The Mediterranean as a Laboratory of Globalisation: The Franco-Ottoman Cloth Trade, 1683-c.1715

In the early 1700s, France overcame English and Dutch competition to become the Ottoman Empire’s main European trading partner.

To date, historians have focussed on Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s (in)famous minister, and his influence on the crucial Franco-Ottoman trade in woollen cloth.

Yet they have neglected the boom in this trade after Colbert’s death in 1683, overseen by Jean-Baptiste de Lagny, the director general of commerce from 1686 to 1700.By treating the Mediterranean as a laboratory of globalisation, GlobalMed asks why this trade flourished.

Moreover, it explores the trade’s significance in influencing the state’s global commercial policy, analysing how France’s Levantine success shaped its engagement with (non-)colonial markets overseas.

In this way, the project will challenge current orthodoxies on the rise of the Atlantic world by reconsidering the early modern state’s role as a motor of globalisation and industrial development.