Empire: World History - 29. The Tudors and the Turks

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Slave raids in Cornwall. Englishmen spying for the venetians. The East India Trading Companies’ older brother. Join William and Anita this week as they discuss the relationship between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, all of which centre around the Levant Company. LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. You had a little rest and put your feet up and had a cup of tea and a biscuit. That was quite the romp, wasn't it, with your mate, your twin. Barnaby. Barnavi! I love Barnaby. I mean, my goodness, it had everything. I'm still exhausted. But look, what we were talking about with our last two podcasts, you've got a two-for, because we're spoiling you that way. Two for one.

It was the Venetian-led Holy League. I'd never tire of saying, the Holy League is conglomerative. I went to Catholic school. That's where my life escaping things called the Holy League. The Holy League used to organize sort of pilgrimages and catechisms and things. I'm very pleased not to have. more Holy Leagues in my life have to say. Do you need a hug? Are you all right? I need a crusade. Sure. Okay, so we were talking about the Holy League, which, apart from Williams' Czech,

a childhood also, talks about this confederation of countries that loathed each other until the Ottomans start to take territory which matters, and particularly threatening Venice. So we ended with the Battle of Lepanto, this enormous. sea battle, this bloody sea battle which turned the waters red. The greatest sea battle in Mediterranean history. And also apparently the last great sea battle to involve galleys. Yes.

So you've had these long succession of sea battles all the way from sort of actium and the argonauts and all this sort of ancient history. And it ends with Lepanto. It's quite a moment. The whole thing was just, I mean, do go back and listen. If you haven't listened, it really, even if naval battles you don't think are your thing, they are your thing. because they weren't my thing yet.

But they are my thing now. Anyway, look, it wasn't just a victory in Italy, which actually really, really truly believed it was under some existential threat that the Ottomans were at their door. I mean, they were. They were in Croatia. So they were literally, there was a Dubrovnik. That was the border.

And, you know, another four days march and they'd be in Venice. Yeah. Well, the question that I asked Barnaby at the end, because we were talking about, you know, that this was a turning point, if not for the fortunes of the Ottomans. it sometimes is described as such, but as you quite rightly said, if the decline takes 400 years, not really that much of a decline. It's not that much of a decline. But, you know, what Barnaby was saying, Barnaby Rogerson, our guest for the last two episodes, was that this was a turning point

because it gave Europe, in particular Italy and Spain, this idea of muscularity, that, you know, they had confidence, that they hadn't had confidence before because they could win a battle against the Ottomism. Yeah, and it's, it's, if you just imagine sitting in Europe and ever, and since the 14th century, the Ottomans have been advancing, slowly and inexorably. First of all, from the interior to the coast of Anatolia, from the coast of Anatolia, into the Balkans. Then they take Istanbul and they continue moving onwards. And this is the first time you've got a major, major defeat. And what I wanted to know was, you know, how did this play out in England here? You know, where, you know, I am sitting and William sometimes sits for a part of the year. And in England, I mean, let's just

zone in on this because it was greeted with joy as if, you know, perhaps England had won something. You know, they're not involved at all, not involved not one wit, but there were bonfires, sermons of thanks, the bells of St. Martin in the fields peeled out, all celebrating what was known as the overthrow of the Turk. And at this point in history, it's worth reminding ourselves that there's, you know, there's completely no comparison between the power of the Ottomans and that that of tiny little England. Despite Lepanto, the Ottoman Empire is still the most powerful force in all Eurasia, and Constantinople is the Mediterranean's greatest port.

From behind the sublime port, which is the symbol of Ottoman government, like 10 Downing Streets door is the symbol of British government, the Sultan and his various viziers are ruling this fantastic, great glittering patchwork of peoples and languages and religions, an empire comparable to Rome, whose last capital it had seized as its own. And decisions made in Ottoman Constantinople affect not a few people here and there, but millions across the globe. And it's worth reminding people as well, William, in the midst of all of this, is this an unusual empire because it doesn't require people to change or convert. It's like, you do you, you, seems to be the Ottoman motto. You do you, but just, you are,

us and you can pay taxes, that would be lovely. But it is marginalized people from around Europe who find themselves in the Ottoman Empire because they can just practice their faiths. So Jews who are thrown out of Spain, they find themselves coming to the Ottomans and saying, can we live here? And the Ottomans say yes. You see them rising through the ranks. We talked about this possible conspiracy theory that the arsenal of Venice was blown up by a secret agent who was either related to or working for a great Jewish statesman within the Ottoman Empire. Has a slight whiff of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that one. I'm not convinced to talk about that.

Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. But the fact that you did have a man who had that much power who was Jewish and was able to practice and be Jewish. And it's certainly not unlikely that the Ottomans would want to start an enormous bonfire in the middle of the arsenal. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to imagine Ottoman agents wanting to do. And certainly you've got the sensation that, you know, from, Well, we talked about last time about the vizier, the grand vizier, Mehmet Sokolu Pasha. And he's sitting in his palace on the Bostras, at the same time, as this is all going on, as Lepanto is being fought, he's simultaneously planning canals between the Don and the Volga and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

One day he's sending armaments to Sumatra to thwart the Portuguese, and the next, he's choosing a new king of Poland to thwart the Russians. I mean, that's nuts, but just give us an idea of scale. You say from the dom to the vulgar. It's a long way. This is no paucity of ambition. And even more so, even we mentioned this last time, he's also arming rebels in Andalusia, the last Marisco, the last Muslims who haven't quite converted to Christianity

or converted to Christianity, but secretly are still Muslims. They're given arms by this guy. At the same time, he's also sending these muskets, of which the Ottomans produce very good muskets, archibuses, to the rebels in Ache, so in Indonesia, the completely other side of the world, beyond the Malacca Straits, so they can fight the Portuguese. And he's ordering pictures and clocks from Venice. He's decorating Istanbul with one of the most beautiful mosques ever built. And he commissions an 11-arched bridge over the river Drina. So this is sort of global. This is, you know, what Washington does

today, putting its fingers in one pie and then putting its fingers in another. This is the 16th century equivalent. And at the centre of it is Istanbul, which we've talked about in several of the podcasts, which no other city in Europe is comparable in size or grandeur, even strangeness. There's a wonderful book by Philip Mansell called Constantinople. He talks about the different ambassadors in Constantinople squabbling over the number of chafthans they're presented by the Sultan. The French generally received 21, the British get 16 and the Dutch 12. So is that the equivalent of the Gun salute that we talked about in the Raj. Exactly.

That's interesting. And this is also, I mean, if you've got a place like Constantinople, which is this melting, bubbling pot or Istanbul, as it now is, this, this is it now is, this, this, it's, the attraction for ambassadors, yes, but also spies. It must be quite livid with intrigue, is it not? Absolutely. And just the same way there's this rumor that the Ottomans are responsible for the fire and the arsenal in Venice. So there are reports that the Venetian. that the Venetians try, how many times is it? 14 times, I think, to poison Mammat the Conqueror.

And then there's these other sort of strange weird Ottoman etiquettes at the palace. The passage of the season is marked by a strict sequence of different fur pelts, ermine in autumn. Yeah, no, I was going to ask you. Okay, so, hang on, where are we now? We're in spring. What's the spring collection? Squirrel.

Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrels for spring. And then sable in midwinter. Oh, right. And ermine for, well, okay. Look, we're talking about all these beautiful things. And ermine and, you know, furs and the beautiful moss that'll be. The ugly side is there as well. I mean, slavery, slave is. I know I keep banging on about this. No, with reason, because it's a big slave culture. And many, many wars have fought in every single war. There are prisoners of war. We talked to the last episode of Savantes, no less, who is at this point, at the end of the last episode, is enslaved as a war. a galley slave before he's ransomed. And you told me about another author. I mean, go on, I just blew my mind when you told me about, go on, you go on, tell everybody, tell everybody what you told me. About Pushkin. Pushkin's great grandfather was a slave was for sale. That's extraordinary.

I think it's a very important thing. I think in the future series, we're going to do the history of slavery, which is such an important part of history. And it's something which, of course, the Europeans industrialised and increased the scale of on a dramatic stage. But it has this long prehistory. And a country like, well, a city like Algiers, a quarter of the population was slaves. This is just astonishing. A quarter of the population were captured in war. And a lot of those were from Western Europe, many from Britain, including a lot of Cornish.

Now that you've brought us on to Britain, let's talk about Britain, shall we? Because the 16th and 17th century here in merry old England, England was small. It was agricultural. I think it's fair to say, relatively impoverished, monolingual as opposed to the Ottoman Empire where every sort of language is spoken. And of such little economic importance that I think I mentioned this the last time we met, William, that despite again and again saying to the Sultan, you know, we'd love one of your ambassadors and be so welcome. It'd be lovely to happen. They just never bothered to send anyone. Neither did the Persians actually bothered to send anyone. body to England because they find it completely irrelevant. So it's here it is. England. And not just irrelevant, but also sort of powerless. Between 1609 and 1616, so what's that?

That is seven years. How long did that take you to? It's a long day. That's hilarious. We found your Achilles digit. That's terrible. Seven years, William. Seven weeks.

Seven years. Yeah. 466 English ships and Mediterranean are attacked by Ottoman galleys. And by the 1920s, the Turkish naval presence is now spreading so far. It has reached the waters of the British Isles. Can you believe it? In autumn 1625, the Turks take out from the church in Mount Spain, Cornwall, 60 men, women and children and carry them away as captives. Just a minute, just stop. So what, they're getting slaves from Britain.

So they're just raiding and picking up people from Cornwall. And in June 1670, a petition that presented to the king on behalf of, quote, 140 men of Stepney who've been captured by the Ottoman Navy. So, I mean, they're all over. It's not just Western Britain. Does that mean that they came to East London? They came up the Thames and they came to East London. They went to Stepney and just grabbed. And took away 140 men.

So, I mean, one of the reasons, and again, if you've missed some of the other podcasts we've done, is that they would take people and ransom them. and say if you want them back, you just have to pay us. Or just take them as gully slaves, if no one, if no one answers them. Anyway, look, there were, I think this is an eye-washering number, some 5,000, well, more than 5,000 British captives in Algiers. And Algiers that you gave us that crackers figure of, what, 40% of Algiers was made up a slave. And there's a further 1,500 Brits captive along the coast at the port of Sally. It's just this idea of them coming up to Stepney.

in helping themselves. I think that's nuts. And, you know, we have, from our failed education system, which doesn't teach you any of this, this idea that sort of Britain is always this sort of vaguely powerful nation. We are, we are absolutely not in the 16th century. We are victim of slaving raids from Alger's. Well, I mean, you're brought up on rural Britannia, Britannia rule the waves. And really, Britain didn't the Ottomists rule the waves all the way up to the Thames? That's, I did not know. Yeah. But what interesting, one of the things that begins to change this and which turns the British into allies of the Ottomans in the next century is the Reformation. The Reformation cuts off Britain from the continent, not unfamiliar situation today. And the Europeans are sort of baffled,

by the way we've turned ourselves into a pariah nation. But we've lost all our links with Italy, with Spain, with Portugal, the Jesuits being sent from Italy. are being hung, drawn and quartered on arrival. The Lisbethan Secret Service under Walsingham is tracking these Jesuits down in their priest holes, in these little recusent dens in the north of England. And this is one of the things that drives the British into trading with further afield. So this is the beginning of this period when you're getting the British venturing out, not just to the Mediterranean, but to Moscow, and as we know from our first series, particularly to the East Indies and then to India with the East India.

company. And one of the things that is a kind of great British invention at this period, which changes everything, is this simple idea of a joint stock company. Same thing we were talking about with the East India company, where rather than a guild where a series of professional allies and collaborators can pool their resources and work together, or a family company, you get with a joint stock company, something that anyone can invest in. So you can be a wine seller. You could be a carpenter. You can be a wool salesman, but you can invest in this company and make a share of the profit. And in the Elizabethan period, from the 1580s onwards, from the end, from that sort of period, you get the Muscovy company, then you get the Barbary company, then you get the Levant

company, you get the Royal Africa company, which was an early slaving organisation. And before the East India company, but exactly the same set of investors, you get the Levant company. It's originally called the Turkey company and then it changed its name for the Vat. But same set of investors. So when you talked about the East India Company and you did it so beautifully and so vividly, go back if you haven't heard that episode. It's great. But you had Customer Smyth famously known, hilariously named Customer Smyth. I still find that quite funny. So customer smithe is... He's involved? He's in this?

Specifically, it's customer smith. It's one of the founders of the LeVat Company too, and a major investor. And when you look at the names, because I know you went through the names and, you know, as you say, sort of Saddlemaker and somebody who, you know, blows glass or whatever. You can correlate names between lists. And they even share the same offices initially. Right. So, and the Levant Company is first. It's originally called the Turkey Company, then it becomes a Levant company.

But it's basically the same group of London merchants. And what's interesting to us, of course, with retrospect, is that the Levant Company, which starts off as the bigger of the two and is a far more immediate source of trade. Because at this point, bizarrely, you know, we don't think of currents as being a big part of the British diet. But currents in a time before sugar is widely available and easily available. Currants is a sweetener. Currents. As in raisins. I mean, we're doing a bit of shrill grape things. Yes, okay. And the Brits buy large quantities of these and Tudor stews contain lots of currents. This is one of the weird things. There's a wonderful book called The Rajat Table,

which makes the point that when the British first arrive in India, Chili's haven't got to India. And in actual fact, British and Indian food is not so incredibly dissimilar to each other because both of them have fruit stews and both of them don't have jillies yet because they haven't arrived in South America. Gosh. So the kind of food that Tudors would have had when they stepped a short, Surat, would not have been, in a sense, as different as the food now between India or Britain. You don't know how much this will outrage my mother.

She won't believe it. You can say it as many times I show, but she will refuse. Can I just say there is a half-form joke in my head about currency, but I don't know how to perform it. Work on that one. Work on it. Anyway, look, so much of the contact between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, peaceful, but also, it sounds like from what you're saying, profitable as well. And so you've got the English and Bank Company, which should say the date, actually, 1581,

we're talking about through a charter from Queen Elizabeth I. and now that brings this relationship, which might have been sort of ad hoc before, into a formalised process. That's right. And they soon established factories at Constantinople, Smyrna, which is the modern Ismir on the Anatolian coast, and particularly Aleppo, which is a huge company factory. And if you think of which Shakespeare player, is it, he to Aleppo gone. Is that Macbeth? Shall I go to the Bodleon? Go to the Bodleyn. Is it Macbeth? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it Macbeth, William?

As I said a minute ago, yes, it's for that. Every fool knows. It's Macbeth. It's Macbeth. What we're talking about? Yes, Aleppo. So they've got oppositions in Aleppo as well. They've got a factured Aleppo and the trade is currents, as we said, silk fabrics and, yeah, more currents, the brown gold of their day.

Yeah. Can I tell you a silk story? So the Barbary Company, the Muscovy Company were before the Levant Company. Is that right? Is that what you're saying? Correct. Yeah, the 1570s, 1580s. And the Levant Company's 1581, I think. Okay, you're going to, you are going to like this story then. So this is the story of a man called Anthony Jenkinson. Have you heard of Anthony Jenkinson from Norfolk? No, go ahead. This is in 1553. So this is earlier, you know, than we're talking about. He's on a tour at the Middle East. He's actually what he's trying to do is he's trying to get to the Persians, because he's a silk trader. That's what he does. That's his job. And he's desperately trying to get to the

Persians, try and make a deal, but nobody cares about England and he can't get anywhere near it. And it just so happens that Suleiman is going in a procession through the city. And this man, Anthony Jenkinson, from Norfolk, jumps, pretty much jumps in front of him. It is in Aleppo. That's why it made me think of it. It's in Aleppo. And he sort of jumps in front and says, look, I'm a silk trader. Can you look wonderful? And while he's sort of waiting for the actual sultan to arrive, he's looking at all the janice. his clothes and say, well, that's much silk, that's wool, that's that we can do this, you know, and he starts to say, look, actually, I can do business here. And he's, you know, when we said

that before the Levant company, they had top deals, he is the first man to do a deal with the Ottomans and say, you know what, I'll take some of your silk and we can have, we can get it into England. Is that interesting? Very interesting. And so the Brits like Ottoman silks. They're like Ottoman spices, which have come via India up through Egypt. And they like indigo. But they particularly, like, as we said, currents, currents. Yes, currency. See, it's going to come out and fully formed in a minute. But look, there's another reason, apart from trade, which pulls these two countries together.

And, you know, as you said, you know, sort of England isolated from Europe. My enemy's enemy is my friend. They are both despised by the Pope. That's, you know, I think Elizabeth has, she's been excommunicated at this time. She has, hasn't? She has been. And what's interesting is it works the other way, too. The Ottomans like the sound.

of the British because they know they're not idolatres. Right. What they don't like is all the idols in Italian churches, all those gorgeous paintings and iconostasis and things all over by Zantia. What they want are these bare, white mosques. And an English parish church in 1650 is not actually so different from that. You've knocked down all the statues, the English Reformation has cleared out all the images.

And this is something that both sides realize that they have in common. Do you know what? that letter I sort of started reading to you in the last episode, the one where the Queen of England was claiming to be also the Queen of France. This is Elizabeth. The rest of that, actually, you'll find really interesting. That same letter where she's writing it to Marad I third in 1579. So she says, you know, I am, you know, the Queen of England, France and Ireland. The most invincible, the most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all kind of idolatries. So right up front and center, you know, we are of the same cloth. The most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all

kind of idolatries. Exactly. And so we don't think of, you know, it wouldn't occur to anyone today that Protestantism and Islam are on the same team. But this is very much something that both the British and the Ottomans play with each other so that they can make common cause against common enemies like the Spanish and the Portuguese. And when the Spanish armada is defeated and blown on, around by the gale, the Ottomans are thrilled. And there's an Ottoman chronicler that talks about how Sultana Isabel, which is what they call the Queen Elizabeth. A call Elizabeth, isn't that gorgeous? Has been saved from invasion by a Rihan Sarasan, a sharp wind, just like the one sent against the people of Ard in the Quran. And this is taken as a sure sign

that Allah, that God was on their side. And when news of her good fortune broke, there was rejoicing at the Chronicles Court in Marrakesh and fireworks too. So you have this growing relationship with the Ottomans, but also particularly I think with the Maghrebbe courts linking Elizabethan England and 16th century Marrakech, something again would never find in a textbook. That's fascinating and that link that you're describing, that actually does result in joint military expeditions, doesn't it? Joint military expedition in 1596 Anglo- Moroccan attack on Cadiz, on the Spanish. Do you have, that's extraordinary. So let's team up against Philip in Spain because we hate him.

And even weirder in 6003, which is only seven years later, Ahmed al-Mansaw, the King of Morocco, makes a proposal to his English ally, Queen Elizabeth I, that England allows the Moors to colonise North America. Stop it. No, this is actually, this is. Just stop it. Really? And he says that they should use English ships.

They should together attack the Spanish colonies in America, expel their hated Spanish enemies, and then this is the key quote, possess the land and keep it under our joint dominion forever. There was a catchover, and that it says that the king should ensure that future colonists should be Moroccan rather than English, quote, in respect of the great heat of the climate, where those of your country do not find themselves fit to enjoy the extremity of the earth there, and our men endure it very well by reason that heat hurts them. not. So the idea is that the lily-livered English, you're not going to be able to manage the heats of America. You'll get sunburn. So this predates mad dogs in English with garage. They don't know, do they? They don't know. They have no idea what's coming in Morocco. And again, this, you know,

something's so different from our preconceptions. You have the idea of a joint Moroccan, Elizabethan, colonising mission in North America to take on the Spanish. So I mean, the Turks love Elizabeth. The Turks, by and large, love England. And, you know, now that they've noticed it, because they've been ignoring it for centuries, but now they've noticed it. But one thing they're very, very rude about is the cooking. They don't like a great surprise, you can say, despite the currents. What do they say?

What do they say about the cooking? This all emerges from a story of one unfortunate English captive who's captured in the sea battle, exactly the sort of thing like the Panto that we've been talking about. And he's 1648, he's taken to Algiers, where he's put to work as a cook for the ruler. and this proves a mistake for everyone involved unused to such exotic fish and meats of the region. The Englishman found himself producing, and this is a quote from the time,

mad sources and such strange ragu that everyone took me to be a cook of the Antipodes. Worse was the reaction of his master, he declares that the food hath the most loathsome taste. In order that the cook should be given ten bastinados, which is whipping on the soles of his feet, and return to the slave market. As far as the English for concerned, the English it seems, made better galley slaves than Gormuz. Yeah. Listen, it's a good time to take a break here. Join us after the break where we explore more matters of taste and also this burgeoning friendship or relationship, at least, between Britain and the Ottoman Empire and how it all revolves around this Levant company.

Join us then. Welcome back. So let's talk about the Levant Company now. So it was a trading organisation, sure. There's financial benefit sure. right at the highest levels, there is a relationship that is growing between Elizabeth and Morad I third. So at the very highest level, they have this link, we're not Catholics, they hate us and we don't care because we like each other. We're going to go and colonise Florida together.

Yes, and that was just a nuts thing, I had no idea. But also, this now allows people to travel. So for the first time, they're somewhere to go. How does that work? So you have Turkish ex-prisoners. Moorish craftsmen, according to one source. a number of wealthy Turkish merchants and a Moorish solicitor, no less, setting themselves up in London. As well as an Albion Blackamore. What is the Albion Blackamore and Turkish rope dancer? What's that about?

These again are odd Moroccans washed up in Elizabethan London. We again have this image in our head of all those films like Robert Bolt, Man for All Seasons and everything is all a very solidly white cast. But if you actually look at the Lisbethan documents, you've got an extraordinary, rich variety of people that are turning up some slaves, some begging around the the city, some rich ambassadors with trains of servants that create a huge sensation in Shakespeare in London. Yeah, and you're right, because, you know, these rows that creep up from time to time about casting, you know, you can't have black characters in this time period. Well, I mean, they were there. There's a very, very good book about this, Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufman. Have you come across it? It's wonderful. I've seen it in bookshops. I never read it. No, it's a really good book. There's also, though, a book I have read, which is by my

Palestinian historian historian friend Nabil Matar, who we should get on the show sometime. And I remember walking past a bookshop in London about 20 years ago and seeing his book, Islam in Britain. And then he had two dates, I kind of 1580 to 1600. And there's a whole book on the Muslims in Britain at that period, which is a period you don't imagine there are Muslims in Britain. Then he follows up with another book with the unlikely title of Turks, Moors and Englishmen. Right. Thanks. They don't call the Levant company or people who work for the Levant company, Levant Company traders. No, they don't give them that sort of honorific. They're called turkey merchants at this time.

Is that meant to be sort of disparaging or is that just a name that morphs? If it is disparaging, it's not a disparagement that lasts long because these guys become very rich, very quickly. And from very modest beginnings in the 1580s, Levant Company takes off far quicker than the Eastern Day company initially. It makes a lot of money. and you have a lot of Brits setting up in these factories. Aleppo and Constantinople are probably the biggest, but Smyrnau, there's another big base in the Peloponnese

where the current trade is centred. So you've got increasing number of Brits finding new lives to themselves in Ottoman dominions. And with the fact that the Ottomans recognize these people as almost Muslims, that Protestants don't have this idolatry, which is the main Muslim problem theologically with the Catholics, it means that these guys are welcomed. The Turkey merchants, there was a beautiful quote that I'd love to read to you. So this is about, they are kind of like the wide boys of the city at the time. They're the ones who are dressing in the finest clothes.

It's not pinstripes, that they've got the finest silks and the finest walls. And they're strutting around the Royal Exchange in London. And this is one of the contemporary reports at the time. one would think the world was converted into newsmongers and intelligences. What news from Scanderoon and Aleppo, says the Turkey merchant? What price bears currents in Zant, apes in Tunis, cutting a throat in Naples, haws in Venice and the curse of the clap at Padua. So they're not popular.

No, but this sort of sensation that Britain is opening up, that this country, which had been this very small place on the edge of the world, is now becoming, for the first time, this sort of globalised, cosmopolitan country. And that you can make money. I mean, the boys are back in town. There's very much the whiff of, you know, God, these guys are strutting around thinking they own the place. And at the same time that you've got all these unlikely Tudor Moors wandering around London, you've got increasing number of Brits finding weird lives for themselves in the Ottoman Empire. And quite a lot of these are British slaves who've converted to Islam and risen in the rank.

There's a phase of a moment when they're trying to ransom some prisoners from Great Yarmouth, which was then a bigger port than it is now. Right. And they go to this Ottoman vizier who's called Hassan Aga. And they find that he too is from Great Yarmouth, that the actual vizier had formerly been called Samson Rowley. And a similar moment in Algeria where the Moorish King's executioner turns out to be a former butcher from Exeter, now called Abdur Salam.

But Abdu Salam, because it's based on his... his actual name was Absalom. That's right, isn't it? His name in England was Absalom. And then he became Absalom. Yeah, that's right. And it's not just English. The Scots are there too. There's an Ottoman general called English Mustafa, who is in fact a Scottish Campbell, who converted to Islam and joined the genoceries. And what you find increasingly in the 17th century is that these converts will not come home because they're having a better time in the Ottoman Empire. So they're not converted by the sword? Some of them are converted by the sword. Some of them go over.

But for whatever reason, they won't come back. Right. And this happens even to British diplomats. There's a guy, Hassan Aga, the former Samson Rowley, was got on a slaving raid. But then you get characters like the English consul in Egypt, Benjamin Bishop, who's a British diplomat. And he probably converts and disappears from the public records and joins the Ottoman elite. Do you know what Brits thought about people like him? I mean, does he disappear from the records because they just don't.

want to talk about them anymore because they don't like it or do they tolerate it? What is the idea of Brits, of course, not at all happy about this. And I talked in the last episode how Archbishop Lord actually designs a service of reconversion. So you've got a sufficient number of people who've converted to Islam and then come back again for whatever reason that they actually need a formal sacrament of reconversion to Christianity. And there's a lot of rude stuff. There's in Elizabethan and Jacobian plays about renegades, people who have, in the language of the time, Mohammedized or donned the turban or turned Turk. You mentioned Sampson Rowley, and you mentioned in his kidnapped from Great Yarmouth.

Did you, I mean, did you know that he was also castrated? He was castrated and he turns into one of the most powerful eunuchs in the Ottoman realm. And there's a picture of him in a manuscript in the Bodlin. And they used to sell, I first heard about this guy. I remember as a teenager, because they used to say. sell postcards of him of this guy with Turpin from Great Yarmouth. Yes, this Great Yarmouth, can you imagine the Great Yarmouth accent as well? So, but you've got this man from Great Yarmouth, he's castrated, which is dreadful.

But then he rises up through the Ottoman ranks. He ends up running the treasury of Algiers, all Algiers. And as you say, you know, he is offered by the English ambassador the chance to come back and be an Englishman again. And he says, he turns around and goes, why would I want to do that? I would just be another person in Great Yarmouth struggling, chipping away at a living, because he's not grand, he's not a, he's not blue-blooded, he hasn't got money behind him, but here in the Ottoman Empire, he's managed to rise up and is pretty much running Algiers.

There's a whole mission that goes to Algiers under Charles II. They send somebody called Captain Hamilton to ransom Englishmen they've heard have been enslaved on the Barbary coast. And they all refuse to return, the men have converted to Islam, and we're now, according to the report of Captain Hamilton, quote, partaking of the prosperous success of the Turks. They are tempted to forsake God for the love of Turkish women, writes Hamilton. Such ladies are, he added, generally very beautiful. Oh, right, okay.

So that's Captain Hamilton put in his place. I mean, just some of the attitudes of this at the time. So Sir Thomas Shirley, reminds who Sir Thomas Shirley is. He's quite important at this time. He's an ambassador to the port, so he's one of the formal British ambassadors. But he talks about this, what does he say? He describes as rogues and the scum of people, which being villainous and atheists are fled to the Turks. for succour and relief.

So there you are. I've answered my own question there. I should have really read on and looked at that because, yes, scum of the earth. So they're really not admired. So some of these people are people who are looking for a better life or have been kidnapped and are making the best of a situation. But you've also got some really terrible people who are fleeing justice who are washing up in the Turkish realm, aren't you?

But there's this consistent anxiety you find in British Ders. diplomats whose job it is to try and bring these people back, that they're just not going to come back. And Thomas Shelley again says, this is a quote from his diaries. He says that the more time Englishmen spend in the East, the closer they move to adopting the manners of the Muslims. And this is what he writes, conversation with infidels doth much corrupt. Many wild youths of all nations as well English as others, in every three years they stay in Turkey, they lose one article of their faith. So this idea that this is not just a dangerous and exotic civilization, it's a very seductive one, and that people who go to Turkey and the Ottoman Empire and work there are actually going to be seduced by the pleasures and the life and the riches of this civilization.

In terms of trade, so this is now building up over the time, so the Levant Company, how quickly does it grow? Because we know the East India Company just grows very, very fast and is very fortuitous, by a number of sometimes, you know, luck, dumb luck helps the East India Company. How does the Levant Company grow? So what's interesting is that Levant Company does very well, particularly the 17th century, when the East India Company is still struggling. The East India Company, in its early days, has a lot of competition from the Dutch, and the Dutch are doing much better than the English with the spice trade.

And in the end, the Brits have to kind of go back to square one and re-plan the whole thing, that they're not going to be spice traders, they're not going to focus on Indonesia. What they're actually going to do is they're going to be textile traders, which was always the strong British trade, the English wool trade, being the staple throughout the Middle Ages. They're going to concentrate on textiles, in this case, cottons and silks, and it's going to be Bengal and Gujarat, not Indonesia and spices. But meanwhile, in the Levant, 17th century is the early 17th century is the peak of the trade.

And when the East India company is struggling at the beginning, the Levant company is making a lot of money. in Aleppo and Smyrna. And what, again, I think it's very important to remember that I think it's very easy to imagine Brits abroad with the hindsight of the Raj and the high empire and imagine us these high and mighty people. These guys are marginal. They're putting up with a lot of insults in the streets in the Levant. They're, you know, they stand out a mile. They don't look like the Ottomans. But they're there because it's the rich country. It's the richest empire on earth, along with the moguls.

And they're there to make money. So if they're picked on, if they're picked on, you know, I thought it's a terrible playground term, but if they're not, you know, they're teased or they're introduced on the streets of, let's say, Aleppo. How do they live? I mean, what do they do? Do they form their own little expat colonies?

Well, exactly. I mean, it's rather like, in a sense, modern Saudi Arabia where, you know, kind of all the oil workers will have their British club and sit in their British bar doing their British things. And in the Aleppo factories, you have early discreet. of cricket being played. Cricket spelled K-R-I-C-K-E-D-T.

Wow. And the Aleppo factors early on have a pack of foxhounds, and they go off doing the hunt. Well, they must have had the foxhounds sent over. Poor foxhounds. They just sort of shipped over, really. But also there's this description of these early factories. There's rather sort of collegiate places, rather like an Oxford Bridge College. And the English factors have to take a vow to avoid the indulgences of quotes fornication and matrimony, as well as vow not to indulge in cards, dice, tables, taverns and playhouses. And this contrasts with the Venetian consul who at the same time is sitting in the same city

and who lives till 114 and fathers no less than 126 children, 105 of whom are illegitimate. Wow. to have all these syllabut Brits sitting there. Francesco Lupazoli. Are we talking Francesco Lupa? The most fecund man in the whole of Europe. That's outrageous. But my favourite story and the guy that I very nearly wrote a book about

and actually may well write a book about. And there's a wonderful book which I recommend to anyone no longer in print, but you can get it in libraries, by a guy called Daniel Goughman, who's a young scholar who'd wrote three books. And then I think he had a heart attack in his 40s. But the book that I love was called, Britons and the Ottoman Empire, and it's got these dates, 1642 to 1660. And he homes in on this character. And this guy is someone I would so like to write a biography of if ever I leave

India and if ever I have another life, I think to go to the Peloponnese where he was based and to research this life is probably my biggest ambition. Okay, you're torturing me. Who is he? Who is he? So he's called Sir Henry Hyde, the same family that Hyde Park is named after. and he is a big royalist at a period when the Civil War is looming. And with both the East India Company and the Vant Company, these are full of citymen who are basically absolute straightforward parliamentarians, roundheads. And both the East India Company and the Vant Company is overwhelmingly when the Civil War breaks out, heading to support Cromwell.

But Henry Hyde is not. he is a royalist through and through. And by the time the Civil War breaks out, he has got three different jobs. He started off with Levant. I mean, he runs them simultaneously. He starts off and his main source of income is the Levant Company. And he is the Levant Company agent in the Peloponnese, not a bad place to be based. And we've mentioned it several times the current trade, raisins, dried fruits.

This is what he's in charge of. And it's shipped out of the same place we were talking. about in the last podcast about the Pant, it's out of that Corinthian gulf that the raisins get sent off to Tudor England. But Henry Hyde also has another job. He's paid very well as a spy for the Venetians. And we were talking about all this backwards and forwards. The Venetians tried to poison the Ottoman Empire. Fourteen times. Fourteen times. They're terrible at it because they try 14. No, they're not thinking of it. And the Ottomans may be successfully burning down the arsenal of the Venetians.

So in the middle of all this, Henry Hyde is sending secret reports to Venice about the trade, politics, but also the military arrangements of the Ottomans. But with the money he gets for spying for Venice and the East Indy company, he then realizes that the Ottoman Empire is sufficiently flexible, that he can actually buy himself into the empire. And he bids successfully to become the Voivod or the Batadilik, as the Turks got, which is basically a consular position. He becomes the consul of the Ottomans for the Peloponnese. So as well as being the agent of the Levant company, he's actually now part of the Ottoman administration. And they give him a whole

regiment of judicaries. What? He has, so he has to, oh, like a Pasha. He's like a Pasha. He's not like a Pasha. He is a Pasha. He is a Pasha. So you have someone who's a cousin of Hyde Hyde Park, who is an Englishman. He's still a Christian. He hasn't gone over to Islam. He has a chapel in his estate, which is increasingly now a large and rambling and ever-increasing sort of feudal slice of the Peloponnese. Very nice. And he, through the 1630s and 1640s, just as the civil war is breaking out, he successfully entrenched himself in his own little fiefdom, west of Patras, fending off all the attempts by the Levant company to withdraw him. Right.

They're saying, come back, hide. They're saying, come back, hide. We know what you're sort, you royalists over there. And eventually he does get expelled. They forced him out. They send this guy called Thomas Bendish. Who's the they? Who fought? The Levant Company.

So the Levant Company, but they can pull him out of that territory. They initially find it very difficult. And when Thomas Bendish comes out to replace him, Hyde sends his genoceries after him. So there's a lot of scuff. But eventually he finds it impossible to continue. And he does go back and he fights in the Civil War. And then, of course, Charles I was executed.

He's on the losing side. Charles II goes over to Paris and Hyde goes with him and then is sent by the future Charles the second in the Interregnum to Istanbul again as his ambassador. So this guy who had first of all worked for the Vak Company, become a Venetian spy, then works for the Ottomans themselves as a Pasha, is sent back to Constantinople, to the court, to the top capy palace. as Charles the Seconds would be ambassador, where, of course, he instantly clashes with his enemy, Thomas Bendish. And there's this long struggle between these two men. Bendish, who's backed by the Levant

company with all its resources and poor old Hyde, who had the resources, but is now on the losing side. And on his own. And on his own. And it all has a very sad ending. He ends up having to take refuge on a French ship in Smyrna Harbour, where there is eventually. a sort of S-A-S-style raid on the ship. And Hyde is snatched from the French ship, kidnapped, taken back to London, and put in the Tower of London, put on trial for treason. It's an extraordinary life. It's a one. There's letters and everything.

I'm longing to write this. So you've got to write it. You've got to write it. But, okay, you've just left it. There was a trial. He's found guilty. Is he done away with? He's found guilty.

And he is beheaded. Oh, he's beenheaded. We mentioned the place where he's beheaded earlier in the podcast. the old exchange in Cornhill on the 4th of March 1650. It is an extraordinary story. You've got to write it. You've got to write it. I have questions.

Can I ask you a question? Go on. I'm no expert on this. I mean, this is stuff I would love to know more about it. You are an expert on the East Indy Company. There's nobody I know who knows more about the Eastern Day Company. No, not at all. But if you've got the same characters, you've got the same trajectories, you've got

actually a fairer wind behind the Levant Company. You know, they haven't got the problems initially. that the East India Company has. Why does it not grow in the same way? And why does it not turn to empire building like the East India Company does? This is the key point. And it's basically, of course, just power. The Mughal Empire grows very, very quickly.

We have Shahjahan building the Taj Mahal. But then Orang Zeb takes over and the whole thing falls apart. Partly it's his bigotry. He alienates. The Mughal empire was always an alliance between the Hindu Rajputs. and the incoming moguls from Central Asia. And as long as the Rajputs and the Hindus are doing okay out of this deal, the thing survives. But when Orang Zeb starts destroying mosques, and it also combines with a major economic crisis,

there's not enough land to give out to new recruits and so on. And there's a lot of rural uprisings. I mean, the story of the collapse of the Mughal Empire is a fantastically complicated and fascinating story, which we can deal with on this podcast in the future. But basically, the whole thing falls apart. The maratas rise up. They start off on the West Coast in these hill forts, but they then break out, they're soon in Surat, they're burning down mogul garrisons. And then Nadea comes.

We talked about this earlier. And the whole of India fractures into a million pieces. And that's the moment that the East India Company, when India is not a huge unitary state, but a fractured series of city states, that's when the East India Company has its moments in India. But that never happens in the Ottoman Empire. Right, right. So they don't fragment. so there's not the space. So although we have this idea of Ottoman decline going on for 300 years,

which is, of course, such as a ridiculous concept, that after Lepanto, it's all downhill all the way, actually the Ottoman Empire keeps its integrity. And as later as Gallipoli, the Ottomans are very successfully keeping British attempts to find a way into the Ottoman Empire at Bay. And as we all know, Sula Bay and the British descent packing, Churchill's first great disaster at Gallipoli,

many years in advance of what we're talking. But the Levant company never has the opportunity to penetrate the autism system. You can buy yourself into it like Henry Hyde did and collaborate with it, like Samson Rowley, Ahasanaga, the Unuch, or Henry Hyde. But because it doesn't fall, because it remains strong and it's militarily able to defy Europe, also because the British support the Ottomans because they don't want the Russians there and they don't want the French there. So it becomes British policy in the 19th century to keep the Ottomans in power, whatever.

And better to have a weak Ottoman Empire than to have the Russians controlling the Bosphorus, as we know today. The Bosphorus is the key to all Russian exports. Exactly. Ironically, it's actually the East India Company that deals the death blow to the Levant Company, although they'd started off as sister enterprises. And in fact, the East Indian Company was the little brother of the Levant Company. Because after the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, when Napoleon lands in Alexandria, defeats the local Ottoman army, and has this plan to go down the

Red Sea and join up with Tippa Sultan in India. That's wrecked when Nelson finds the French fleet in Abu Qaeda Bay and there's this first great victory of Nelson. But after that, what's fascinating is that the East India Company does the same plan in reverse. It sends its sepoys up to Egypt. and you get these Indian sepoys crossing from what's now Suez up to Egypt and defeating the French army that's been dumped by Napoleon left in Egypt. Napoleon's gone back to France and these poor French people are stuck in the desert in Egypt and they're defeated by Indian sepoys. And after that, the Levant company kind of sinks into financial impotence and becomes a sort of, it's just replaced by these syndic companies now so powerful that's not only taken over

all of India, but it's also taken over the Levant Company's territory in Egypt. So the East India Company gobbles up not just the Mughals, but ultimately the Levant Company. Listen, this is so, so fascinating. I'm so grateful, again, to you and your wealth of knowledge. I have an it. I need to scratch. Can I tell you about it? Can I tell me what it is? This whole relationship between Elizabeth and the Ottoman court, I just need to know, I want to know more about it. Because I find, you know, Apart from the tantalizing letter where I just read bits of it over two pods now. I think it's so interesting. But there is a really serious relationship going on.

So I want to know more about that. I also want to know, you know, the missing figures and all this. We've done a lot of blamming and blasting and slicing and dicing on ships. I want to know what's happened to. Where are the women? I mean, you know, we sort of get to hear about them as passive. They've got to be more than that. They've got to be characters.

And you know how obsessed I am with finding women in history. Well, we know who to get in. Can we get her on? Can we get her on the phone? Should we get her on the phone? So we're talking about Bettany Hughes. Bettany Hughes, we're after you. We're on your case. We'd like you on because this cannot be that they're just, you know, cement or background scenery. I want to know more about those. I went to a wonderful festival in the Panoponnese, very near where Henry Hyde was based this October, speaking at the Cardamilly Festival.

Last October. The year has moved on. You have to get with the time. And I heard Bettany on Ottoman women there, and particularly this extraordinary relationship between various Ottoman Sultanas and Elizabeth and these letters which passed between the two. So let's get Bethany in on that next. And I might be able to get her to talk a bit more because I'm also obsessed with Roxalana now. So if you've been listening to the podcast, you know how fascinating she is. Listen, that's all we've got time for this week.

Next week, hopefully, fingers crossed, Bettany. And we've got all sorts of wonders in store for you in this podcast because we've been going through, well, largely William's address book and we've pulled out some stonkers for you for the rest of the series. So do join us again. That's it from me, Anita Arnain. And me, William Drupal.