The Ottoman Mirror
What early-modern Europeans saw in the empire to the east
You probably know the story of the Dutch tulip mania. It’s a high-school-economics-class staple: a perfect example of uncontrolled speculation, of the way the boom leads to the inevitable bust.
But not as many people know the Dutch got hooked on tulip bulbs in the first place. Tulips aren’t native to Europe; they originally came from the Ottoman Empire. A Frenchman named Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Holy Roman Emperor’s representative in Constantinople, brought them back in the 1550s along with a wealth of other knowledge about the huge empire to the east of Europe.
Busbecq traveled all over the Ottoman Empire, collecting plants, coins, and artifacts. He reported back about previously unknown (to Europeans) Roman temples and obscure languages. He wrote a series of letters describing what he saw; these were later compiled into a book called, straightforwardly, Turkish Letters:
Busbecq found much to admire about Turkish society; his tone is one of fascination. In his eyes, …
