E465 | What was it like to be a foreigner living in Ottoman Istanbul? In this episode, our guest Robyn Dora Radway answers this question by providing an in-depth look at an unusual type of document: alba amicorum, or friendship albums, which were essentially the social media of the sixteenth century. Produced in the Habsburg embassy (aka the “German House"), these albums functioned like yearbooks in that the owners residing in the embassy would strive to collect all manner of mementos from their time abroad, including signatures, poems, short anecdotes, and even drawings and paintings. At the German House, men from all walks of life would end up assembling their own album amicorum, from the Habsburg ambassador to the cook (who was quite popular and had the largest album by far). We discuss how these albums can thus serve as a valuable resource for historians, as they offer a full picture of the social makeup of these kinds of diplomatic spaces—information that does not often turn up in more traditional archives.
More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/07/radway.html
Robyn Dora Radway is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Central European University, Budapest/Vienna. She specializes in Habsburg Central Europe and its imperial entanglements across internal and external borders. She has recently published articles in Austrian History Yearbook, Journal of Early Modern History, and Archivum Ottomanicum. Her current book project, “Paper Portraits of Empire: Habsburg Albums from the German House in Constantinople,” examines what it meant to be a “Habsburg subject” through archival materials and a set of manuscripts containing painted images, decorated papers, and friendship albums from the Habsburg ambassador’s residence in Constantinople.
Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of Art History at Temple University. Her research concerns the art and architecture of the Islamic world, particularly of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. She is co-curator of our series on The Visual Past.
CREDITS
Episode No. 465
Release Date: 5 July 2020
Recording Location: Budapest, Hungary
Audio editing by Emily Neumeier
Music: "Fast Csardas from Bonchida" by MetroFolk (2008)
Bibliography and images courtesy of Robyn Dora Radway available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/07/radway.html
