OCTOBER 19–21, 2005 • ISTANBUL, TURKEY

INTRODUCTION

This conference aims to use historically grounded cross-cultural comparisons to explore the intersections between Ottoman and Atlantic (particularly Anglo-American) empires and world views in the early modern era. In this period two of the principal zones of imperial expansion were in the eastern Mediterranean, under the suzerainty of the Ottomans, and around the North Atlantic rim, where European monarchies competed. The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and Columbus’s voyage to the west in 1492 intensified encounters and rivalry between Ottomans and Europeans, and although the timing and particularities of empire formation varied, contacts, knowledge of each other, and desires for each other’s goods and territory influenced their respective political agendas, religious views, mental constructs, economic goals, and cultural values. The meeting has been structured to facilitate methodological and historiographical exchanges among historians of the Atlantic and Ottoman worlds that will shed new light on both fields of inquiry. Andrew Cayton, Miami University of Ohio, Edhem Eldem, Boğaziçi University, and Daniel Goffman, DePaul University, chaired the program committee for this conference. Members of the committee included Allan Gallay, The Ohio State University, Carla Pestana, Miami University of Ohio, Sharon Salinger, University of California, Riverside, and Fredrika J. Teute, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.