The Interviewees
Interview with Chloe Metz - August 2023
1- The title of your talk and your earlier thesis is somewhat ‘Dickensian’, drawing on C19th travellers’ comments such as ‘faraway, gaslit world’, clearly deliberately chosen to convey an atmosphere. Did this choice come from the sense of a degree of Westerness in these Levantine ports, yet differences hard for outsiders to put their finger on?
a. The title of my thesis and talk “‘A Thoroughly Mongrel Race’ in a ‘Faraway, Gaslit World’: Levantine Liminality and Legacy in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Port Cities” is a nod to two of my sources. In her 1858 travelogue to Constantinople entitled In and Around Stamboul, Englishwoman Emilia Hornby wrote, “The Levantines are a thoroughly mongrel race, despising the two dominant races, and yet possessing all their faults without anything that is good in either.” This anecdote embodies the kind of scientific racism that permeated Western interactions with the “other” at this time. The Levantines were seen as “mogrel” (both Ottoman/Asian and European) while at the same time, “despising the two dominant races,” that is, neither Ottoman/Asian nor European. “Mongrel” means “undefinable”, but it also carries a negative, derogatory connotation. From the Western gaze of an English tourist visiting Constantinople, the Levantines had ostensibly bastardized and mongrelized Western customs and aesthetics. Hornby’s words are insulting, but true to her and her time. My use of Hornby’s words for my title is meant to be ironic.
b. The second part of the title “faraway, gaslit world” alludes to a quote from André Aciman’s 1994 memoir Out of Egypt. The memoir details several generations of Aciman’s Jewish franco-italio-turkish Levantine family from their time in Turkey, to their expulsion from Turkey to Egypt and finally their expulsion from Egypt. On page 172, Aciman’s uncle asks him which country he's from. He doesn’t know. So his uncle redirects and asks, “which country are you a citizen of?” Aciman admits that he never thought about it before (so typically Levantine of a response), but then replies “France.” His family laughs at his error. Aciman then reflects on his family’s roots in Turkey and writes, “Everyone in the family had talked almost daily about a faraway, gaslit world called Turkey.” I just loved that line. For Aciman’s family—lost Levantines now living in Alexandria and on the verge of being expelled from Egypt for their “foreignness” —the Turkey they once knew was far gone, a gaslit world.
c. “Gaslighting” was also Merriam-Webster’s 2022 word of the year. The former cosmopolitan nature of Ottoman port cities now seemed to be a fever dream, and few would believe what it used to be, hence a world that is both “faraway” and “gaslit.” I think it’s particularly apt the way Aciman calls Turkey a “gaslit world,” denied and gaslit by hyper Turkish nationalists.
2- There were other ports in the 19th century that functioned like Western enclaves growing prosperous from a ‘native hinterland’ such as Shanghai, Algiers, Singapore etc. Yet these other locations were all within Western colonial spheres protected by Western troops. In the Levant the troops and police were the Ottomans, though always a light touch. Do you think or did you find evidence in the literature that this reduced or removed the potential hostility of the indigenous populations to the European merchants and was perhaps part of that success story, as cooperation was never seen as collaboration?
a. Having Ottomans (as opposed to Levantines and other European expats) police the Levantines probably reduced some hostility, but any possible reduction was likely off-set by Ottoman resentment: resentment at the fact that the Levantines (thanks to protections from their local consulates) could avoid civic responsibility, like serving in the Ottoman military and police. In his Political Testament, statesman Âli Paşa details the problematic disparities between Levantines and Ottomans over their civil and military service engagement. Because the Levantines could avoid military conscription and serving as civil servants, this created a situation in which Muslim Ottomans were predominantly ill-paid civil servants and/or soldiers dying from contagious diseases in military barracks while non-Muslims (i.e., Levantines) were in activities that brought them wealth, where they were “prospering, multiplying, and taking over”, according to the Paşa. Generational wealth among Levantines then continued to exacerbate these inequalities.
b. I also want to add that the consulates were a force in and of themselves (with their own sort of “army”: dragomans). The dragomans were often sent by the consulates to deal with issues, like for instance a case in which local Ottoman authorities might wish to search and enter the home of a Levantine foreign national. Dragomans were the greatest peacekeepers and reduced potential hostility between the indigenous populations and European merchants.
c. A note on the word “indigenous”: Your use of the term “indigenous” here and my reiteration of the term points to predominantly Muslim Ottoman Turkish people. However, “indigenous” is a loaded term that neither means “firstness” nor “aboriginality” 100% of the time. Its meaning has been neither solidified nor stabilized in modern discourse. The label “indigenous” also often assumes colonization, which I don’t want to suggest here. I use “indigenous” to mean the people who arrived on Ottoman soil before the Levantines and Europeans, but after the Byzantines. Ottomans (Turkish tribes) are technically not “indigenous” because they came to the soil after conquering the Byzantine Empire. However, Muslim Ottomans are considered more “indigenous” and more “native” to the Ottoman Empire than the Levantines. To complicate matters further, Roman Catholic emigrants (les latins and les francs), merchants, and dragomans from Genoa and Venice (i.e., the first/precursors to the “Levantines”) settled in the Eastern Mediterranean from around 1200 to 1500 AD, around the time the Turkish tribes came and founded the Ottoman Empire. So then who is indigenous after all? Are some communities more indigenous than others?
3- Your research is principally based on the French diplomatic archives at Nantes and clearly they show different facets of the French population and their protégé subjects in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. How far back do the records go and how ‘granular’ are the records, in terms of names and details of people petitioning or being referred to? Did your research suggest other themes that others might usefully pursue through these records?
a. My research primarily focuses on mid-to-late 19th-century documents. From what I’ve seen, Nantes’ documents go as far back as 1528 (potentially even earlier but not to my knowledge). The records get more granular and detailed over time as record keeping, implementation and maintenance of capitulation protections became more streamlined. Nantes has entire books of just names of protégés (protected French nationals) including profession, birthplace, related family, and my favorite part: their signatures. It’s interesting to see how people were signing their names (or if they used a stamp to sign instead of writing, which might suggest illiteracy) and in what alphabet/language they wrote their name in. There are vast swaths of names in Nantes’ protected nationals lists.
b. Oliver Jens Schmitt, who wrote “Levantiner” (in German), which was translated into French, (English translation of title: “Levantines: Life-worlds and identities of an ethno-confessional group in the Ottoman Empire during the ‘long 19th century’”) makes use of documents from the Nantes archives. Most of his documents are earlier than the documents I consulted. His bibliography is substantial and helpful.
4- Clearly some of the French population in Pera and elsewhere married into other communities such as the Greeks resident there. How were legal complications such as inheritance handled and interpreted by the Ottomans when one party died or the offspring were seeking ownership?
a. This is a great question for future research. In terms of the legal landscape, if a Levantine was a protected national, they likely had legal extraterritoriality and thus their own courts, as opposed to Ottoman courts.
b. It was predominantly Greek women (as opposed to men) marrying into Levantine families. Nationality was very gendered and followed the status of the husband. So Greek women were enveloped by the Levantine umbrella (and the legal privileges and extraterritoriality that went along with being Levantine/protected European nationals).
c. The consulates would get involved in legal complications and contest Ottoman interpretation of inheritance disputes. Letters between lawyers, families, and consulates regarding legal disputes are numerous in the Nantes archives. For example, a lot of the naturalization requests (or requests to become a protégé/protected French national) I looked at dealt with inheritance issues and Levantines wanting to change nationality because they were about to come into some windfall from a deceased family member.
d. See Nantes Archives 1871-1956 Registre des Actes divers 167PO/A/108 for inheritance issues and legal disputes more broadly.
5- Over time a number of French merchants and protégés sought to alter their citizenship. It is easy to understand why an Ottoman subject would want to obtain French citizenship with all the capitulation privileges it brought. Do the archives illuminate the various reasons given why such individuals would wish to leave French nationality and do we get a sense of prejudices of the French officials seeing such commercially (?) driven loyalties in a dim light?
a. There were fewer individuals leaving French nationality to become full Ottoman citizens and more seeking to gain French nationality. However, there is one individual I came across who sought to leave his French nationality behind. His name was Saleh Legrand, né Louis Joseph Legrand. Saleh was born in northern France (Canton of Bohain). At the time of his letter, he had converted to Islam seven years ago (1891), changed his name to Saleh, and was now seeking Ottoman nationality. For Saleh, it seems being Muslim was incompatible with being French. Alternatively, Saleh may have been just an Orientalist who wanted to become Muslim and Ottoman. There might also be something else going on here. A Muslim woman is only allowed to marry a Muslim man, so perhaps Saleh had fallen in love with a Muslim Ottoman woman. Or perhaps, Saleh had committed crimes while being French and wanted to change nationality to gain amnesty for previous crimes. It’s always difficult to discern sincerity versus insincerity (i.e., economically or politically motivated decisions) when it comes to altering one’s nationality. But that’s the fun in reading these naturalization requests/letters! For more about Saleh, consult Nantes Archives (1865-1898 Ambassadeur Outrey 166PO/E/952).
b. There is at least one case of a protected French national switching to Italian protection (see 166PO/E/498 1862-1900 Protection française Nantes archives).
c. No doubt a lot of those seeking to obtain French nationality did so for commercially driven motives. In terms of prejudices of French officials receiving the naturalization requests (of predominantly individuals asking for French nationality/protection), it’s difficult to know or say what the officials decided or how they responded to these letters. Could a French official tell if an individual was bluffing or just playing to what he/she thought the French wanted to hear? Could an official tell when an individual was sincere or fake? These questions go back to what the French were defining as criteria for nationality at this time (a ripe question for intellectual historians who study -isms, like nationalism).
6- The French government over many centuries saw itself as the protector of the Catholics of the Levant, in part competition with their arch enemy the Habsburgs. Do we see in the archives a conscious effort to maintain that religiously driven sense of primacy in the protection of their ‘flock’ and do we see complications when dealing with the registration of ‘mixed’ marriages with Protestant or Orthodox men?
a. I think there are public and private reasons for French involvement in the Levant. The French government used religion as a façade/public reason for getting involved in the Levant and exercising greater power to “protect” the Catholics in the region and its own nationals. But the French government’s private reason for doing that was more economic. There’s a document contained in a microfilm from the Nantes archives in 1898 avril-juin l’arrivée, which states, « en ce cas, le gouvernement français devrait faire cette franche déclaration : ‘Nous sommes, il est vrai, catholiques de nom, mais en réalité nous sommes athées et, partant, nous nous soucions fort peu de favoriser l’eclat de la souverainete pontificale et le développement du catholisme. De nos yeux, il n’est pas un intérêt religieux mais un pur intérêt politique qui représente le protectorat de l’église catholique en orient ». This roughly translates to, “in this case, the French government should make this honest declaration: ‘We are, it’s true, Catholics in name, but in reality. we are atheists, and thus, we care very little to promote the radiance of the papal sovereignty and the development of Catholicism. In our eyes, it’s not a religious interest but a pure political interest that represents the protectorate of the Catholic Church in the East.” Emphasis on “we care very little to promote […] the development of Catholicism.”
b. The answer to this question is to look at lists of individuals given protégé status in the Nantes archives. The lists I looked at were 1860s onwards, see 1862- 1900 protection française 166PO/E/498. These lists were not entirely Catholic. There’s an entire list of Jewish French protégés as well as Greek dragoman protégés (presumably they were Greek Orthodox Christians not Catholics) who were granted protection from the French government. Notably, these lists were not separated by Catholic vs. Protestant. Rather, the list was separated by protégés, protégés juifs (Jewish protected nationals), and Employés du Consulat (French consulate employees). So from this, it looks like the religiously driven sense of primacy in protecting French Catholics had been greatly diminished by this time (1860s). But who knows, probably Jews and Greek Orthodox had a harder time gaining French protégé status than Catholics did.
7- The French revolution was clearly a major rupture with the old regime and no doubt there was collateral damage to trade and standing in the Ottoman Empire for officials and the population. Do the archives show how the community tried to pick up the pieces and restore old trading rights and routes?
a. The French Revolution and aftermaths is a bit outside my time realm/expertise; however, there is plenty of late 18th-century and early 19th-century materials in the Nantes archives (including correspondence from de Choiseul-Gouffier between 1789-july 170, august 1790-september 1792; as well as documents pertaining to military and commerce involving Marie Louis Descorches, Jean-Baptiste Annibal Aubert du Bayet, Claude Carra Saint-Cyr, Raymond de Verninac Saint-Maur, among others). There are many documents from the Chambers of Commerce in Constantinople and Marseille, as well as “bourses traités de commerce, tarif de douanes, conventions commerciales, monopoles, douanes,” etc.
b. There is also a great article by Ali Budak entitled “The French Revolution’s Gift to the Ottomans: The Newspaper, The Emergence of Turkish Media.” Levantine newspapers can also indicate trends and changes in trade, particularly The Levant Times and Shipping Gazette and Oriental Advertiser-Le Moniteur Oriental.
8- Do the archives you consulted include personal memoirs or Ambassadorial / Consul diaries or were they all within the dry remit of reports and exchanges? Despite this do you get a sense in the writings of officials living a ‘gilded lifestyle’ of Ottoman receptions, embassy balls etc. so a ‘juicy posting’ for any aspiring diplomat?
I didn’t come across any diaries or personal memoirs. Levantine newspapers tend to include more personal writings (like op-eds), and their advertisements indicate the more personal, opulent and lived experiences of Levantines (such as ads for various balls or outdoor summer operas). In terms of the “gilded lifestyle,” there is definitely evidence of this in the Nantes archives. I’m thinking of a letter I found written by a dragoman that was written entirely in glittery gold ink, see 1865-1898 Ambassadeur Outrey 166PO/E/952.
9- Dragomans were clearly vital roles in all the various diplomatic missions of Western powers vying for influence and greater trade with the Ottomans through the centuries. Do the archives demonstrate how young prospective dragomans were picked, from which communities and what the training included and for how long?
Both La Courneuve and Nantes have documents on young dragomans, including names of students, information about the exams they took, syllabi and schedules of what they did during the school day, report cards, etc. One of the schools mentioned in the archives was L'École des Jeunes de Langues à Paris. Another school mentioned was Établissement D’Éducation Des P.P. de la résurrection de N. S. J. C. à Adrinople. There is definitely more materials about young prospective dragomans; these were just documents I brushed up against. See for example La Courneuve “Jeunes de langues 1863-1875 50MD_171”.
10- Do the archives show how criminals and ‘embarrassing behaviour’ by members of the French nation in the Levant were dealt with? Did the Ottomans stay out of that system as much as possible unless a prominent Moslem merchant or official was involved in any entanglement / victim?
a. There’s a whole box on les frères enkserdjis (Simon and Artine Enkserdjis) involving debt, the arrest of insolvent foreigners, and bankruptcy. The case involved the Sultan and eventually went to court. The Enskerdjis were officials of the Imperial Palace in charge of lavish purchases for the Sultan (the supposed real debtor). This case and other criminal cases in the archives would be a great topic for future researchers.
b. There are documents about the Sultan wanting to create a treaty of extradition with France for criminals and anarchists in the Empire (see Nantes microfilm 1897 sep-dec au depart). There are also documents pertaining to arrests of foreigners by Ottoman police, criminal procedures, indictments, judicial requests, tribunal acts, and convict registrations.
11- Clearly one of the unspoken duties of diplomats was gathering intelligence, particularly on the activities of rival European powers in the region. Do the records shed any light on what we might call spying?
I’m not sure, but I know that there’s a document in Nantes called “Divulgation des secrets militaires, espionnage, traîtrise 1914” (166PO/E/592), which might shed light on potential spying.
12- Did the French officials in Constantinople and elsewhere try to ‘codify’ their citizens in terms of listing them according to their profession, addresses, number of children etc. If so do we see changes in numbers and the nature of the community over time?
Yes, protégés (protected nationals) were codified by place of birth, married/unmarried, number of children + relatives, profession, religion, and dragoman/non-dragoman. See Nantes archives 167PO/A/122 (1856-1872 Matriculation), 167PO/A/235 (1872-1876 Protégés Français), 166PO/E/498 (1862-1900 protection française), among others.
13- Do the records go up to the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the inevitable upheaval in the status of the French Levantines it brought and discussion of possible solutions to those who might have had only a fragile protégé status?
Yes
14- Do the archives also include printed material such as contemporary French newspapers printed in the Levant? What sort of information were you able to glean from these concerning Levantine identity as clearly the major readership for these was that population?
a. Yes the archives include newspapers printed in the Levant including Le Yildiz L’Étoile Orientale, Journal de Constantinople, La Turquie, Le Stamboul, The Levant Herald and Eastern Express, Al Saadat d’Alexandrie, Journal de Philippopoli, Moniteur Oriental, as well as newspapers printed elsewhere that circulated in the Levant like Le Temps, Chronique des Tribunaux, Le XIXe Siècle, La Paix, Le Figaro, Journal de Marseille, La Gazette d’Allemagne, La Liberté, etc.
b. There are also documents from Nicolas Nicolaides, the newspaper owner of La Turquie (see Nantes archives 1865-1897 presse et censure 166PO/E/392) and documents relating to Edouard Chester owner of Le Stamboul (see 1891-1906 presse 166PO/E/396).
c. If interested in French newspapers printed in the Levant, a researcher’s best bet is to consult SALT Research and Gallica.
15- There were a number of minor diplomatic crises between the Ottomans and the French government such as the Lorando / Tubini affair of 1910 that brought the French navy to apply pressure on the indebted Ottoman Government. Do these twists also have entries in the archives you consulted?
a. Yes, there is a whole box in the Nantes archives on the Lorando/Tubini affair, see 1881-1903 Reclamation contre gouvernement ottoman/affair Lorando 166PO/E/539. I decided not to use these documents for my research, but there is a ton in this box including letters between diplomats, letters from the Ottoman Imperial Bank to Etienne and Jean Lorando, lists of finances, newspaper clippings about creditors, among much more.
16- Would you argue that the Levantine notion of it being a cultural identity can survive both outside the Ottoman region for a generation or so and also in a more shallow sense in Republican Turkey and other successor states?
a. This is a schema I made to understand multi-hyphenated Levantine identity. Evidently, Levantine identity goes far beyond ethnicity and religion. You are right to call Levantine identity a cultural identity. Retaining European contact, sensibilities, and languages, while also participating in Ottoman culture and local languages, the Levantines baffle neat categorization.
b. I would argue that being Levantine was a socio-economic identity; that is, both cultural and economic. It was cultural in the sense of community, cosmopolitanism, polyglotism, and heritage. Being Levantine was about which circles you socialized in and in what language (i.e., French primarily, along with other European languages), which parties you attended, who you danced with, and who you yachted with. It was about where you dined, who you dined with, where you lived, who you married, etc. It was a sense of being both an insider and outsider in the Ottoman port cities.
c. But being Levantine was also an economic identity, more specifically it was about proximity to commerce and trade. Being Levantine meant personal, familial or ancestral involvement in the Levant trade. It was about where you shopped, what you bought, what you sold. It also meant knowing French, as that was the lingua franca of the commercial world (like English is today). (Here is a passage from André Aciman’s memoir Out of Egypt that illustrates the ways in which French operated as a bridge for a diverse and polyglot Levantine community: “[Ladino] was a language of loosened neckties, unbuttoned shirts, and overused slippers, a language as intimated, as natural, and as necessary as the odor of one’s sheets, of one’s closets, of one’s cooking. They returned to it after speaking French, with the gratified relief of left-handed people who, once in private, are no longer forced to do things with their right”, p. 56). Even though French was not the mother tongue/first language of many Levantines, it was still the lingua franca¬—the common language among Levantines whose native languages were different.
d. Being Levantine was more a matter of contact/participation: participating in certain social activities (e.g., seeing the opera at Théâtre Naum and going to parties at the European consulates), participating in certain economic activities (e.g.., shopping at Carlmann & Blumberg and Au Bon Marché in Pera), participating in certain social circles (e.g., hanging out with cosmopolitan polyglots and intellectuals at François Vallaury’s café), and participating in certain traditions (e.g., going on pilgrimages to Ephesus).
e. Although Levantines were present during the Ottoman Empire’s founding in their earlier forms as latins, francs, and dragomans, the Levantines reached their pinnacle in terms of population and contributions during the late nineteenth century. Through centuries of intermarriage and transculturation, the Levantines continually reinvented themselves, defining and redefining themselves in relation to others. As political philosopher Davide Tarizzo notes, “Every new political discourse gives birth to a new ‘people.’” From “latins”, to “francs”, to “dragomans”, to “protégés” and foreign nationals, to “Levantine” the exonym (an outsider name and derogatory insult coined by European tourists), to “Levantine” the endonym (an insider name and label used internally by the Levantine community), the Levantine community evolved tremendously. Many contemporary reductionist historians simply want to label the Levantines as “European.” Meanwhile, Levantine descendants push the label to a new meaning as they proudly push to uncover Levantine history and maintain the Levantine community’s distinctness from modern post-nationalist categories. While the Levantine label evolves in meaning and usage, I conclude that the Levantines were and are a people in a constant state of translation and reinvention.
f. Descendants of Levantines may call themselves Levantines, but it wouldn’t mean the same thing as it did pre-WWI. Being “Levantine” today means instilling new meaning into the Levantine label. There is a great book entitled “Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation” in which the philosopher Jonathan Lear lays out his theory of radical hope and how one group (the Crow Nation) can continue to exist and re-invent themselves even though the community’s way of life and everything that once defined it no longer exist. I do not in any way believe what happened to the Crow Nation and what happened to the Levantines is comparable, but both communities experienced a level of cultural devastation and erasure of their way of life. To be Crow today requires a radical hope—pivoting one’s mindset to reimagine all the good and all the new ways to be Crow after the genocide of Native Americans. We can use Lear’s radical hope theory similarly with the Levantines. To be Levantine today requires a radical hope—an insistence on cosmopolitanism and polyglotism, even though all the structures (i.e., the Ottoman Empire, dragomans, a Europe and Ottoman Empire intact and unbroken by the devastating forces of hyper nationalism and two world wars) that once facilitated the Levantine era no longer exist.
Interview conducted by Craig Encer
Group photo of pupils, parents and the guiding priest Padre Giulio (on the left) around 1970s at the Kalabaka Catholic summer recreational school near Izmir that functioned till the early 1980s, one of the important Levantine cultural institutions that forstered a tight community spirit.
Additional source information: Inventaire Sommaire: Mémoires Et Documents, Turquie; Affaires diverses politiques: Etats des Français à l’étranger, 1833-1872; Papiers d’agents - Archives privées - microfilms; Répertoire numérique des registres rapatriés, 1599 - 1973; Répertoire Numérique Des Archives Rapatriées De L’ambassade De France A Constantinople, Série C-1830-1913; Répertoire Numérique Des Archives Rapatriées De L’ambassade De France À Constantinople; Répertoire Numérique Des Archives Rapatriées De L’ambassade De France À Constantinople, Xixe S.-1914; Répertoire Numérique Des Archives Rapatriées De L’ambassade De France À Constantinople; Repertoire Numerique Des Archives Rapatriees De L’ambassade De France A Constantinople Série A 1528-1820; Archives rapatriées de l’ambassade de France a Constantinople série B 1792-1830: Dropbox link of wider inventory of documents: