Palmira Brummett F'09

ACLS Fellowship Program 2009
Professor
Department: History
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
The Ottoman Adriatic, c. 1500-1700

The early modern Adriatic constituted a complex regional zone exploited by the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Venetian empires. It was a place of intense ethnic and communal exchange, marked by hybrid identities, intermarriage, and conversion. Contemporary historiography tends to treat the Adriatic as a Venetian lake into which the Ottomans (viewed as an Asian, Islamic, land-based military power) made periodic incursions. Using Ottoman-Turkish and European language sources (narrative, documentary, and visual), this study examines the Adriatic zone as an integral part of the Ottoman empire, a system for the diffusion of knowledge, and a coherent regional zone linked through coastal and inland fortresses which were sites of both chronic conflict and chronic accommodation.