Empires Die Neuzeit
Graciano Goudreau
The paper analyses the claims to Habsburg subjecthood advanced by the prominent Jewish merchant Haim Camondo following an Ottoman imperial order banishing him from Istanbul to Cyprus in 1782. As the Jewish merchant was the holder of Habsburg and British berats, the Camondo affair came to concern the European ambassadors in Istanbul. Eventually, the merchant and his family were able to escape to Habsburg Trieste with their lives and most of their fortune secured. How the European ambassadors, the Ottoman government, and Haim Camondo translated their understandings of legal belonging and identification to each other during the affair, omitting aspects which did not help their respective cases, sheds further light on notions of imperial subjecthood at a crucial period of transition of these concepts in the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Analysing the web of cultural and political translations in which the Camondo family was caught up also adds to our understanding of trans-imperial families and contributes to the history of (national) identification and subjecthood.
The examination of the Camondo affair also gave us the opportunity to see how different bureaucracies and actors negotiated what it means to be a trans-imperial subject. As there was no clear definition of what made someone a subject of a government, identification often depended on the individual understanding and goals as well as commercial and political benefits of the actors involved. On the other hand, identification was essential for the imperial authorities, who needed their subjects to be legible to tax, conscript, or else provide justice to them. At the end of the eighteenth century, trans-imperial families like the Camondos were capable to resolve the tension between the individual and state identification in their favour, or at least try to do so. The understanding of identity and identification was fluid and open to negotiation between the individual and the state and cultural translation between imperial bureaucracies. In the course of the nineteenth century, disputes over the legal and political boundaries of protgs and subjects now turned citizens would increase and pose new challenges to the status of Jews and other non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 70
The Jewish merchant was one of many in a long history of espionage and information gathering between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires (goston 2007; Yeşil 2011; Grkan 2015, 2017). While these studies address the role of Jews, in particular the Nasi family, in espionage and information gathering, most of the studies dealing with Jewish spies focus on their activities at European courts (Barber 1990; Cassen 2017).
As we know, European embassies sold the berats usually to Ottoman non-Muslim subjects, not to their subjects, who would have already enjoyed all the legal and tax advantages of foreign merchants in the Ottoman Empire.
The journal was written in French, yet bringing another language (besides German, English, and Ottoman Turkish) into the debate over belonging and identification (FHKA NHK Kommerz Lit Akten 1040, Haim Camondo. Triest 11ter April 1788).
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In the early modern composite state, recent scholarship on the subject of empires has called attention to a specific form of political rule that offers great potential for comparative research.1 Historians of the early modern era have already done much to identify the defining traits of these dominions.2 As dynastic agglomerations, composite states were formed of at least two territories which, while united under a single monarch, nonetheless tended to retain a high degree of political, judicial, economic and cultural heterogeneity. In this respect, they differed fundamentally from the modern nation states, classically defined by the triad of people, territory and power.
In some cases, the realms forming these territorial conglomerates were geographically dispersed. The most familiar example is probably the Spanish Empire, which had possessions across the European continent as well as its overseas colonies. Early modern Brandenburg-Prussia, with its territories dispersed from the lower Rhine to the Duchy of Prussia, is also a case in point.3 On the other hand, there were composite states whose component parts existed within a single set of borders, with examples including the Swedish Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the United Kingdom or Piedmont-Savoy.
Drawing on two concrete examples, the following discussion aims to bring together the study of early modern composite states on the one hand and empires on the other, thereby demonstrating the potential of trans-regional and trans-national approaches.4 However, we would be well advised not to make anachronistic comparisons between modern empires and early modern structures of dominion.5 The aspects specific to pre-modern rule must always be borne in mind if misleading analogies are to be avoided. Nor should we forsake conceptual precision: not every composite state was an empire. Considering the two concepts side by side is further complicated by the imprecision attending that of "empire", for it has been observed that "empires have come in many shapes and forms, at many places and in many times".6 In an effort to render empires describable, the field of empire studies uses the demarcation against other forms of rule on the one hand and increasingly performative approaches on the other in order to examine techniques of rule and administration and the actors involved in them.7 Yet there is still no consensus how exactly empires ought to be defined.8
A closely related trans-epochal phenomenon is that of rule being delegated.10 The ruler's claim to exercise governmental authority in each territory of his disparate realm posed a problem for many composite states. For in practice, rule from afar turned out to be far more difficult than when the ruler was permanently present in a given place. One means by which this deficit might be supplied was for the ruler to tour his dominions. This instrument posed severe logistical challenges. Another widespread practice was to instal a deputy (under a title such as steward, viceroy or governor-general) to maintain a permanent presence as the monarch's alter ego, thereby ensuring the exercise and supervision of his rule even in his absence. Since, in the early modern era, authority and rule were widely understood in a personalised sense, establishing such deputies as mediators between the centre of power and local elites was a widely used means of compensating for the lack of a permanent presence of the monarch himself.
In this context the question of large empires and their supposed pacifying effects has to be considered. Of particular importance here is the traditional guiding principle of a universal peace (pax universalis or pax generalis) and the notions associated with it: hegemony or balance, universalism or particularism, hierarchy or equal status.17 These ideals of monarchia universalis and pax generalis were and remain of essential importance in attempts at legitimising large empires.18 The accurate dictum whereby "empires were made and unmade by words as well as deeds"19 can also be applied to the "composite" monarchies of the early modern age. Justifying and legitimising their own actions was everyday business in composite states and was an established part of their self-presentation and their communicative strategies as pursued through printed propaganda.20
Moreover, to reach an adequate understanding of the emergence, maintenance and decline of composite states and empires, it is important to analyse the integrative power of royal symbols, symbolic acts and performative elements.21 Particularly those techniques of rule aiming at centralisation, standardisation and integration made deliberate use of visible signs and communicative acts in order to create trans-territorial connections.
The Holy Roman Empire is not infrequently mentioned in discussions of early modern composite states.22 Yet the concept scarcely does justice to the empire's unique constitutional structure, which was defined by the "basic constellation of the coexistence of and correlation between the majestas personalis of the emperor and the majestas realis of the empire".23 These two poles existed in a state of mutual dependence and restriction. The emperor's power was restricted by the "partial legal autonomy" of the territorial lords no less than by the commitment to consensual cooperation on which the imperial constitution was founded. Both enjoyed supra-national validity, a fact which increased the scope for action on the part of the imperial estates while also imposing limits on what they could do.24
This study will take a closer look at two composite states which hitherto have not been adequately compared: the early modern empires of Sweden and Spain.25 To compare them seems both legitimate and worthwhile, since both were among the great powers of the 17th century whose competing claims to dominance contributed to the exceptionally high density of conflict witnessed by that era.26 Unlike Spain, however, empire scholars have so far largely ignored Sweden. Moreover, both powers are widely held to have seen their position among 18th-century states decline.27 Both were unable to maintain their great power status, and both composite states thus offer striking illustrations of the triadic narrative of the rise, decline and fall of empires.28 Another similarity can be found in the fact that in the early modern age, both Sweden and Spain harked back to their Gothic heritage as a means of articulating and legitimating their far-reaching claims to dominance.29
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