Beyond Ottoman History: The Caramoussals and the Early Modern Mediterranean

The article is concerned with a class of early modern Ottoman vessels, known as caramoussals. It reveals an ignored aspect of their past by providing evidence for the fact that these ships were owned, traded and used outside the boundaries of the Ottoman world. While historians have so far used available sources to determine the part played by caramoussals in Ottoman economic and military affairs, this paper refers to several neglected sources revealing the acquisition and capture of these vessels by Western Christians in order to reuse them. This explains their presence on the sea routes linking Western Europe to the Ottoman Empire, as well as on the domestic routes of some of the Mediterranean maritime powers, such as Venice. The sources analyzed here emphasize the topic as being relevant not only to Ottoman maritime history, but also to the history of early modern Mediterranean. Thus, they serve as an incentive to a comprehensive study of caramoussals within the framework of Mediterranean maritime history..