated to the wars between the Ottoman Empire and Poland for the steppe frontier on the North of the Black Sea until the conquest of Podolia. Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx, whose description of the Ottoman policy on the right bank of the Dnieper deserves attention, should have multiplied the references to the relation of the Cossacks,before and after Xxxxxxxxxxx, with Moldavia. The only Christian ‘vassals’ of the sultan who are omitted here are the Caucasian states, Kartli and Kakhetia, though their development under the domination of the Porte was highly significant.
The connection of the Romanian Principalities with the Ottoman Empire is a field which Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx has searched for many years. He argues again that Xxxxxxxxx and Moldavia were finally conquered under the reign of Xxxxxxxx the Magnificent and that since then they were included in the sultan’s dominions. In my review of Xxxxxxx’x previous book (Revue des études sud-est européennes, LI, 2013, p. 435–436) there are some reservations which I maintain. I am ready only to agree that any long-term treaties regulating the conditions of allegiance did not exist. It is useless to collect the many statements of the Ottoman authorities which repeated that the two principalities belonged to the sultan; on the other side, the Romanian tradition of an informal autonomy did not disappear. Xxxx Xxxx’x article on the involvement of the Greeks from Constantinople in the anti- Ottoman actions of Wallachia and Moldavia is renewing the subject, it brings out evidence which had been neglected and its best part concerns the influence of prophecies that inspired such political decisions. Unlike most Romanian historians who praised the alliance between Xxxxxxx xxx Xxxxx and Xxxx the Impaler, Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx is right to show that, in 1462, the Moldavian attack on Kilia was helping Xxxxxx XX.
When reading this outstanding work, one can only rejoice that so much has been done so far. Besides placing these para-Ottoman states in something like a constitutional setting, these comparative studies give a sense of coherence and integration.
Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Xxxxx XXXXXX, Xxxx X.XXXX (eds.), Europe and the „Ottoman World”. Exchanges and Conflicts (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries), Istanbul, The Isis Press, 2013, 261 p.
This always useful publishing house has printed a volume where ten studies are exploring various diplomatic and military aspects of Ottoman history. Most of them originated from a workshop organised by Xxxx X.Xxxx at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, in 2010. What brings them together is their orientation towards frontier regions of the Ottoman Empire (Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, Ragusa, Herzegovina and Crimea) and also their focussing often on individual cases that illustrate the situation of the intermediary fringe close to Western Europe.
In chronological order, the first of these researches is consecrated to Xxxxxxx the Brave’s campaigns. Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx judiciously demonstrates that the Wallachian participation to ‘the Long War’, in spite of the tendency to raise its importance, played only the role of a second front in the wide fight between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires which developed mostly on the territory of the former kingdom of Hungary. The author’s original contribution is to emphasize the need to pay an army of mercenaries as determinative factor of Xxxxxxx’x policy. An episode in the career of a very picturesque character of French history, the Maréchal Xxxxxxxx xx Xxxxxxxxxxxx (1579–1646), serves to Xxxxx Xxxxx to show how a young Xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx could chose to join the imperial army before making his life at the Paris court. In Venetian documents we find Xxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx, a Turkish general of Bosnian origin, whose biography reconstructed by Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx discloses his position on the Dalmatian front, where he had a secret and well paid relation with the Republic. The existence of a network of espionage who supplied its services to Rome is revealed by Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx, a specialist of the specific conditions of communication. The information gathered from Constantinople through