Welcome to the Dragoman Renaissance Research Platform, a companion website to E. Natalie Rothman's The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism (Cornell University Press, 2021). Together, the book and website explore the role of dragomans (diplomatic interpreter-translators) in mediating relations between the Ottoman Empire and its European neighbours from ca. 1550 to ca. 1730.
Despite their immense importance in brokering Ottoman understandings of language, subjecthood, religion, and statecraft to European publics, dragomans remain a surprisingly under-studied group. In addition to making freely and openly available all images analyzed in the book, this research platform thus aims to facilitate further research into dragomans' personal and professional trajectories and textual and visual practices. To that end, the platform offers a range of data sets that can be dynamically edited, analyzed, and augmented, modelling collaboration and resource sharing among scholars and students from a range of disciplinary perspectives interested in processes of cultural mediation in the early modern Mediterranean.
If you'd like to learn more about the project or to get involved, we'd love to hear from you!
E. Natalie Rothman and the Dragoman Renaissance research team
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