Dr Michael Talbot’s research ranges across the early modern Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East and Mediterranean. Rarely for an English-language scholar, he uses sources not only in English, but also Ottoman Turkish, Italian, French, Hebrew and Arabic, and uses innovative methodologies around visual and material sources and ephemera, across four main areas
The research primarily focuses upon diplomatic practice, commercial interactions, and cultural exchanges between the British and the Ottomans between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Unlike other studies of Ottoman-British relations, Dr Talbot has moved well beyond just English-language sources, to highlight the intimate relationship between commerce, finance, and diplomatic practice; and foreground the experiences of British and Ottoman merchants and important changes in legal regimes on land and at sea.
This research has contributed to the renaissance of Ottoman maritime history through work on Ottoman ideas of political and legal control at sea, with a particular focus on Ottoman responses to domestic and international piracy . This research demonstrates that, far from being a passive actor with the growth of increasing domestic and international violence in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ottomans instituted extensive naval and legal reforms to assert their maritime sovereignty.
Dr Talbot has gone on to contribute to a number of public engagement activities, including being BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, podcasting, schools sessions, and specialist media consultancy, including for Netflix. His expertise in the history of the Ottoman empire and post-empire Middle East has resulted in people of all ages engaging with aspects of Ottoman history, language and sources, often for the first time.
“Building and enhancing public understanding of the histories of the Ottoman Empire and Middle East” was carried out by Dr Michael Talbot.
