Literature on Ottoman Diplomatic History From Beginning to the Tanzimat Era
The literature on Ottoman diplomatic history is very extensive. This paper aims to outline the development of Ottoman diplomacy, to highlight its problems and to review important works on Ottoman diplomatic history. This topic has attracted the attention of many academics, especially in the last 30 years. There has been enormous increase in the number of academic studies based on Ottoman and foreign archival documents, ambassadorial accounts, reports of travelers and private correspondences of the diplomatic corps. Although a number of issues concerning this subject still need to be elaborated by the researchers, a lot of books, articles, theses and translations have been published on the issue. Within the scope of this research, a huge literature on Ottoman diplomatic history has come out starting with the 15th century. Unfortunately, mostly foreigners have so far evaluated the sources and literature on this subject, but some of these works could not be reached for certain reasons for the time being. Thus, this article only reveals the main problems of the studies in the field. This paper chronically approaches, and also reviews the leading studies with critical standpoints. Finally a fundamental bibliography of Ottoman diplomatic history is attached to the end of this paper.
M. ALAADDİN YALÇINKAYA
