Ottoman History Podcast - The Ottoman Red Sea

Episode Date: August 16, 2016

with Alexis Wickhosted by Susanna Ferguson Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud The body of water now known as the Red Sea lay well within the bounds of the Ottoman Empire's well-protected domains for nearly four centuries. It wasn't until the 19th century, however, that this body of water began to be called or conceived of as "the Red Sea" by either Ottomans or Europeans. In this episode, Professor Alexis Wick argues that we have much to learn about how history (and Ottoman history in particular) "makes its object" by studying not only the emergence of the concept of the Red Sea, Ottoman or otherwise, but also the surprising absence of such a history in previous scholarship. His new book The Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space (University of California Press, 2016) is both a conceptual history of the Red Sea as seen through both Ottoman and European eyes, and a reflection on the methodologies, tropes, and preoccupations of Ottoman history writ large. « Click for More »

¶¶ Hello and welcome to another episode of the Autumn History Podcast. I'm Susie Ferguson, and I'm here today with Professor Alexis Wick, who is an assistant professor of history at the American University of Beirut, where we are broadcasting today. And the topic of our discussion today is Ali's new book, The Red Sea in Search of Lost Space, which is partly about the question of the Ottoman Red Sea. And this book, we're very lucky to have Professor Wick here with us today. This book is hot off the presses from the University of California Press. So Ali, congratulations on the book and thanks for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So as I said to you earlier, I'm really excited to talk about this book because it raises really

a host of issues, not only about the Red Sea and the Ottoman Empire, but also about the methodologies and presumptions of the field that we know and love as Ottoman history. So I'm hoping that we can get to sort of both of those sets of issues in our conversation today. And our listeners can therefore look forward to an episode which will take on theoretical and conceptual issues about our discipline as well as empirical ones. So I thought maybe we could start out by, I just wanted to, you know, I've noticed that in the last sort of maybe five to ten years there's been kind of a spate of books dealing with seas and oceans or bodies of water as sort of their primary frame of analysis or question, you know, thinking about people like N. Sang Ho and Giancarlo Casale, right? And I think, you know, N. Sang Ho is called

this or referred to this as the oceanic turn. So I sensed from the book that you're both within this field and also a critic or perhaps a historian of it. So I'm wondering, you know, if you could just tell us a little bit about, has there been an oceanic turn and does this book fit into that move or does it lie a little bit outside of it? Thanks, that's a great question and it really ties in with the origin of this book, essentially,

which indeed began as an attempt to join the oceanic turn of the historical discipline and write what I thought would be a straightforward history of the Ottoman Red Sea, in part because of the mood of the discipline at large, and Ottoman history in particular, but also because I found it remarkable that the Red Sea, despite its obvious coherence and geological, geographical, historical, did not have its historian. This was the kind of impetus when I first went out to the Ottoman archives in Istanbul to gather material and data to write a history of the Ottoman Red Sea, or the history of the Red Sea in the Ottoman period, in the mold of the post-Bredelian oceanic turn. Right, right. But you of course note in the mold of the post-Bredilian oceanic turn.

Right, right. But you, of course, note in the book that actually, I mean, the question of the sea as an object of analysis has a much longer history than, you know, the field of Ottoman history or even the discipline of history over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about, you know, in the course of your exploration, what did you find about, you know, this sort of category of the sea or the sovereign sea as an object of history? And what is the history of that concept? Well, so, I mean, perhaps I can go backwards. There's kind of two tracks to this, I think.

of two tracks to this, I think. The startling realization that, or observation that I had when I got into the Ottoman archives was that the Ottomans, until the mid-19th century that is, did not call that place the Red Sea and did not have a conception of it as the Red Sea. And that led me to actually reflect on the category of the Red Sea in its specificity, but also the larger category of the sea in the abstract. And what I discovered is that the sea, in fact, is a very important, indeed central element to the philosophy of history, much earlier than we, or than I at least, knew. And indeed it goes back to the disciplinization of history and its institutionalization in the early 19th century. And in particular, it features prominently, for example, in the work of Hegel and in his lectures

on the philosophy of history. There is a sea in general and the Mediterranean, of course, in particular. Right, so the Mediterranean emerges as this kind of Ur-sea or the kind of early, sort of, the concept of the sea kind of takes place around this space. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what the relationship is between the concept of the sea kind of takes place around this space. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what the relationship is

between the concept of the sea and, you know, the sort of becoming of the discipline of history. I mean, how do they relate? Perhaps using Hegel as an example. Well, for Hegel, for example, which is an idea I think that he gets from Adam Smith before him and others, no doubt, the basic principle for Hegel is that, counterintuitively, the sea is not an obstacle or a border, a natural border as it may appear to be, as it may appear to be, but on the contrary, is a connecting link, almost natural vector of communication.

And so for him, the sea should not be conceived of as a space that kind of borders the historical, but indeed one that stimulates historical becomeings. So in a way we could think of Hegel as perhaps like the father of the oceanic turn. I mean that the sea itself should be an object of historical analysis. This is... And in particular the Mediterranean. Yes, this is in a way what I'm trying to argue or what I try to demonstrate in one of the chapters of this book. Right. So then I think, I mean we could turn then to this question of why the Mediterranean in particular. You know, one of the arguments that you, I think, make in the book is that there's kind of a relationship also

between the sort of emergence of Europe as an idea or as a concept and the concept of the sea, in particular the Mediterranean. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about how that comes about. Well, that's also a very good question and it is indeed at the heart of this book. And I think it can go two ways. I mean, one, there's the notion of the Mediterranean

as the fount and the source of European civilization. Right. And this goes back to sort of the Greeks and, you know. The Greeks, the Phoenicians even in an awkward way. So it becomes part of a kind of European. The Mare Nostrum of the Romans. And it becomes appropriated as the exclusive fount of European civilization or Western civilization.

But also the Mediterranean emerges in the early 19th century as an operative geographical and it is in a geographical sense too appropriated to European, to the European space in a way. Right, right. And it strikes me that this is part of also a sort of 19th century recapturing of a classical European civilizational heritage, perhaps, you know, this sort of like going back to the Greeks and the Romans

and naming this space as belonging to Europe. Definitely. But I but I also absolutely. But I also want to insist on the geographical dimension of it and the emergence of the Mediterranean as an organic kind of intuitive hole that makes sense to us and which we've inherited. I mean, we talk about the Mediterranean as a distinctive space. Hegel will appropriate that geographically in his famous argument on the geographical basis of history, will detach, for example, Northern Africa

in its Mediterranean guise from the rest of Africa proper and appropriate it to Europe. Absolutely. Indeed, legitimizing and justifying the French conquest of Algeria as a geographical fact. Natural outcome. Yeah. Interesting.

And similarly with Western Asia, of course, also on the Mediterranean. So maybe we could contrast, you know, this sort of like perhaps the sort of easy affinity between the Mediterranean and an emergent concept of Europe and of history with the way that European thinkers conceived of the Ottoman Empire or the world of Islam or the Arab world in relationship to the sea. Yes, so another element in this configuration, if you want, this discursive formation, and we know that very well that a concept of self is always produced by the appropriation of certain things, but also the distancing of the other. And one of the very longstanding associations has been between Europe and the sea,

the sea in general, maritimity as a concept, but also the Mediterranean Sea in particular. And in parallel, the disassociation of non-Europeans from the maritime. And this is very clear in Hegel, for example, where he defines Africa as being distinctly non-maritime or as being distinguished by its lack of access to the sea. Right. And it is later on elaborated by others with the Islam in general and in the case of a famous geographer, historical geographer, Xavier de Plagnol, who has a book called Islam and the Sea, where he argues that Islam is distinguished by its lack of meritimity. Right, and its association with the desert and the lands, right? Exactly.

And this carried on in the field of Ottoman history too in distinctive ways, as Palmyra Bramit showed now some while ago already. Yeah, well, we can direct our listeners to another episode that we have with Palmyra Bramit on this question. So these questions, I think, about the sort of spatial assumptions that get carried into the production of categories like Islam or Europe I think is a really fruitful sort of track to go down for the researcher So I guess then the next question is it's sort of the perhaps the corollary

Which is you know did the Ottomans have an idea of the sea? In general or the Red Sea in particular Sort of prior to the 19th century? What did that look like? I mean, obviously they were, you described the Red Sea as an Ottoman lake for about roughly four centuries. So clearly they were in the space of the sea. How did they think about it?

Well, that's a good and really difficult question. I would be hesitant to actually conjugate categories such as Ottoman and sea in the abstract, in fact. So let me speak more to the material that I'm familiar with and comfortable with. Of course, the sea has always featured prominently in Ottoman history. I think all Ottoman historians would agree to that instinctively almost and in the case of the Red Sea in particular what I found startling is that as I said before they didn't conceive of it as the Red Sea until the mid 19th century when becomes, when the use of the category Red Sea becomes ubiquitous in the form most often of Bahri Ahmar. Right. But also Qizildanis and others.

Before that, the most common appellation was Bahri Suveys. And what I came to the realization of is that Bahri Souveish is not simply another name for the same place, but indeed may convey a different sense of spatiality, in fact, more largely. One in which, and I think this is very important, the appellation is very important in the sense that it's mediated, it's relational. It goes through a city on the shores. A port city on the shores. That was strategically important to the Ottomans, of course. And equally important is the fact that it wasn't the only name available or mobilized in Ottoman or in Arabic at the time.

There were others, often associated to different shores and different places around the sea. So it's very interesting because, you know, at the outset of our conversation, you said, well, you know, the Red Sea is kind of an obvious object for historical analysis or even contemporary conception because it was an Ottoman lake in that the Ottomans were present on all of its shores. It's relatively geographically, perhaps uniform compared to larger bodies of water. And it was, you know, tightly connected by these kinds of mobilities, you know, trade and travel across it. But then at the same time,

it seems like for the Ottomans, actually, it looked very different. I mean, in that it was a space of sort of overlapping names and also that the names were not about the body of water as a whole. So, you know, you mentioned sort of this concept of an Ottoman spatiality based on this example. What can we say about an Ottoman spatiality, at least in particular to the Red Sea? How

are they conceiving of the space? Well, again, I would be hesitant to call it an Ottoman spatiality in the abstract or to define particular features associating Ottoman-ness or Ottomanity with in the abstract with speciality in the abstract but certainly what I found revealing was this relational or mediated notion of space whereby places are defined by in mediated form as opposed to the kind of objective space of a two-dimensional map, say. So what do you mean by mediated form in that they're defined by particular places that have particular importance? Places, people, texts, discourses, symbols, a variety of ways. And this is not unusual, of course. Indeed, even in the

European tradition that would eventually lead to the institutionalization of geography as a discipline itself before the 19th century, it was not unusual to have a multiplicity of names and a multiplicity of categories to evoke the same in different places. Right, right. And maybe, I mean, we can get a little bit later to sort of how this changes over time, right? Because, you know, in a way, it seems to me like there's a real shift in this with the coming of sort of geographical thinking, shall we say, in the 19th century, or a new kind of geographical thinking. But first, I want to draw out this question of, you know, what did the Ottoman Red Sea look like

by asking you about sort of a methodological question, which is that, you know, I can't say that I've ever seen a chapter in a book on Ottoman history, and this may just, you know, reveal my own ignorance, but that really is based around the close reading of a single document. to reveal my own ignorance, but that really is based around the close reading of a single document. And not only that, but a document that you yourself describe as, you know, I can't remember if it's trivial or something, but it's an everyday document. This is not like the smoking gun of like explaining, you know, the entire arc of your argument or something. So I'm curious how you came to sort of turn to this methodological approach to answer the question of sort of how can we think about the Ottoman Red Sea?

And maybe this goes back to your desire not to generalize about it in the abstract. set for myself was to try to imagine and attempt a writing of history outside of the logic of Eurocentric time and space. And I found it useful for that, at least, to ground myself and anchor myself in what else but an Ottoman document. And, of course, building on scholarship that has demonstrated that the basic difference that we assume or in which disciplinary history grounds itself between the primary source and the secondary source is more complicated than may appear at first.

I sought to explore in a kind of almost trivial document derived from the famous Mahime-e-Masr series, registers in the Ottoman archive, what a close, deep over-reading of that document would yield in an attempt to anchor my writing and my historical imagination in the interstices of this Ottoman scribe's product. Right. I mean, can you tell us a little bit more about this idea of over-reading and sort of connect it maybe to the desire to not differentiate in your reading or your writing between primary and secondary sources in the way that historians often do?

is a term that's been used, along with a number of other cognates, deep reading and slow reading, that derives from a long tradition, actually, of exegesis that sees in a text not a kind of mine of data, but rather an entire kind of textualized cosmos. And that our relationship to reality is mediated through language in its most basic form. So I took the kind of methodological position of applying that type of over-reading

not only to the established canon of high culture, if you want, but also to documents that are usually used to as a as a pool of data and to see what what it would yield yeah and I think you know that's something I encourage all of our Ottomanist readers and other readers as well to to read the book because I think one thing that really knits it together is that you're you bring this sort of the careful, slow reading, kind of multifaceted reading of documents equally to this Ottoman document as to Hegel, as to the kinds of things that are usually taught in a class on theory, right? And I think that that's actually a really provocative and fruitful way of reading.

And to pay attention to sort of the aesthetics of the text and the relationship that the text presumes with the reader in a document from the Ottoman archive, which I think you see a lot of being sort of added up as data to prove a point. I think that's a really powerful way of reading. So I guess my next question is then, so can you tell us about the document? And what does it reveal? And what did you gain from this kind of over-reading of it?

Well, I won't spoil your reading. We want to leave something for people who read the book. No, but the way you describe it is actually exactly it, actually. I found that the actual mode of writing was important, and the rhetoric of the text, which is a basically a fairly straightforward, when you think about it, command to build, to buy ships to, for the provisioning of the hijaz.

Right, from, if I'm not mistaken, 1771, is that right? Something like this? I think so. Yeah, okay. Pre-19th century. anyway. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, definitely. 1777. Oh, okay. But what I found is that the actual text itself, instead of simply formulating itself as a straightforward command, found it necessary to build a case in very, what proved to be quite

extensive and profound ways, though it's not a particularly long text. Its rhetoric and its composition added significant layers, if you want, and depth to the matter at hand, revealing, I think, a particular understanding of the Ottoman Red Sea, in a way. Great. Well, I'll direct our listeners to the chapter to find out more, where you can really find a very detailed and thoughtful reading of this document, which is certainly going to, for me, as someone who's just beginning work in the Adam and Archive and struggling through documents, you know, it really made me much more interested in reading them, actually. So that was, it's really a pleasure to read. So then maybe we can turn to, I think the,

you know, the question of what is the Red Sea or what is the sea is one of the central preoccupations of the book. And the other one, it seems to me, is this question of how history makes its object. And you get at this kind of, and I think this is a really provocative way to begin, is by asking the question of why hasn't there been a history of the Yadmin Red Sea? I mean, you sort of noted that you came to this project having sort of witnessed or thought about the sort of oceanic turn, to this project having sort of witnessed or thought about the sort of oceanic turn maybe as we as we're calling it and then and then noticing that the Red Sea hadn't had its historian um why do you think that is well as you say that was the very straightforward

point of departure for me uh and but instead of simply um acting out on that initial impulse, I began reflecting on whether this absence of the history of the Red Sea, despite its obvious, almost compelling presence, compelling presence didn't reveal certain features and characteristics of our craft and of our discipline and that resulted in one of the chapters of the book that explores the in six theses the absence of the Red Sea, ranging with material that's historiographical, theoretical, but also ultimately linguistic even. Yeah, well, maybe we could talk about, I don't want to give away the whole show, but I'm curious about maybe we could talk about a few of those theses.

We could start with this question of, we talked a little bit at the beginning about the way in which Islam and the Arab world are associated with land and the desert, and Europe becomes associated with water and meritimity. So this is one reason why perhaps the Ottoman Red Sea didn't make it into this sort of the long history of Europeans studying the history of bodies of water. But I'm curious, I mean, you mentioned at another moment in the book that the Ottoman Empire is in an interesting position vis-a-vis Europe, right? the category and sometimes it's the other, but it's not always sort of homogenously located in, you know, the land of Islam and the desert. So I'm curious, you know, I was a question I had

when I was reading, you know, how do you, what do you make of that? I mean, I think there's more than one question in what you just said. But indeed, the Ottomans feature kind of awkwardly in the global hegemonic discourse that rises in the 19th century of particular spaces being historical, i.e. Europe, and other spaces being non-historical, as exemplified by Hegel. And the Ottomans for obvious geographical

or spatial and temporal reasons don't quite fit the continental boundaries. Right, the sort of dichotomy. As possible that nurtured these assumptions concerning the historicity of particular spaces. But also, temporally, it lasts until the 20th century, 1923, which made it more complicated to fit neatly in this packaging. That said, as far as the sea is concerned, there has been a fairly heavy a priori in the field of Ottoman history.

Again, I refer the listeners back to Palmyra Bramit's first book, which understood the essence of the Ottoman Empire as being very land-based. the essence of the Ottoman Empire as being very land-based and therefore reticent to engage with the sea. Of course, there has been, from the start of Ottoman history as a field, there's been work done on precisely the maritime dimension of Ottoman history. work done on precisely the maritime dimension of Ottoman history. But it hasn't kind of shaken sufficiently, at least I think,

this assumption that the Ottoman state was primarily land-based. Interesting. Interesting. I mean, can you say a little bit more about why you think that is? I mean, you know, so what are the paradigms in Ottoman history or the you know the sort of predispositions of the archive or the sort of historiographical dominant historiographical theses which lead us to focus on land rather than on water? Well so in that chapter that we referred to before I make the argument that this has to do with a number of reasons. In the case of the Red Sea in particular,

the absence of the Ottoman Red Sea as a kind of coherent subject of history has derived from a number of reasons. One is the kind of overarching theoretical association of Europe with the sea and of non-Europe being disassociated from the sea. But also there's the dominant model of provisionism, which has played an important role in the direction of Ottoman studies. And many of our listeners will be familiar with the idea of provisionism, but the idea that the sort of driving logic, shall we say,

first of all, that there was a logic to the Ottoman Empire or even an economic logic, and then that that logic was based around provisioning the imperial capital, sort of drawing goods and wealth from the provinces to the center. So how has that sort of shaped our understanding of Ottoman space and trade or in time? It's a complicated question and it's been, again, discussed often and repeatedly

by Ottoman historians. But the point that's of interest here to my argument is the implication of this model for seagoing, if you want. And the assumption that it leads to is that this is one of the reasons, provisionism is one of the reasons for the Ottoman state's reticence to venture out into the sea too much, because the first principle of their logic was supposedly to attract as much, as many goods to the capital and to the army and to the, as opposed to going outwards, exactly.

Yeah, which is, I mean, you know, it brings us back to some of your earlier comments about certain characteristics being associated with Europe, and other characteristics being associated with non-Europe, and, you know, makes us think in interesting ways about, you know, the stories we tell about, you know, why Europe was able to project outward and conquer versus other, you know versus other parts of the world. So I think this has really fascinating implications. Yeah, and that features certainly the notion of this is why the sea features so prominently in its association with Europe

in the early 19th century, especially and beyond, is the fact that the sea is that natural element that leads to the outward turn and the impulse to go. It somehow becomes a sort of, it makes colonial expansion sort of seem like a natural outcome of that geographical space. Yeah, it's really fascinating. It certainly features prominently in Hegel, for example. Yeah, so I'm wondering then, I mean, you know, one of the other things that, you know, I mean, obviously when you go to the Ottoman archive to find out about the Ottomans and the Red Sea, you actually find quite a bit about the space, even though they're not calling it Bahri Ahmar until the 19th century. So, you know, maybe you could talk a little bit about the process of locating these documents in the archive.

How do you navigate something like the Ottoman Archive, which is, you know, documents are very carefully cataloged in certain patterns and not in others. How do you sort of, I mean, it's almost a reading against the grain of the archive in a way, given that this is not a category that you can, you know, there's no folder or file on this space. Yes, absolutely. And I think this think the question of the archive and its place and its importance in Ottoman history is a topic that really deserves further elucidation and research.

But one of the points I try to make also is that the structure of the archives in a way has played a role in structuring the historical narratives that we tell about Ottoman history. And most evidently the kind of national biases that are projected backwards onto the Ottoman past. The most evident example could be Egypt, for example. Right. In that because Egypt has specific archival collections that belong to it, going back long before there was such a thing

as the nation-state of Egypt. Correct. This becomes a sort of obvious object for historical analysis. Correct. And meanwhile, something like, a space like the Red Sea, obviously doesn't receive the same archival treatment.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly, and the critical point here is to insist on the fact that the Ottoman province of Egypt is not, or the Ottoman province of Mesut, is not a kind of prefig not or the Ottoman province of Mesir is not a kind of prefiguration or proto-national

entity that will kind of teleologically emerge into the modern nation state of Egypt but something significantly different and in fact you found a lot of your material

on what we now call the Red Sea in the folders belonging to Egypt. Absolutely, of course. There's much to be found that is not about simply the land space of the modern nation state. And this is one of, I think, the great fascinations of Ottoman history is that, you know, in a way, I think it comes very easily to think about this as a location for a different kind of spatial imagination you know the sort of imperial formation versus you know the state absolutely but then also to recognize as you do that even the imperial archive or you know especially the imperial archive also had its own categories of course of course to to rule is to classify absolutely so I guess maybe then we can turn um to this question of the 19th century Of course, of course, to rule is to classify. Yeah, absolutely.

So I guess maybe then we can turn to this question of the 19th century, which I'm really interested in my own work and sort of, you know, I think a lot of times we see the 19th century as this moment of rupture, of transformation, of sort of an epistemic break. And it seems to me like, you know, you sort of approach this question by doing a close reading of another document that has to deal with this, you know, has to do with the space of the Red Sea. What changes in the 19th century, both for perhaps for Europeans, but also for Ottomans, both in the concept and the sort of, you know, what is happening in the space of the Red Sea?

you know, what is happening in the space of the Red Sea? Good question, of course, and one that dominates, I think, many of our attempts at thinking through the Ottoman history writ large. There's a lot of things going on that feed into what I'm trying to evoke in this book. But one of them, and a very important one, certainly is this epistemic break that you evoke, which happens in the European tradition, and which Michel Foucault, of course, has analyzed superbly.

But which leads to, in what concerns us most closely the institutionalization of history and geography as academic disciplines. Something that they never were before in that form at least. And so with the emergence of the human sciences what I argue argue is that the sea emerges as an organizing concept too, alongside this wider discursive transformation. So as disciplines like history and geography take shape, so too do their objects, right? Spaces like the sea, the land, the nation, the city. The continents, et cetera. objects right spaces like the sea the nation the land the nation the continents etc um what's

happening also is uh the extension of a new form of imperial european imperial power uh notably in the concerning the space that uh that is at hand the extension extension and transformation of British presence in India and in the Indian Ocean more largely. Particularly, and I think, you know, I'm just thinking about this now, like, fascinatingly, because of, or in our sort of traditional historical narrative, because of their dominance over the seas, right? Or at least the sea becomes the kind of um the kind of staging ground for imagining a new kind of you know global regime of power in which you know certain uh certain groups will come and come to places that they haven't necessarily been before in the same way um so maybe yeah we could turn to the to the document again which is i think, another fascinating document,

which is, let me see if I'm not mistaken, it's Sailing Directions for the Red Sea, which is a British manual published in 1841. What is the nature of the document? So it's heralded, if you want, in subsequent literature and even at the time as the first scientific charting of the Red Sea in its plenitude. And something that was, of course, that would come in handy for another development that emerges at the time,

which is steam travel, which found it useful to have these types of manuals. Right. Couched in the sort of new language of science and mapping. Yes, yes, precisely. And participating in that wider nexus of knowledge power that is well beyond the Red Sea as a discrete space. But what I try to show is that this,

though it, of course, paraded itself as simply describing an object that was already there, what, and here I find inspiration from the history of science in particular and science studies more largely, the act of charting the sea creates it as a scientific object and therefore transforms,

intervenes in the world, doesn't just represent the world. So science like history produces its object in a way. Correct. Which, you know, shouldn't, and this is what historians of sciences have demonstrated beautifully, I think, and this is what historians of sciences have, have demonstrated beautifully,

I think, which doesn't prevent, doesn't make it not real or it's not, it's the notion of reality is transformed. Right. So I guess, I mean, and, uh, you know, I hope our listeners will bear with me because this is sort of something I'm turning over my own head, but, um, you know, when I, uh, when I looked at your treatment of this, of this British document, this sort of new scientific manual charting the Red Sea for ships that were presumably coming from Europe, you know, my sense was actually that it's, you know, we talk about this as a moment of rupture, of epistemic break, of a sort of new kind of knowledge slash power that is sort of taking over older notions of space and it's sort of it's you know how people are gonna deal with it but when you actually look at the document it's it seemed like a kind of more complicated story and that they're invoking local knowledge you know there are these like very romantic pictures of you know native Arab sea captains who are charting their way around

coral shoals that science hasn't been able to discover. It seemed actually like there was, rather than a break or an imposition of a new kind of knowledge, there was actually more of a negotiation going on. I wonder if you agree with that characterization or how you think about this notion of what constitutes an epistemic break in this field? Yeah, again, this is a really important question and one that I try to grapple with in that chapter that you're referring to. Because indeed, what was startling to me in that document, and again, it takes a kind of, this is the value of slow deep reading in a way it

allows you to kind of uh penetrate the texture of the of the document in question uh but what struck me is despite the the the claims of um omnipotence of modern science, it still found itself relying and had to verbalize that reliance on native, quote-unquote, native pilots. Right. But also the simple act of seeing as opposed to charting and establishing in something set in stone. and establishing in something set in stone. But, so there are always aporias to the claims of modern science.

And that said, I do think something does change. And maybe what changes is not necessarily the knowledge, the accumulation of knowledge about a place, but its configuration in its relationship to power. So that the charting of the Red Sea was also its domestication as a space, its capturing as a space upon which a new form of power could be imposed. Yeah, that's a really nice way of putting it and something that I think gives us a very

interesting way of thinking about this kind of larger question that's dominated a lot of Ottoman historiography about how do we characterize the relationship between the West, so-called, and the Ottoman Empire in this moment of transformation? And I think that, you know, you're also giving us a sense of a methodology that can help us think a little bit differently about these questions, you know, by reading these texts for their tropes, for their sort of aesthetic effects, for their sort of, the work that they do on the reader and the audience, so the presumed audience, you direct our attention towards these issues about power and knowledge, which I think could really, you know, stand to further enrich the field of Ottoman history. So I think that's a great, that's a great way to close our episode for today, you know, which I think has been, you know,

nominally a reflection on a very specific topic, right? This sort of the nature and the concept of the Red Sea in the sort of four centuries that the Ottomans were present in that space, but it's actually also like the book, which I encourage all of our readers to take a look at, really a reflection on not only the discipline of Ottoman history, but actually the ways that, you know, we think about doing history, particularly in a sort of non-Western space. So, you know, I think that there are issues here that are of interest to historians of all stripes, not just Ottomanists, which of course we strive for. And I really, you know, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to have you. Thanks, Susie. Thanks for having me. So... Pleasure for me too.

Good. That's what we always like to hear. So for those who want to find out more about today's episode, I obviously encourage you to buy the book, Fresh Off the Presses. And in the meantime, obviously encourage you to buy the book fresh off the presses um and in the meantime uh or as well you can also visit us on the web at www.odamanhistorypodcast.com um we'll post a short bibliography uh that we'll come up with for this episode and um we also you know direct you to uh our history our series on the Ottoman history podcast on the history of science um where you know people like Palmer Rebrennman and others take up some of these questions of space and mapping, and also change or rupture in the 19th century and before. And we also have an ongoing series on urban space in the Ottoman Empire, which maybe

takes up these questions of space and spatiality from a different perspective. We also encourage our listeners, as always, to join us on Facebook with your comments and questions. And we thank you for listening. That's all for this episode. Until next time, take care. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you.