East Meets West - Banking, Commerce and Investment in the Ottoman Empire (Studies in Banking and Financial History)

By: Monica Pohle Fraser

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Synopsis: Bringing together cultural, economic and social historians from across Europe and beyond, this volume offers a consideration from a number of perspectives of the principal forces that further integrated the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe during the first century of industrialisation. The essays not only review and analyse the commercial, financial and monetary factors, negative as well as positive, that bore upon the region's initial stages of modern transformation, but also provide a ready introduction to major aspects of the economy and society of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Beginning with two chapters providing the context to the development of Ottoman relations with Western Europe up to the second half of the nineteenth century, the collection then moves on to explore more specific questions of trade links, the impact of improved transportation and communications, the development and changing nature of Ottoman finance and banking, as well as European investment in Turkey. The outcome is a broad ranging consideration of how all these issues played a fundamental role in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Turkey as a modern state with links to both east and west. The essays in this collection derive from the EABFH colloquium held in the Imperial Mint, Istanbul, in October 1999.