The Mediterranean mirror : Italo-Ottoman relations in an age of transition, 1856-1871

Abstract

After the implosion of the Holy Alliance, the 1860s marked a period of transition towards the new imperialist diplomacy of Berlin. In this decade, the global diffusion of the principles of European international law produced an ‘overflowing’ of diplomatic culture among non-European elites. This cultural flourishing produced a multitude of ‘diplomatic modernities’ in every political entity involved in this first wave of cultural globalisation. Such a cultural environment created a common sensibility in the tactical behaviour of the diplomatic agents involved in diplomatic negotiations and in their sense of belonging to a global civilisation with universal aspirations. The comparison between the Ottoman and Italian cases is fundamental to highlight this transformation in international relations, and to bring out the similarities between these two actors: the former generally considered a European power; the latter an Eastern one. Despite their divergent economic paths towards modern development, after the Crimean War, both the Ottoman sultanate and the Kingdom of Sardinia were included in the Concert of the Great Powers. In this way, the Mediterranean space was included into the modernisation dynamics of the continental European system. Italo-Ottoman relations and the conflicts between these two powers in the nineteenth century had a peculiar nature, one that this work seeks to highlight. Accordingly, this thesis aims to analyse the history of the Eastern Question from a new perspective. First of all, it focuses on the Eastern Mediterranean, an area that has often been marginalised in histories of the nineteenth century, in comparison with the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. The purpose of this less Eurocentric analysis is to offer a less teleological narration of this significant and complex phenomenon. The adoption of a global perspective when studying Italo-Ottoman diplomatic relations is fundamental to this endeavour. From a methodological point of view, the Italo-Ottoman diplomatic relations are analysed using a global perspective thanks to the relevant number of sources from the main European capitals, supplied by the Ottoman and Italian archives.