On the Waterfront: Ottoman Port Politics and the Khan of Acre (1696–1702)

Using a recently discovered private merchant archive (the Archivio Adami-Lami in Florence, Italy), this article reconstructs the Acre Consul Controversy, a diplomatic dispute over the appointment of a Tuscan merchant, Francesco Adami, as the first English vice-consul of the Ottoman port of Acre. Through a micro-spatial case study, documenting the emerging rivalry between European ‘nations’ and their consular representatives in an Ottoman port city, this article contributes to understanding the power of space in early modern Mediterranean politics. First, it analyses the interplay between the more institutionalized and corporate political practices typical of early modern Europe (embodied in the office of the ‘national’ consulate) and the more informal and flexible political practices of the Ottoman empire. Second, it situates key elements of this diplomatic controversy within a particular, clearly delineated semi-public space: Acre's Khan al-Ifrānj, a residential warehouse exclusively used by European merchants.