Cover not available
Part of
Towards an Atlas of the History of Interpreting: Voices from around the world
Edited by Lucía Ruiz Rosendo and Jesús Baigorri-Jalón
[Benjamins Translation Library 159] 2023
► pp. 212–237

Chapter 9
Domesticating dragomans

Affect and textual circulations between the hyperlocal and the trans-imperial

 | University of Toronto, Canada
In the summer of 1660 the Venetian bailate (diplomatic residency in Istanbul) was shaken by an attempted work stoppage involving its dragomans (diplomatic translator-interpreters). This essay situates the aborted work stoppage in relation to dragomans’ deep embedding in Istanbul’s courtly society, their trans-imperial relational resources, and Venetian efforts to mold dragomans into loyal political subjects. It further considers how the disparate archival traces of this singular event underscore tensions between loyalty, secrecy, and dragomans’ writerly habitus that often breached the bailate’s affective and mediatized boundaries. In conclusion, the essay considers how dragomans’ subjectivities and practices of mediation were shaped through emergent technologies of governmentality, such as the controlled circulation of particular knowledge and bodies inside and outside the space of the bailate.
Keywords: dragomans, Venice, Istanbul, early modern diplomacy, secrecy, loyalty, patronage, circulatory regimes, trans-imperial subjects
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Dragomans and diplomacy in early modern Istanbul
  • Rival dynasties
  • Profession, family, household
  • Controlled publicity
  • Official version(ing)
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Works cited
Published online: 22 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.159.09rot
References (32)
Works cited
Archival series consulted
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Venice
Bailo a Costantinopoli
Collegio, Risposte di dentro
Inquisitori di Stato
Senato, Dispacci Costantinopoli
Printed works
Arnauld, Antoine, and Pierre Nicole. 1674. La perpétuité de la foy de l’Eglise catholique touchant l’Eucharistie, vol. 3. Paris: Charles Savreux.Google Scholar
Baigorri-Jalón, Jesús, and Anne Barr. 2010. “Christian Balliu. Les confidents du sérail: les interprètes français à l’époque classique.” Interpreting 12 (1): 105–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barkey, Karen. 2013. “Aspects of Legal Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire.” In Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850, ed by Lauren Benton, and Richard J. Ross, 81–108. New York: New York University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brajović, Saša, and Jelena Erdeljan. 2015. “Praying with the Senses: Examples of Icon Devotion and the Sensory Experience in Medieval and Early Modern Balkans.” Zograf 39: 57–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broomhall, Susan, and Jacqueline van Gent. eds. 2011. Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Cavallo, Sandra. 2007. Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy: Identities, Families and Masculinities. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Cerutti, Simona. 1995. “Giustizia e località a Torino in età moderna: Una ricerca in corso.” Quaderni storici 89: 445–86. [URL]Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1968. “A Trade Union in Sixteenth-Century France.” The Economic History Review 19 (1): 48–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardina, Edvilijo. 1993. “La famiglia capodistriana dei Tarsia.” In Antonio Tarsia, 1643–1722, Koper-Capodistria, 350 let, ed. by Pokrajinski muzej Koper, 11–24. Pokrajinski muzej Koper: Zveza kulturnih organizacij Koper.Google Scholar
Ghobrial, John-Paul A. 2014. The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London, and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hastings, Adi, and Paul Manning. 2004. “Introduction: Acts of Alterity.” Language & Communication 24 (4): 291–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Infelise, Mario. 2002. Prima dei giornali: alle origini della pubblica informazione, secoli XVI e XVII. Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
Köse, Metin Ziya. 2011. “Osmanlı Galata’sında tercüman olmak: Bir Venedik tercümanının terekesi ve borçları (1672).” Turkish Studies 6 (3): 1065–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lesure, Michel. 1983. “Michel Cernovic ‘explorator Secretus’ à Constantenople (1556–1563).” Turcica 15: 127–54.Google Scholar
Luca, Cristian. 2003. “Veneziani, levantini e romeni fra prassi politiche e interessi mercantili nell’Europa sud-orientale tra cinque e seicento.” In Romania e Romània: Lingua e cultura romena di fronte all’occidente, ed. by Teresa Ferro, 243–260. Udine: Forum.Google Scholar
. 2008. “Il bailaggio veneto di Costantinopoli nel cinque-seicento: i dragomanni provenienti dalle famiglie Brutti, Borisi e Grillo.” In Dacoromano-Italica: Studi e ricerche sui rapporti italo-romeni nei secoli XVI–XVIII, 1–158. Cluj-Napoca: Accademia Romena Centro di Studi Transilvani.Google Scholar
. 2013. “Notes on the Family Wealth and Career Progression of Cristoforo Tarsia and His Sons, Dragomans of the Venetian Embassy in Constantinople (1618–1716).” Acta Histriae 21: 39–56. [URL]Google Scholar
Malcolm, Noel. 2015. Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Nussdorfer, Laurie. 2015. “Masculine Hierarchies in Roman Ecclesiastical Households.” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire 22 (4): 620–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paz, Alejandro I. 2009 “The Circulation of ‘Chisme’ and ‘Rumor’: Gossip, Evidentiality, and Authority in the Perspective of Latino Labor Migrants in Israel.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19, no. 1: 117–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paz, Alejandro I. 2018. Latinos in Israel: Language and Unexpected Citizenship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petitjean, Johann. 2013. L’intelligence des choses: une histoire de l’information entre Italie et Méditerranée (XVIe–XVIIe siècles). Rome: BEFAR.Google Scholar
Philliou, Christine. 2009. “Communities on the Verge: Unraveling the Phanariot Ascendancy in Ottoman Governance.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (1): 151–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Andrea, Birgit Lang, and Anthony Pym. 2019. What Is Translation History? A Trust-Based Approach. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, E. Natalie. 2020. “Accounting for Gifts: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Material Circulations in Venetian-Ottoman Diplomacy.” In Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400–1700. Essays in Honour of Benjamin Arbel, ed. by. Georg Christ, and Franz-Julius Morche, 414–454. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Gelder, Maartje, and Filippo de Vivo. 2022. “Papering Over Protest: Contentious Politics and Archival Suppression in Early Modern Venice.” Past & Present. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Voulgaropoulou, Margarita. 2019. “From Domestic Devotion to the Church Altar: Venerating Icons in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Adriatic.” Religions 10 (390): 1–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar