How Favourable towards Turkey are the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu?

    In the ODNB entry for Elizabeth Craven, written by Katherine Turner, we find the assertion that the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu written in the early 18th century, Letters of Lady M--y W-----y M--------e Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, offer a "favourable" account of Turkey, unlike Craven's later travelogue A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople, published in 1789.

   Turner's essay "From Classical to Imperial: Changing Visions of Turkey in the Eighteenth Century" in Stephen H. Clarke, ed, Travel Writing and Empire (Zed books, 1999), also states that she offers an "attractive vision of Turkey" and that her letters are "highly favourable". The essay presents Craven's travelogue as the antithesis of Montagu's, and insists that Craven is far more critical.

    The opinion that Montagu is favourable towards the Turkish empire is undoubtedly meant to be a favourable judgement in itself, in line with an attitude, prevalent in academic circles, that it is a virtue for a European traveller to laud the Turkish empire and culture, and a sin to find any fault with it. Being Euro-centric or worse, Anglo-centric, is disapproved of in academia where it seems to be fashionable to defend Turkish imperialism and take every opportunity to palliate it, while regarding Western European imperialism as unpardonable. In Turner's binary, Montagu is the goodie and Craven is the baddie.

   I would like to challenge the assumption that  Montagu's travel letters actually are favourable towards the Turkish empire. I don't think a careful reading will bear this out. In fact, Montagu, like the later traveller, Baron François de Tott, was sharply critical of the Turkish culture and the oppressive nature of the regime. To be sure, she describes the city of Constantinople as very splendid, large, wealthy and full of luxury, but that is only a tiny fraction of her observations. I am fully aware that many spurious letters were added to her work in a later edition (hence Craven's belief that they were all spurious) so I will quote from an edition of 1763-64 .

   In Letter XXVIII she writes: "The government here is entirely in the hands of the army. The Grand Signior with all his absolute power is as much a slave as any of his subjects and trembles at a Janizary's frown. Here is, indeed, a much greater appearance of subjection than amongst us: a minister of state is not spoke to but upon the knee. Should a reflection on his conduct be dropt in a coffee house (for they have spies every where) the house would be raz'd to the ground and perhaps the whole company put to the torture. No huzzaing mobs, senseless pamphlets and tavern disputes about politics, a consequential ill that freedom draws, a bad effect but from a noble cause! None of our harmless calling names! but when a minister here displeases the people, in three hours time he is dragged even from his master's arms. They cut off his hands, head and feet and throw them before the palace gate ...while the Sultan to whom they all profess an unlimited adoration sits trembling in his apartment and dare neither defend nor revenge his favorite."
    The key word here is "freedom". In Great Britain there is freedom to criticize the monarch and his ministers because he is not an absolute ruler, and the aristocracy, who really hold power, need not fear him. But in Turkey, the people and the Sultan are both slaves. The nobles live in terror of spies, torture, and having their houses burnt down, while the Sultan lives in terror of his own army and of the savage, ignorant mob.

  A more complete condemnation could hardly be written. As for the justice system, "False witnesses are much cheaper than in Christendom" she writes cheerfully in Letter XLII.

   Invited to the homes of Turkish ladies, Montagu has a lot to say about their luxury and lavish hospitality, and notes their numerous slaves, including the obligatory "black  eunuchs". This is only favourable if we take an indulgent view of slavery, racism, and physical mutilation. Montagu actually goes to some lengths to extenuate slavery, arguing that the slaves are well off because their masters give them expensive clothes. This is ample compensation for being captured, trafficked and existing at the mercy of an owner who can cut your head off quite legally at any time. [Letter XXXII]

  In Letter XLII Montagu asserts that Turkish ladies lead a pleasant life, but readers should scrutinize and reflect on this very carefully before deciding whether it is favourable. Having questioned the pitying attitude to their confinement expressed by a previous traveller  (Aaron Hill), Montagu says that despite being restricted to the harem and the bathhouse, they are more free than any women in the universe, because they have nothing to do all day. "Exempt from cares", they spend all their time, visiting each other, bathing, spending money or "devising new fashions". In other words, they are frivolous, ignorant, shallow creatures, fit only for petty and narrow concerns. Montagu herself wanted a very different sort of "freedom", the freedom to travel widely, refusing confinement and seeking independence, the freedom to study many languages, read, write and conduct affairs with lovers.  At best, her comments are condescending, and define Turkish women as an inferior species.

   Montagu is under no illusions about the subjugated status of the Orthodox Greeks, who were still around 30% of the population. The percentage was dwindling but they had not all been exterminated or driven out yet. (It took a couple more centuries to do that.) They were subject to harsh taxes and arbitrary confiscation of property. In Letter XXV she writes that "the richest Greeks... are forced to conceal their wealth with great care, the appearance of poverty, which includes part of its inconveniencies, being all their security against feeling it in earnest..."

 "There is no possibility for a Christian to live easy under this government but by the protection of an Ambassador - and the richer they are the greater is their danger" [Letter XXXI]. Craven makes precisely the same observation.

   As she travels around the Ottoman domains, Montagu sees things that horrify her. In Serbia there are no inns, and officials travelling are empowered to seize by force any provisions they need from whatever village they stop at, apparently without payment. “Indeed the janizaries had no mercy on their poverty, killing all the poultry and sheep they could find without asking to whom they belonged, while the wretched owners durst not put in their claim for fear of being beaten. Lambs just fallen, geese and turkies big with egg, all massacred without distinction. I fancied I heard the complaints of Melibeus for the hope of his flock. When the pachas travel 'tis yet worse. Those oppressors are not content with eating all that is to be eaten belonging to the peasants –  after they have crammed themselves and their numerous retinue, they have the impudence to exact what they call teeth money, a contribution for the use of their teeth, worn with doing them the honour of devouring their meat.” [Letter XXVII]

Turner compares this passage with the one in Craven's book where she records that at a tiny town in Ukraine the Russian authorities "obliged a Jew to give me up a new little house he was on the point of inhabiting". Turner says that Craven shows "rather less sensitivity" than Montagu, which is just plain wrong. The two cases are totally different. Craven was merely staying in a house overnight, and the owner, clearly a prosperous citizen, was none the worse off the following morning. It was a temporary, minor inconvenience, whereas Montagu's party were seizing livestock from the poorest peasants, their livelihood, eating it and leaving the villagers to possibly starve in their wake. It was murder. 

   Professor Turner has her crude binary so firmly fixed in her mind that she cannot see this. Her readings are hasty and superficial.

Having seen Greek peasants playing musical instruments in their gardens, Montagu writes to Pope, “I no longer look upon Theocritus as a romantick writer, he has only given a plain image of the way of life amongst the peasants of his country, who, before oppression had reduced them to want were, I suppose, all employed as the better sort of them are here...” [Letter XXX].

Montagu was enthusiastic about the internal décor of Turkish houses, but not their exteriors or their sturdiness of construction. In Letter XXXII she tells us, “Tis true they are not at all solicitous to beautify the outsides of their houses and they are generally built with wood which I own is the cause of many inconveniences, but this is not to be charged on the ill taste of the people but on the oppression of the government. Every house at the death of its master is at the grand signior's disposal. And therefore no man cares to make a great expence which he is not sure his family will be the better for. All their design is to build a house commodious and that will last their lives, and they are very indifferent if it falls down the year after.”

Montagu was quite used to the system of arranged marriage in England but describes the subjection of Turkish women as being far worse. In Letter XXVII she comments on the re-marriage of the Sultan's young daughter, “When she saw this second husband, who is at least fifty, she could not forbear bursting into tears. He is indeed a man of merit and the declared favourite of the sultan, which they call mosayp, but that is not enough to make him pleasing in the eyes of girl of thirteen”.

In Letter XLVII Montagu relates how Turkish women may be murdered by their husbands and gives a particularly chilling account of the discovery of the corpse of one such woman:

“About two months ago there was found at daybreak not very far from my house the bleeding body of a young woman naked, only wrapped in a coarse sheet, with two wounds of a knife, one in her side and another in her breast. She was not quite cold and was so surprizingly beautiful that there were very few men in Pera that did not go to look upon her, but it was not possible for anybody to know her, no woman's face being known. She was supposed to have been brought in the dead of night from the Constantinople side [where the Muslims live] and laid there. Very little enquiry was made about the murderer, and the corpse was privately buried without noise. Murder is never pursued by the king's officers as with us. Tis the business of the next relations to revenge the dead person and if they like better to compound the matter for money, as they generally do, there is no more said about it”.  

   Murder of course happens everywhere, but pointing out that there is no actual legal penalty here for killing your wife, and the observation that nobody could identify the victim's face, as Turkish women were not allowed to go out unveiled, are both specific criticisms of the Turkish Muslim customs.

   In Letter XLII Montagu tells us the story of a Christian woman captured and raped by a Turkish admiral. "I am well acquainted with a Christian woman of quality who made it her choice to live with a Turkish husband and is a very agreeable, sensible lady. Her story is so extraordinary I cannot forbear relating it, but I promise you it shall be in as few words as I can possibly express it. She is a Spaniard and was at Naples with her family when that kingdom was part of the Spanish dominion. Coming from thence in a Felucca accompanied by her brother, they were attacked by the Turkish admiral, boarded and taken. And now how shall I modestly tell you the rest of her adventures? The same accident happened to her that happen'd to the fair Lucretia so many years before her. But she was too good a Christian to kill herself, as that heathenish Roman did. The admiral was so much charmed with the beauty and long suffering of the fair captive that as his
his first compliment he gave immediate liberty to her brother and attendants, who made haste Spain and in a few months sent the sum of a thousand pounds sterling as a ransom for his sister. The Turk took the money which he presented to her and told her she was at liberty. But the lady very discreetly weighed the different treatment she was likely to find in her native country. Her Catholic relations (as the kindest thing they could do for in her present circumstances) would certainly confine her to a nunnery for the rest of her days. Her Infidel lover was very handsome, very tender and very fond of her and lavished at her feet the Turkish magnificence. She answered him resolutely that her liberty was not so precious to her as her honour, that he could no way restore that but by marrying her and she therefore desired him to accept of the ransom as her portion and give her the satisfaction of knowing that no man could boast of her favours without being her husband. The admiral was transported at this kind offer and sent back the money to her relations, saying he was too happy in her possession. He married her and never took any other wife, and as she says herself, she never had reason to repent the choice she made. He left her some years after one of the richest widows in Constantinople. But there is no remaining honourably a single woman, and that consideration has obliged her to marry the present Captain Bassa i.e. Admiral, his successor. I am afraid that you will think my friend fell in love with her ravisher but I am willing to take her word for it that she acted wholly on principles of honour." 

     While this account may be unfavourable in some ways to Spain, it is certainly not favourable to Turkey, (nor does it reflect very well on Montagu who accepts a pre-Clarissa notion of female honour).

    Montagu is not reluctant to criticize Islamic beliefs, regarding women and much else. In

Letter XXXV she writes that when a man has divorced his wife, "he can take her again upon no other terms than permitting another man to pass a night with her, and there are some examples of those who have submitted to this law rather than not have back their beloved."

She adds, "Any woman that dies unmarried is looked upon to die in a state of reprobation. To confirm this belief they reason that the end of the creation of woman is to encrease and multiply, and that she is only properly employed in the works of her calling when she is bringing forth children or taking care of them, which are all the virtues that God expects from her. And indeed their way of life, which shuts them out of all public commerce [i.e. interaction] does not permit them any other. Our vulgar notion that they don't own women to have any souls is a mistake. Tis true they say they are not of so elevated a kind, and therefore must not hope to be admitted into the Paradise appointed for the men, who are to be entertained by celestial beauties. But there is a place of happiness destined for souls of the inferior order where all good women are to be in eternal bliss. Many of them are very superstitious and will not remain widows ten days for fear of dying in the reprobate state of a useless creature. But those that like their liberty and are not slaves to their religion content themselves with marrying when they are afraid of dying. This is a piece of theology very different from that which teaches nothing to be more acceptable to God than a vow of perpetual virginity. I leave you to determine which divinity is most rational." 
     In making this comparison with the beliefs of Catholics, Montagu is not being favourable to the Muslims, rather she is casting aspersion on both of them. Her attitude could be called Anglocentric. In Letter XXVII she goes even further than that, and speculates on how easy it would be to convert that Turks to Christianity. This is the least politically correct thing she could possibly contemplate:

"This is a long digression I was going to tell you that an intimate daily conversation with the Effendi Achmet-beg gave me an opportunity of knowing their religion and morals in a more particular manner than perhaps any Christian ever did. I explained to him the difference between the religion of England and Rome, and he was pleased to hear there were Chriftians that did not worship images or adore the Virgin Mary. The ridicule [i.e. absurdity] of transubstantiation appeared very strong to him. Upon comparing our creeds together, I am convinced that if our friend Dr .... had free liberty of preaching here it would be very easy to persuade the generality to Christianity, whose notions are very little different from his." 

No such idea ever crossed the mind of Craven, who was at heart an Enlightenment Deist.

   All in all, Montagu's account of Turkey is far more critical than Craven's. They concur on many points, but it is Craven, not Montagu, who shows the influence of the Enlightenment in her reluctance to assume superiority to another culture. This being the case, Turner's notion that Craven's travelogue is a "reactionary engagement with Montagu's" makes no sense at all. Her frequent accusation that Craven is "arrogant" is merely a prejudice. The references she makes to Craven are dominated by hostility and ridicule and are often biographically inaccurate. To find her described as a "submissive" wife is very odd indeed, and the claim that her book "lumps together" Turks, Greeks and other nationalities is not based on any evidence. 

    Like Craven, Montagu deplores how the Turks have no value for the past, and are casually destroying the archaeological heritage of Byzantine and earlier times. In Letter XLIV she writes, from Troy, "Here are many tombs of fine marble and vast pieces of granate, which are daily lessen'd by the prodigious balls that the Turks make from them for their cannon." Craven made very similar observations when she was in Athens.

     Turner concludes her essay by saying that Montagu's letters are "enlightened" "tolerant" and "free from opinion or judgement". She contrasts this with the "colonial" attitude and "arrogance" of Craven's. Neither of these views  stand up to a careful reading of the text. 

  Many people today assume that Montagu was pro-Turkish because she brought the practice of inoculation against smallpox from Turkey to England. Wasn't she thus introducing the benefits of the Ottoman culture to the more backward northern Europeans? This misapprehension is encouraged by the Wikipedia entry on Montagu which claims she found the practice in Muslim "zedanas". In fact, the letter in which she first describes the practice, written in 1718 from Adrianople, (the modern Edirne), on the borders of Bulgaria, makes it abundantly clear that it was a custom among the Christian population. It reads as follows:-

LETTER ΧΧΧΙ 

To Mrs SC Adrianople April 1 OS 1718 

IN my opinion, dear S, I ought ratier to quarrel with you for not answering my Nimeguen letter of August till December than to excuse my not writing again till now. I am sure there is on my side a very good excuse for silence having gone such tiresome land journeys, though I don t find the conclusion of them so bad as you seem to imagine. I am very easy here and not in the solitude you fancy me. The great number of Greeks, French, English and Italians that are under our protection make their court to me from morning till night and I'll assure you are many of them very fine ladies, for there is no possibility for a Christian to live easy under this government, but by the protection of an Ambassador, and the richer they are the greater is their danger. ..."

    After a discussion of the Bubonic plague, which she thinks far less alarming than people believe, Montagu goes on, "A propos of distempers I am going to tell you a thing that will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox, they make parties for this purpose and when they are met, commonly fifteen or sixteen together, the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small pox and asks what vein you please to have open'd. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle, which gives you no more pain than a common scratch, and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins. The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening one in the middle of the forehead, one in each arm, and one on the breast, to mark the sign of the cross, but this has a very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by those that are not superstitious, who chuse to have them in the legs or that part of the arm that is concealed. The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day and are in perfect health to the eighth. Then the fever begins to seize them and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty [spots] in their faces which never mark and in eight days time they are as well as before their illness. Where they are wounded there remain running sores during the distemper which I don't doubt is a great relief to it.

   Every year thousands undergo this operation and the French Ambassador says pleasantly that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England."

    The fact that some Greeks liked to have the engrafting done in a cruciform pattern makes it 100% certain that these are Christians who are practising inoculation. It is almost a form of baptism. The custom may have been going on in the Balkans for centuries, long before the Muslim conquest, or it may have emerged later through necessity among an oppressed, occupied people struggling to survive under the rule of brutal overlords. How curious that fashionable history has forgotten that Muslims brought smallpox to Europe, while ascribing to them the invention of inoculation, which was certainly a product of the Orthodox Christian civilization. 

     Montagu and Craven saw eye to eye in this respect, as Craven and her family, the Berkeleys, were patrons of Dr Edward Jenner who pioneered vaccination which superceded inoculation. Craven and her brother Admiral George Berkeley took a close interest in furthering Jenner's career. In this and in many other ways, Montagu and Craven are far better understood as sympathetic minds with immense amounts in common, than by constructing and imposing a crude binary that obscures both, rather than elucidating either of them.

 

Letters of Lady M--y W-----y M--------e

Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to which are Added Poems by the Same Author 2 vols 1763-64

https://hekint.org/2024/06/10/satturday-by-lady-mary-wortley-montagu-who-helped-introduce-smallpox-inoculation-to-england/

Koplow DA. Smallpox: The Fight to Eradicate a Global Scourge. University of California Press; 2003.

https://istanbultarihi.ist/517-the-religious-life-of-istanbuls-greek-residents-from-the-conquest-to-the-late-18th-century

The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924

Benny Morris, and Dror Ze'evi, (Harvard UP 2019)
"The late Ottoman genocides, including the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides, resulted in the deaths and displacement of millions of Christians." By the early 20th century only 20-25% of the population was Christian and today they make up less than 1%.