Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681

Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681

The history of Anglo-Turkish relations as a whole still remains to be writtena strange and not very creditable fact, considering the part which the Ottoman Empire has played in our commercial and political career since the age of Queen Elizabeth. This monograph deals only with a fraction of a vast subjectthe English Embassy to Turkey from 1674 to 1681, though for the sake of intelligibility it glances at the years which preceded and followed that septennium. Critics, I hope, will not do my work the injustice of thinking that it is not serious because, perhaps, it is not very dull. A piece of historical narrative is a sort of superior novel: it has its heroes and its villains, its vicissitudes, its catastrophes: all of which are eminently capable of administering amusement even to the most seriously minded. Only the amusement must be founded in truth; and the discovery of truth requires painstaking industry. This condition I have endeavoured to fulfil to the utmost of my ability. Every bit of the story here related is the result of careful research among original and,[viii] for the most part, hitherto unexploited documentschiefly the Manuscripts preserved at the Public Record Office (Foreign Archives, Turkey and Levant Company) and the Coventry Papers in the possession of the Marquis of Bath, by whose courtesy I was able to make use of them. It is impossible to convey the impression given by seventeenth-century despatches in any words but their own: nothing can be more striking to modern eyes and ears than their language, their spelling, their grammar and punctuation, or want of it. The handwriting itself betrays not only the writers normal character, but often the particular emotions which swayed him at the moment of writing: as we peruse those ancient sheets of paperextraordinarily fresh most of them, with sometimes the sand still clinging to the dry inkwe see the person who penned those lines, the very way in which he held his quill. The same facts, extracted, paraphrased, and printed, no longer arouse the same sense of reality, nor grip the imagination in the same way as they do when presented in their native garb. I have attempted to reproduce something of this effect by transcribing as frequently and fully as it is convenient the original utterances in all the individuality and quaintness which belong to them. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 64131
Author: Abbott, G. F. (George Frederick)
Release Date: Dec 25, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English