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An Evaluation of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha's Foreign Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2024
Abstract
Historiographical tradition has tended to view the Köprülü-era foreign policy as one of conscious expansion, fueled by religious fervor. The descriptions of the seventeenth-century Ottoman chroniclers to that effect influenced the researchers of the twenty-first-century, too. However, in the reports of European diplomatic representatives active in Istanbul at the time, we see that the expansionary policy in the Köprülü period was not actually a pre-planned phenomenon with religious motivations; it was more likely that the grand viziers responded to the urgent problems arising from the political conjuncture of the period. To be more precise, this study argues that events such as the Érsekújvár Expedition (1663), the Siege of Candia (1667-69), and the Campaign of Kamieniec (1672), which all took place during the reign of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet Pasha (r. 1661-76), could not be explained by religious motivations alone. Instead, the present study argues that a better way to understand Fazıl Ahmed Pasha's foreign policy is interpreting it from an international relations perspective through the neoclassical realist parameters of the individual, state structure, and international system.
Keywords
- Type
- Special Focus Roundtable: Unveiling Uncharted Realms: The Ottoman Grand Vizierate in Comparative Perspective and the Köprülü Dynasty Revisited
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America
References
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