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528 Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu

2. The Mediterranean Context in the Seventeenth Century

Historiographic tradition places ample emphasis on the fact that
there were no major clashes between the Christian polities and Ot-
toman Empire in the Mediterranean in the period after the Battle of
Lepanto in 1571 . Hence, until the outbreak of the Cretan War (1645-
7
1669), the primary task of the Ottoman fleet was to patrol the Medi-
terranean in order to protect Ottoman coastal settlements and mar-
itime transportation against Christian corsairs. Ottoman efforts to
fend off the raids operated by the Tuscan and Maltese military orders
(St. Stephen and St. John of Jerusalem respectively) stated a reason
for the Ottoman navy to navigate the Levant each year during the
spring and summer . Hence, it was not any great Christian armada
8
at all out sea battles, but rather raids that the Ottoman fleet was
operating against in this period. It would be fair to observe that Ot-
toman navy fought during this era against forces who employed “hit-
and-run” tactics and aimed at capturing as many Muslim slaves as
possible to fill the ranks of their rowers .
9
Another novelty of the period was the increasing interest of Western
and Northern European sailors in the Mediterranean ports. This so-
called “northern invasion” suggested that French, English and Dutch
shipping started to take control of the Mediterranean maritime trade
around the turn of the seventeenth century .
10

7 A. Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580-1615, tr. by Brian Pullan,
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967, p. 16.
8 I. Bostan, Akdeniz’de Korsanlık: Osmanlı Deniz Gücü, in İdris Bostan and Sa-
lih Özbaran (edited by) Baslangıctan XVII. Yuzyılın Sonuna Kadar Turk Denizcilik
Tarihi, Cilt 1, Deniz Kuvvetleri Komutanlığı, 2009, pp. 227-240; D. Panzac, Osmanlı
Donanması (1572-1923), Türkiye Is Bankası KültürYayınları, Istanbul, 2020, pp.
94; P. Fodor, Maltese pirates, Ottoman captives and French traders in the early se-
venteenth-century Mediterranean, in Geza David and Pal Fodor (eds.), Ransom Sla-
very along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries), Brill,
Leiden, 2007, pp. 221-238, particularly p. 222.
9 M. Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the
Mediterranean, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2010, p. 4; M. Gemignani,
The Navies of the Medici: The Florentine Navy and Navy of the Sacred Military Order
of St. Stephen, 1547-1648 in John B. Hattendorf and Richard W. Unger (eds.), War
at Sea in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Boydell: Woodbridge, England, 2002,
pp. 169-185, esp. on pp. 181-182; and M. Acıpınar, Anti-ottoman activities of the
Order of the Knights of St. Stephen during the second half of the 16th century, in
Dejanirah Couto, Feza Gunergun, and Maria Pia Pedani Fabris (eds.), Seapower,
Technology, and Trade: Studies in Turkish Maritime History, Piri Reis University
Publications, Istanbul, 2014, pp. 165-172.
10 M. Greene, Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seven-
teenth Century, «The Past and Present»,174, (2002), pp. 42-71, p. 43.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)