John-Paul Ghobrial. The Whispers of Cities

John-Paul Ghobrial's book investigates the movement of information between Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the late seventeenth century. Through a close analysis of an immense range of documents and correspondence left by William Trumbull, English ambassador to Istanbul from 1687 to 1692, as well as newsletters, personal papers, and documents sourced from other individuals, Ghobrial traces how knowledge of the Ottoman world was transmitted and consumed by Europeans, as well as the reverse movement of knowledge about Europeans to the Ottoman world. Although there is now a fairly extensive historiography discussing how knowledge about the Ottoman Empire was consumed by Europeans, such as in the works of Nabil Matar, Daniel Goffman, and Sonia Anderson, little is known about the central topic of this book: how information was acquired at ground level, and how information networks then disseminated that information throughout Europe. In addition, there has been little prior research discussing how Ottoman officials and subjects themselves obtained information about Europe. One of the brilliant aspects of this work is Ghobrial's ability to trace tenuous clues through little-known sources to uncover unofficial sources and even oral dialogue. For example, he has extracted details of private conversations in letters, diaries, and diplomatic reports, on occasion unearthing several accounts of the same exchange. In some instances, these include closely recorded transcripts of what was said. His research also encompasses the knowledge networks of English and French ambassadors, as well as details about less prominent individuals attached to Trumbull's information network. The complexity of the information networks analyzed by Ghobrial is illustrated by two charts, one that details personal networks (p. 110) and another that traces the circulation of information from Istanbul to London (p. 149).

Ancient history · Archaeology · Empire · Historiography · Linguistics · Media studies · Ottoman empire · Political science · Politics · Sociology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies