From Religious War to Secular Embrace: The Spanish and Ottoman Empires in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Over the course of the 1700s and 1800s, the Spanish and Ottoman Empires followed parallel paths: defeat in foreign wars, civil wars. economic revival, attempts at internal reforms, pressure from the British and French, and local victories in pursuit of revived imperial strength. The two former enemies even attempted at mid-century to form an alliance to support each other’s ambitions, although this was not successful.

Using diplomatic records, memoirs, trade reports, and military archives, this paper will examine the fall and rise of these two empires, and the efforts to create a mutually beneficial diplomatic, economic, and military partnership in the Mediterranean. From two states that had led holy wars against each other and their respective allies from the 15^th to the 17^th century, emerged a countervailing initiative to seek allies, as both experienced relative decline and increasingly aggressive conflicts with other European and Asian powers.

To what extent were these efforts at an alliance successful? What impact did they have on the military and economic balance in the region, as well as on the respective attempts at reform and revival in the Ottoman and Spanish Empires? Finally, what does the effort to forget this partnership have on the previous self-image of each state as a leader in holy wars against the other?