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Book review: Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul , written by E. Natalie Rothman

Book review: Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul , written by... Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul , Ithaca, ny and London: Cornell University Press, 2012, 323 pp. isbn 978-0-801-44907-9. $45.00. Nathalie Rothman’s work focuses on culture brokers and boundary-making in early modern Venice. In this original work, which relies on an extensive body of primary sources and takes sides in several theoretical debates, Rothman demonstrates how trans-imperial subjects—i.e. emigrés from Venetian colonies and the frontier regions, redeemed slaves returning from the Ottoman Empire, converts, merchants, and diplomats who travelled between the Venetian and Ottoman Empires—brokered linguistic, religious, and geopolitical boundaries across Venetian and Ottoman domains. In an effort to reflect their role in the “ongoing process of boundary maintenance,” she underlines their intermediation in articulating imperial categories of difference and deciding who was local and foreign, Muslim and Christian, Turk and Venetian, Levantine and European, as well as what was East and West in early modern Venice. Her work helps us understand how notions of membership and belonging were negotiated and recreated as well as how boundaries, the historicity of which has been forgotten over time, emerged in the early modern Mediterranean—the multiculturality of which has long been celebrated, somewhat anachronistically according to the author. The http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Early Modern History Brill

Book review: Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul , written by E. Natalie Rothman

Gürkan, Emrah Safa
Journal of Early Modern History , Volume 18 (3): 313 – Mar 21, 2014
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Book Reviews
ISSN
1385-3783
eISSN
1570-0658
DOI
10.1163/15700658-12342407
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul , Ithaca, ny and London: Cornell University Press, 2012, 323 pp. isbn 978-0-801-44907-9. $45.00. Nathalie Rothman’s work focuses on culture brokers and boundary-making in early modern Venice. In this original work, which relies on an extensive body of primary sources and takes sides in several theoretical debates, Rothman demonstrates how trans-imperial subjects—i.e. emigrés from Venetian colonies and the frontier regions, redeemed slaves returning from the Ottoman Empire, converts, merchants, and diplomats who travelled between the Venetian and Ottoman Empires—brokered linguistic, religious, and geopolitical boundaries across Venetian and Ottoman domains. In an effort to reflect their role in the “ongoing process of boundary maintenance,” she underlines their intermediation in articulating imperial categories of difference and deciding who was local and foreign, Muslim and Christian, Turk and Venetian, Levantine and European, as well as what was East and West in early modern Venice. Her work helps us understand how notions of membership and belonging were negotiated and recreated as well as how boundaries, the historicity of which has been forgotten over time, emerged in the early modern Mediterranean—the multiculturality of which has long been celebrated, somewhat anachronistically according to the author. The

Journal

Journal of Early Modern History – Brill

Published: Mar 21, 2014

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