Alice-Chardin Paper Outline-Week 6

I. Intro, importance

A. Main gist of paper: Chardin’s work is important because his view of the Ottoman Empire is not of a Catholic Frenchman, loyal to and financially backed by the Catholic monarch. Rather, he is religiously persecuted in his own country as a Huguenot, so his writings don’t carry the fiercely anti-Islamic slant that the writings of a Catholic observer of the same time would.

II. Small context, biography

A. Use Emerson’s article for much of this (entry in the Encyclopedia Iranica), as well as tidbits pulled from other sources that reference him. Also use R.W. Ferrier’s A Journey to Persia (overview and summary of Chardin’s views on many topics, with introductory bio).

B. First journey conducted with his father, in whose footsteps he followed as a jeweler and traveler. Second journey much longer, includes living in Ispahan for six months; it was on this journey that Chardin set out to collect as much information about the Persian culture as possible, with the intention of amassing it in a body of work, though the work wasn’t written until several years later.

C. Contemporaries:

i. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier – also a Huguenot, whose large body of travel writing was immensely popular in France (following his sixth journey) at the time that Chardin was returning from his first journey.

ii. (Others)

III. Relations between France and the Ottoman Empire

A. Main sources here: Thierry Hentsch’s Imagining the Middle East,

B. Political, Economic relations - Ina Baghdiantz McCabe’s Orientalism in early modern France : Eurasian trade, exoticism, and the Ancien Regime is a great secondary source that will supply most of the information and references to other sources for this

C. The beginnings of orientalism

i. Came into full force in the eighteenth century, but began as a phenomenon in the seventeenth century; Chardin and his fellow travelers, traders, and collectors were a part of it

ii. References from McCabe and Edward Said’s Orientalism

D. Cultural changes effected in each by the encounter between France and the Ottoman Empire (brief mention of Muzaffar Alam’s Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries and Fatma Gocek’s East encounters West)

IV. Religion

A. Catholic France and the position of Huguenots: The Edict of Nantes, which protected Protestants like Calvinists and Huguenots in France, was established earlier in the seventeenth century, and repealed in 1685. Upon Chardin’s return from his travels, he found that the atmosphere in France had moved from one of begrudging toleration of Huguenots (albeit exclusion from some spheres of society) to one of persecution and exile, and he left for England.

B. Multi-cultural, multi-religious Ottoman Empire

i. Reference number of converts to each – voluntary European converts to Islam and immigrants to the Orient, but no Easterners converting to Catholicism.

ii. Turks and Persians much more willing to accept converts; their

C. Huguenot presence in England

i. Anti-French sentiment

ii. Chardin exiled to London, where he wrote Voyages

D. Chardin’s travels come right before Huguenots are persecuted in France (repeal of the Edict of Nantes), and his writings are necessarily a product of that break with the Catholic country that exiled him

V. Conclusion

A. Chardin’s account was used by many French philosophers and critics of the regime who used the Ottoman Empire as a mirror with which to critique the French monarchy but never traveled there themselves (notably, Montesquieu). It’s very interesting and telling that his account would be so seminal among critics of the Catholic monarchy.

/*Rather than devote a section to "analysis," quotes from Chardin will be scattered throughout the paper to support the picture of Franco-Ottoman political, economic, and religious relations, and especially in the 'religion' section to show Chardin's view of Islam*/