MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISC THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO UNDER THE TURK IN CONSTANTINOPLE A RECORD OF SIR JOHN FINCH’S EMBASSY 1674-1681 BY G. F. ABBOTT AUTHOR OF “TURKEY IN TRANSITION,” “TURKEY, GREECE AND THE GREAT POWERS,” ETC. WITH A FOREWORD BY VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1920 COPYRIGHT...

By LORD BRYCE Whoever discovers a dark bypath of history and opens it up by careful research renders a service to scholars. If he has also the gift of presenting the results of his investigation in a form agreeable to the general reader who has a taste for novelties in other books as well as in novels, he earns a double meed of thanks. Mr. Abbott has not only had the good fortune to find such a bypath and the acuteness to note its interest, but is also the possessor of a talent enabling him to m

[ Ellis Papers at the British Museum: Add. MSS. 28937 , pp. 167-9.] Instructions for our Trusty and wellbeloved Servant S r John Finch Knt going in Quality of our Amb r. to reside at y e Court of y e Grand Seig r. Given at y e Court at Whitehall the ________ 1672. 1. You shall embarque your self upon y e ship designed to carry you, and dispose thereof according to y e instruc͡ons of our most Dear Brother the Duke of York, our High Adm ll. of England. 2. Being arriued at Constantinople you shall

Two such instances may be quoted as affording an instructive parallel to the present case. In 1661 the Algerines complained “That the ship the Goodwill , bound, with the persons and goods of several Turkish passengers from Tunis to Smyrna, meeting with some Maltese galleys, without any dispute or contest, resigned them up all with their estates into the hands of the Grand Signor’s enemies. That another ship, the Angel , had done the like to the Venetian fleet and rather sought excuses to cover t

When Macaulay, in his Third Chapter, depicted the English squire of the 17th century as looking down upon those of his neighbours who “were so unfortunate as to be the great grandsons of aldermen,” he attributed to a past age prejudices derived from his own. A little serious investigation might have taught him better. The Earl of Danby, afterwards Marquis of Caermarthen (1680) and Duke of Leeds (1694), was the great grandson of an alderman—the clothworker Sir Edward Osborne, one of the founders

This outrageous specimen of oppressive impudence, like other abuses, can be traced up to a very respectable origin—to one of those feelings which do honour to human nature. It is still the custom among the Turks, after a banquet, to give the guests a present which, in the quaint language of Oriental courtesy, they style dishe parassi —“teeth-money”—a slight return for the trouble the guest gave himself in partaking of their hospitality. But what was originally a delicate token of respectful affe

SIR DANIEL HARVEY TO LORD ARLINGTON [ S.P. Turkey , 19] ( Extract ) Pera of Constantinople , Jan. 31, 1669 [-70] . I was received by y e Grand Segnior according to y e custome of this Court, except in a condescention w ch I am told this Monarch does not accustome himself to, for after my Memorial was read by my Druggerman, containing a congratulation for his success in Candy & recom͡ending to his consideration y e senceritie of my Master’s frendshipe by such instances as ware proper to d

SIR JOHN FINCH TO SECRETARY COVENTRY [ Coventry Papers ] Caragas near Adrianople , September the 9th, 1675 . This done, I thought no other difficulty could remain; but when they were wrote out and the Gran Sig rs seale to them, and I appointed to come to receive them from the Vizir, asking whether the Gran Sig rs Hattesheriffe or Hand was to them, I was answerd’ No. I said then, I could not receive them: Here I send to the Rais Affendi who desires me to desist for it was impossible to be done, f

Sir John Chardin, writing from first-hand knowledge, described our export trade with Turkey at that time as amounting to between £500,000 and £600,000 a year (a quarter of the total export trade of the kingdom), and estimated the annual exportation of cloth, the staple commodity of England, at about 20,000 pieces [ Travels into Persia , London, 1691, pp. 4-6]. These statements are corroborated by an official Account which the Levant Company delivered to the Lords Commissioners for Trade in 1703.

That the Levant Company did not consider the result of Sir John’s expedition to Adrianople at all commensurate with the expenditure it had entailed may be seen from its Instructions to subsequent ambassadors: not to go out of Constantinople for the presentation of their Credentials, but to await there the return of the Court, and to forbear renewing the Capitulations, unless the juncture of affairs should happen to prove so favourable that some new Articles for the security and advancement of tr

To avoid similar complications, the Levant Company instructed the Ambassadors: “Many Evils have ensued upon the marriage of Englishmen with the Subjects of the Grand Signor. We therefore pray your Lordship to discourage and discountenance that practice, it being prejudiciall to themselves as well as to the publique” [see Instructions to Chandos, Trumbull, Hussey, Pagett, Sutton— Register, S.P. Levant Company , 145]. But the practice continued. In 1758 the Grand Vizir Raghib Pasha re-opened the w

Dudley North’s genius is proved and his place in the history of Political Economy established by an anonymous pamphlet which he published shortly before his death under the title Discourses upon Trade, principally directed to the cases of the Interest, Coinage, Clipping and Encrease of Money . This great little treatise, suppressed by the Government of William III. in 1691, was reprinted, from one of the very few copies extant, in 1856 by J. R. M’Culloch among his Early English Tracts on Commerc