British 'informal imperialism' in the Eastern Mediterranean in the long eighteenth century.

这项研究将调查英国商人在奥斯曼帝国的活动如何促成英国在东地中海的非正式帝国。学者们早就认识到19世纪和20世纪英国帝国主义在地中海东部的重要性，特别是在埃及和巴勒斯坦(达尔文1981，瓦瑟斯坦1991)，但它在早期现代时期的总体面貌和表现被忽视了。就该地区的信贷活动和土地所有权而言，英国的经济利益是高度商业化的。因此，通过商人在海外活动的非正式控制手段，对于帮助国家控制商品和促进广泛的市场一体化是至关重要的。这项研究将证明这是18世纪英国黎凡特商人与奥斯曼帝国进行贸易的情况。作为一名本科生，我学习奥斯曼帝国历史，特别是奥斯曼帝国统治下的塞浦路斯。我还学会了阅读奥斯曼土耳其文。我于2019年在伯明翰大学完成了早期现代史文学硕士学位，在那里我了解了目前关于历史方法、原始资料获取方法和早期现代世界历史学的讨论。我还学会了阅读法语和早期的现代英语秘书笔迹(满分100分，我得了92分)。我的硕士论文研究了18世纪初英国与塞浦路斯的贸易，通过这一研究，我发现了英国商人对农业土地的投资和对岛上人民的信贷延伸，使这些商人能够直接获得棉花和丝绸等商业商品，并促进了对贸易商品的一定程度的控制。这可能构成通过贸易和投资建立非正式帝国的过程之一。(Gotteland 2017)。事实上，对英国商人在奥斯曼帝国内部活动的纵向研究将揭示英国在18世纪东地中海的非正式帝国。要进行这样的研究，需要来自英国和奥斯曼帝国历史学家的专家监督。诺丁汉大学的Sheryllynne Haggerty展示了商人在通过市场一体化促进大英帝国商业方面的重要性，因此将为英国在地中海的商人活动提供一个至关重要的视角(Haggerty，2012)。伯明翰大学的Christopher Markiewicz是英国为数不多的研究奥斯曼帝国近代历史的历史学家之一，他最近关于奥斯曼帝国内部通过房地产商的生活所经历的转型时期的研究对这项研究具有重要意义和启发作用(Markiewicz，2019)。

This study will investigate how the activities of British merchants in the Ottoman Empire contributed to British informal empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. Scholars have long recognised the significance of British imperialism in the eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly inEgypt and Palestine (Darwin 1981, Wasserstein 1991), yet its general complexion and expression in the early modern period has been neglected. British economic interests were highly commercial in terms of credit activities and landownership in the region. Therefore, informal means of control through merchantactivities abroad were vital for helping state control over commercial goods and facilitating far-flung market integration. This study will demonstrate that this was the case for the English Levant merchants trading with the Ottomans in the eighteenth century.As an undergraduate, I studied Ottoman history, particularly Cyprus under Ottoman rule. I also learned to read Ottoman Turkish. I completed a Master of Arts in Early Modern History at the University of Birmingham in 2019, where I learned about current discussions on historical methods, approaches to primary sources, and the historiography of early modern world. I also learned to read French and early modern English secretary handwriting (I received 92 out of 100). My MA dissertation examined English commerce with Cyprus in the early eighteenth century, through which I uncovered English merchant investments in agricultural lands and credit extension to the island's people which enabled these merchants to acquire direct access to commercial goods such as cotton and silk and facilitated a certain degree of control over the traded goods. This might constitute one of the processes for establishing informal empire through trade and investments. (Gotteland 2017). Indeed, a longitudinal study of English merchants' activities within the Ottoman Empire will reveal British informal empire in the eighteenth-century Eastern Mediterranean.Undertaking such research requires expert supervisions from British and Ottoman historians. Sheryllynne Haggerty at the University of Nottingham has demonstrated the importance of traders in facilitating the commerce of the British Empire through market integration and would therefore contribute a vitalperspective on British merchant activity in the Mediterranean (Haggerty 2012). Christopher Markiewicz at the University of Birmingham is one of the few historians in the UK expert in early modern Ottoman history and his recent work on a period of transformation within the Empire through the life of astatesmen are both significant and inspiring for this study (Markiewicz 2019).