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

本研究将探讨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。学者们早就认识到英帝国主义在19世纪和20世纪东地中海的重要性，特别是在埃及和巴勒斯坦（达尔文1981年，沃瑟斯坦1991年），但它在近代早期的总体面貌和表现却被忽视了。就该地区的信贷活动和土地所有权而言，英国的经济利益高度商业化。因此，通过海外商业活动进行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至关重要。这项研究将证明，在18世纪，英国黎凡特商人与奥斯曼人的贸易就是这种情况。本科时，我学习了奥斯曼历史，特别是奥斯曼统治下的塞浦路斯。我还学会了阅读奥斯曼土耳其语。2019年，我在伯明翰大学完成了近代史文学硕士学位，在那里我了解了当前关于历史方法、主要来源方法和近代史的讨论。我还学会了阅读法语和早期现代英语秘书的笔迹（满分100分，我得了92分）。我的硕士论文考察了18世纪早期英国与塞浦路斯的贸易，通过这篇论文，我发现了英国商人在农业用地上的投资，以及对岛上人民的信贷扩张，这使得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。这可能是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18世纪东地中海的英国非正式帝国。进行这样的研究需要英国和奥斯曼历史学家的专家监督。诺丁汉大学的Sheryllynne Haggerty已经证明了商人通过市场整合促进大英帝国商业的重要性，因此将为英国在地中海的商人活动提供重要的视角（Haggerty 2012）。伯明翰大学的克里斯托弗·马基维茨（Christopher Markiewicz）是英国少数几位研究早期现代奥斯曼历史的历史学家之一，他最近通过政治家的生活研究帝国内部一段时期的转型，这对这项研究既重要又鼓舞人心（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).