In my first blog entry, I want to tell you a story that has not received much attention from scholars who study Anglo-Turkish relationships in the Interregnum. While the several phases of the Civil War in England (1642-1651) divided the country into pro-monarchic and pro-parliamentarian factions, each of which were also divisive within themselves about how to conduct political reform, the resonances of this dividedness could be felt overseas, too. For instance, in the earlier phases of the Civil War, Sir Sackville Crowe, who had been appointed by Charles I (r. 1625-1649) as the English ambassador to İstanbul in 1633, naturally sided with the royalists. This, however, alienated the Levant Company and its merchants who not only openly supported the Parliamentarian forces but faced seizure of their goods and imprisonment for doing so. The merchants of the Levant Company informed the House of Commons of Crowe’s capricious behaviour as early as 1642 which culminated in their request to withdraw Crowe from office in 1646. The tense relations and sabre-rattling between the ambassador and the Levant Company continued well until the end of the First Civil War in 1646 and upon the victorious Parliament’s appointment, Sir Thomas Bendysh set sail in 1647 towards the Sublime Porte to take over the post as the new ambassador of the Parliamentarian forces.

While Bendysh was also a royalist at first, his imprisonment in the Tower of London, the confiscation of his lands and his eventual release from prison in 1644, after paying a heavy fine of £1,000, must have been strong reasons for why he turned against his previous allegiance and was appointed as the Parliamentarian ambassador to İstanbul at all. Although Bendysh had arrived in İstanbul in the same year of his appointment, the news of the victory of the Parliamentarian forces did not arrive until several months after his arrival, which was among the reasons why Crowe and the Ottomans refused to acknowledge Bendysh as the legitimate ambassador.

Just imagine how awkward Bendysh must have felt, not being able to prove for several months that he was in fact representing England. The very question of the authority of both diplomats and how they shouldered each other to gain attendance to the Ottoman court was thus an extension of the tensions of monarchic absolutism and republicanism back in England. A similar amazement must have been on the Turkish side for this diplomatic diplopia, which is why the court waited until it could verify the legitimacy of Bendysh’s claim about the political circumstances in England. When news arrived about the success of the Parliamentarian forces in the First Civil War, Bendysh was accepted as the ambassador, upon which Sir Sackville Crowe was forced to depart from the Ottoman realm to face a long term of imprisonment, a heavier fine of £2,000 and eventual release as late as 1658. All in all, the domestic political circumstances in England in 1647 were extended into the international realm in a period when the Ottomans experienced similar political turmoil, especially after the failed coup d’état by Kösem Sultan in the same year.

While most of the studies in the West about this awkward start to Anglo-Turkish relationships in the Interregnum period just make use of Western archives like the National Archives, the British Library, or the Bodleian Library, only a few Turkish scholars, including İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, have mentioned it through the scarce evidence that still needs to be dug out from the yet to be transcribed documents found in the Turkish archives about the period. I strongly believe that there is a need for further research that combines both archival materials to have a better view of how early modern Anglo-Turkish exchanges might have been perceived respectively in these very tumultuous times in which England and the Ottomans faced a similar transition period.

Image: Ambassador Cornelis Calkoen at his Audience with Sultan Ahmed III, available from Wikipedia.