AN OTTOMAN GLOBAL MOMENT: WAR OF SECOND COALITION IN THE LEVANT
Kahraman Sakul
Georgetown Univ, 2009
ABSTRACT
This dissertation aims to place the Ottoman Empire within its proper context in the Napoleonic Age and calls for a recognition of the crucial role of the Sublime Porte in the War of Second Coalition (1798-1802). The Ottoman-Russian joint naval expedition (1798-1800) to the Ionian Islands under the French occupation provides the framework for an examination of the Ottoman willingness to join the European system of alliance in the Napoleonic age which brought the victory against France in the Levant in the War of Second Coalition (1798-1802). Collections of the Ottoman Archives and Topkapı Palace Archives in Istanbul as well as various chronicles and treatises in Turkish supply most of the primary sources for this dissertation. Appendices, charts and maps are provided to make the findings on the expedition, finance and logistics more readable.
The body of the dissertation is divided into nine chapters discussing in order the global setting and domestic situation prior to the forming of the second coalition, the Adriatic expedition, its financial and logistical aspects with the ensuing socio-economic problems in the Morea, the Sublime Porte’s relations with its protectorate – The Republic of Seven United Islands, and finally the post-war diplomacy.
This study demonstrates through the examination of the negotiations that led to the alliance with Russia and Britain (1799) –the Triple Alliance-, Ottoman-Russian Convention (1800), and the Treaty of Paris (1802) that the Ottomans were well-informed on European affairs and flexible as well as realistic enough to form an alliance with the traditional enemy Russia against the traditional friend France. This study also offers a unique opportunity to observe the way in which the Ottomans could wage war on the cheap and still mobilize its resources effectively owing to the reforms of Selim III and local notables –petty as well as great ayans such as Tepedelenli Ali of Yanya- in a time when the friend and the foe believed that the Sublime Porte was on the brink of collapse.
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553132/sakulKahraman.pdf?sequence=1