Family of Empires: The Pisanis in the Ottoman and British Empires.

Abstract

Operating at the intersections of diplomacy, the Ottoman Empire and Europe, and the Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Istanbul, the Pisanis were a prolific family of dragomans with many members employed by the British Embassy in Istanbul in the nineteenth century. These non-Muslim interpreters and translators were intermediaries who facilitated diplomatic relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, and acted as brokers that bridged two worlds. Apart from the world of diplomacy, the Pisanis were a well-connected family whose members excelled in Istanbul’s Levantine community, and participated in a wide range of enterprises. But by virtue of family members’ occupation as dragomans, extra-territorial legal protection gained by their employment at the embassy, and membership in the Levantine community, the Pisanis, and dragomans in general, are often considered to be actors that were “in-between” empires. This dissertation revises that narrative and argues that the Pisanis were anything but in-between empires, and were rather firmly embedded in both the Ottoman Empire and British Empire. To do so, this study reconstructs their family history and social networks, their public activities in their roles as dragomans and their private activities as non-Muslim Ottoman subjects to examine how members of this family operated within Ottoman and British imperial spaces. In discussing the lives of the Pisanis, this dissertation intervenes in scholarly debates on non-Muslims living and operating in the Ottoman Empire by providing insight from the bottom up on the opportunities provided for this family, and what they did with them. It charts the tactics used to conserve their position in the embassy, the difference in self-representations of their identity among family members, and their use of British and Ottoman institutions to shape their lives within these empires.