The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London, and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull

Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman JOHN-PAUL A. GHOBRIAL, The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London, and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Pp. 270. $ 135.00 cloth.In this beautifully crafted book, the author traces the history and fortunes of Sir William Trumbull, English ambassador to the Sublime Porte in the late seventeenth century (1687-1692). He does this in order to explore the question of how newscirculated in the early modern period. Ghobrial first sets the scene by describing the flows of information within and among the various communities of istanbul in the late seventeenth century, as well as in and out of that city. He then sets up the reader with a thorough acquaintance with William Trumbull, his family background, his tendencies, his mission, and the legacies of his writings. Fanning out from this one witness and participant in the Ottoman world, Ghobrial then explains how different groups each had their own sources and habits for gathering and filtering information about the Ottomans as well as about the other European groups represented in the cosmopolitan world of istanbul. Systems for gathering information varied widely from country to country so that, for example, under Colbert's ministry, France had developed a bureaucratic method that enabled the retrieving of information as easily as its filing. England was not yet as systematized, so archives tend to be not in the National Library, but in private family collections, harder to identify, find, and access. Three hundred volumes of Trumbull journals were acquired by the British Library only in the 1990s, and forty of these volumes focus entirely on Trumbull's residency in istanbul, including a detailed diary covering this period. Given the practice at the time of copying down papers, letters, accounts, etc., in order to include them in an official or family record, one begins to appreciate the enormous importance of the position of secretary or scribe in the ambassador's retinue.Ghobrial's study offers the complete profile of an ambassador's qualifications, prior experiences, knowledge base, connections, and even proclivities such that the reader obtains a quite complete portrait of Trumbull the person, member of a distinguished family, educated and distinguished individual, and assiduously devoted servant to the English crown. The reader learns about Trumbull's social circles in istanbul, the knowledge circuits available to him, as well as his privileges and responsibilities as ambassador. We learn about the contacts he had with the other diplomats, with merchants and artists in transit, as well as with slaves, and renegades, and the Ottoman informants on whom his embassy depended for reliable news. Also not negligible were the various Catholic priests and missionaries who enjoyed privileged relations with the Patriarch of the Orthodox faith as well as the Imam of the city, hence useful news sources. We learn more about the daily activities of an ambassador in seventeenth-century istanbul, and finally, as if to test the information circuits already described, the full account(s) of the deposition ofthe Sultan Mehmed IV in 1687. Ghobrial painstakingly traces the movement of this sensational piece of news around istanbul, out of the city, onto the seas, to the major ports, and into the cities of London, Paris and Venice. He demonstrates how it is perfectly plausible to appreciate two radically different "official" accounts of the deposition of the Sultan, depending as they do on the distinct circuits of information used by the English and the French embassies respectively. The news stories in the London Gazette and the Gazette de France are quite different from each other for these very reasons of circuitry. The work of establishing the routes, carriers, and sources of news in late seventeenth-century Europe is painstaking and thorough. It requires careful scholarship, and Ghobrial deserves much credit for his meticulous scholarship. …