top of page
Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_The_Fall_of_Phaeton_(National_Gallery_of_Art) (1).jpg

Zinkeisen Johann Wilhelm

  • Kaan Köprülü
  • Jul 7
  • 5 min read

It shows the Ottoman borders in Europe and the Caucasus - a reminder of geographical breadth.
19th-century map of the Turkish Empire, Greece and the Caucasus

Born on April 12, 1803 in Altenburg, Wilhelm began his higher education with theological studies in Jena and Göttingen. However, he earned his doctorate in history in Dresden. He then moved to Munich and completed his associate professorship at Leipzig in 1831, where he was awarded the title of non-university associate professor of history and political sciences. Wilhelm became interested in Greek history and published the first volume of his History of Greece (Geschichte Griechenlands vom Afange geschichtlicher Kunde bis auf unsere Tage), which dates back to the Greek campaign of King Ruggero of Sicily. For this work, he was awarded the title of professor by Duke Friedrich of Sachsen-Altenburg. In this work Wilhelm challenged Fallmerayer, who argued that the Hellenic presence in the Peloponnese had disappeared and that the ethnic composition had been completely changed by the settlement of Slavic peoples, mainly Albanians. By 1840 he published volumes III and IV of his History of Greece, based largely on his translation of the two-volume History of the Greek Revolution by the English writer Thomas Gordon.


In 1832, Wilhelm started a project on the history of European states and accepted an offer from Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren and Friedrich August Ukert, who were also his former teachers, to write a history of the Ottoman Empire. Wilhelm gained a distinguished place among historians with this work, which was about seven volumes and 700 pages. Later on, he rejected offers from Greece, especially from Athens, because of Greece's weakness in terms of science. He spent 4 years in Paris between 1936-40 for his researches and got married there in 1839. Wilhelm, who wrote many articles about Lafayette, Versailles, Jacobins and France in various publications in Germany, also wrote the History of the Ottoman Empire in Europe (Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa) in 1840 upon a commission. In the writing of this work, he made use of the rich libraries in Paris as well as the reports of the Venetian ambassadors and the works of Byzantine historians. Since he did not speak Turkish, he made up for this deficiency by using rare translations such as Antoine Galland's translation of Hodja Sadeddin's Tacü't-tevarih, which was also the main source of Joseph von Hammer. By focusing mainly on the Ottoman presence in Europe, he also disproved Hammer's thesis that Ottoman history could only be written by those who knew the language.


Again in 1840, on the recommendation of Leopold von Ranke, he was offered the position of editor of the official newspaper (Staatszeitung) at the Prussian Foreign Office. This position eventually led him to settle in Berlin. In March 1848, he resigned and left Berlin due to the troubles he was experiencing as a result of the revolution that broke out. However, he was recalled at the end of May and took over the newly established Prussian Staatsanzeiger. When the newspaper ceased publication in 1851, he returned to his scholarly work, living a modest life on an unemployment pension. Between 1854-57, he published volumes II, III, IV, and V of the Ottoman history in Gotha, one volume per year.


Wilhelm mentions Hammer, whom he did not have the opportunity to know personally, as a source in many parts of his works. He also makes some evaluations in his prefaces. Although he treats his works with respect, he also makes some criticisms. He mentions that Hammer's works are disorganized and that he has a habit of using every material that comes his way, that he is not concerned with “pragmatic historiography” and that his work has become a great storehouse of information. Wilhelm also interprets pragmatic historiography in a different way, presenting it as an uninterrupted narration of the occurrences of events in accordance with the truth.


Wilhelm's Ottoman history does not match his own name. Rather than Ottoman history, the work is about the relations of the great European states with the Ottoman Empire. In the struggle of Charles XII against Peter, in the recognition of Napoleon as emperor, the narrative turns into the details of the relations between the second and third states. It is obvious that the long pages devoted to the Governor of Egypt, Mehmed Ali Pasha of Kavalalı, disrupt the balance of the work. Since the reports of foreign ambassadors are used as sources in the work, the real history of the Ottoman Empire is reduced to a minimum dimension, and there are more foreign names than Ottoman names.


In his treatment of Ottoman historiography, the author emphasizes two major aims: the Ottoman relations with the European community of states and the diplomatic position of the Divan-ı Hümayun and the internal state of the state and its effects on politics. Drawing attention to the difficulties of such a work, he emphasizes that no such work has ever been written. Volume I goes from the earliest histories to the conquest of Constantinople and states that the situation in the Christian world facilitated Ottoman expansionism. In a way, Zinkeisen thinks that Ottoman history cannot be written independently of Europe. He emphasizes this in the preface of Volume I. He emphasizes that the difficulties first arise from the provision of material, and that it is necessary to touch upon the intellectual and spiritual world of the society whose history he will try to write. He also emphasizes that writing Ottoman history is different from writing the history of other European states and underlines that this volume is solely his own work and research. He states that he consulted Hammer for Turkish sources, but that these sources were not very important.


Zinkeisen wrote the preface to Volume II of his work in 1854 in Berlin, which was published after an interval of fourteen years. In this work, which coincides with the period of the rise of the state, it is emphasized that the Ottoman court is treated as diplomatic relations with European states. The helplessness of Christian Europe against the Ottomans, their internal divisions and struggles are emphasized as the reasons for the Ottoman development in the direction of Europe. In the preface to Volume II, the author emphasizes the importance of the events originating from Istanbul, Rome and Venice by focusing on the corpus of manuscripts and documents he had the opportunity to examine in Paris. He continues to introduce the sources he uses in the other volumes. In his October 1862 preface to Volume VII, Zinkeisen mentions some new sources on Ottoman-Russian-British relations. Zinkeisen, who stated that Volume VIII, which would cover the reign of Abdülaziz until his accession to the throne, would be prepared in a short time, died on January 5, 1863.


References


bottom of page