His Bailo’s Kapudan: Conversion, Tangled Loyalties and Hasan Veneziano Between Istanbul and Venice (1588-1591)

Abstract

This article concentrates on the relationship between the Ottoman Grand Admiral Uluc Hasan Pasha (Hasan Veneziano), a Venetian renegade, and the Venetian ambassadors (baili) in Istanbul. Based on documentation from Venetian and Spanish archives, it analyzes how two compatriot’s shared background shaped diplomatic negotiations and their personal relationship. First, it scrutinizes several aspects of this mutually beneficent cooperation in the higher echelons of cross-confessional diplomacy. Secondly, it studies Hasan’s vacillation between the Serenissima and the Ottoman Empire, his past and present, his patria and his new homeland. It examines how this Ottoman convert resolved his inner conflicts and what kind of a role his tangled loyalties played in diplomatic negotiations. Finally, by comparing and contrasting a number of similar cross-confessional diplomatic negotiations between Christian rulers and renegade pashas, it aims to analyze the Europeans’ different attitude towards Ottoman renegades and illustrate how divergences in imperial projects and the renegades’ social background led the Habsburgs and the Venetians employ different arguments and use a different vocabulary while negotiating with their former subjects.