Only one -95group of minorities managed to develop the social resources necessary to foil the sultan's confiscation: the

Ottoman minority merchants. The minority merchants could retain the resources they accumulated through their interaction with the West by entering into foreign protection. Until the eighteenth century, the trade activities of minority merchants had not been separate from those of Muslim merchants, as all participated equally in Ottoman trade. Many Muslim merchants, for instance, were commercially active 41 in urban centers throughout the world, from Venice and Ancona in Europe to Calicut and Java in Southeast Asia ( Kafadar 1990: 194-99). At the same time, many Muslim and minority merchants often had a sister company based in a Western port. 42 Only after the rise of Western trade and the Europeans' exclusive association with the Ottoman minorities did Ottoman merchants differentiate their fields of activity according to religion. Hence, from the eighteenth century onward, the Muslim merchants concentrated in domestic trade 43 and the religious minorities traded with the rising West ( nalck 1979: 6; Masters 1988: 33). This economic specialization by Ottoman minority merchants at the expense of European and Ottoman Muslim ones emerged from a coalescence of factors that ranged from the structure of trade to the dynamics of Ottoman control over trade. First, in these centuries the periods of warfare among the major Western powers started to expand quickly into the economic sphere. Commercial blockades often accompanied military warfare so that the European merchants suffered from the effects of political conflict ( Frangakis-Syrett 1985: 34-35). As they were increasingly involved in the escalating intra-European conflict, it became immanently rational to designate a social group that was politically neutral to this conflict: the Ottoman minority merchants filled this prerequisite perfectly and increasingly assumed the role of the European merchants in Ottoman trade. Second, European merchants faced increasing economic barriers in their trade with the Ottoman empire, which led them to prefer employing minority merchants as intermediaries. As a consequence of trade capitulations, European merchants who traded with the Ottoman empire had had to pay only a 3 percent duty, as opposed to Ottoman merchants, who paid duties up to 10 percent. Yet this imbalance did not translate into domestic trade within the empire, so that the European merchants trading in the empire had to pay the same domestic trade duties as the Ottoman merchants did ( Ktkolu 1974: 64, 71). This reduced the incentive for European merchants to engage in the Ottoman domestic trade and reinforced the prevalence of Ottoman minority merchants as their intermediaries. Third, competition among the European powers for influence within the Ottoman empire escalated their cultivation of Ottoman minorities as their allies within. They therefore often tried to secure the political allegiance of the Ottoman minorities by offering them legal protection from the Ottoman sultan. For instance, competition between the Austrians and the Russians over political influence in the Ottoman provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia led the Austrians to extend protective status to two hundred thousand Ottoman subjects in Moldavia, and to sixty thousand Ottoman subjects in Wallachia. The Russians countered by distributing their own protection papers for free in order to claim representation and jurisdiction over this protected populace of "citizens" ( Bozkurt 1989: 140-41). The fourth reason entailed the additional restrictions placed on both European and Ottoman Muslim merchants. Until the end of the eighteenth century, as the sultan categorically barred European merchants from trading in the Black Sea region ( Braudel 1984 -961984: 477), they had to engage Ottoman merchants to trade on their behalf. It was with the peace treaty (Kk Kaynarca) 44 signed with Russia at the end of 1774 that the Ottomans had to relinquish to the Russians unrestricted privileges in the Black Sea. Yet, in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman sultan had set a quota on the number of Muslim merchants engaged in trade as well, 45 thus leaving only the Ottoman minority merchants capable of accommodating the commercial demands of the West. Fifth, minority merchants were often coreligionists with the Western ones and also possessed the linguistic skills to communicate with both the Europeans and the Ottomans. This cultural capital gave minority merchants a competitive edge over the Muslims. Sixth, European merchants were afraid that any contract entered into with an Ottoman Muslim would be struck down in a Muslim court. Uncomfortable with this protection, they chose to deal with minority merchants instead ( Masters 1988: 102). Finally, unlike the Muslims, the Ottoman minorities were willing to enter under Western protection to avoid the sultan's confiscation, a measure the sultan used to avert the potential challenge of the vast economic resources of merchants. 46 Initially, 47 the Ottoman sultan did not object to relinquishing his custody over minorities, but he could never have permitted his control over the Ottoman Muslims, whom he considered entrusted to him by God, to be supplanted in a similar fashion.

As a consequence, more and more minorities throughout the empire participated in European trade under foreign flags. 48 The Ottoman Greek community accumulated wealth with the development of European commerce and shipping. The Armenians prospered as they controlled the trade routes leading to Persia, Central Asia, and India and became active in banking. The Arab-speaking Christians 49 of the empire also benefited from the great prosperity in Aleppo that emerged through trade with Europe. In addition to the prosperity in Aleppo, earlier interactions between Middle Eastern and European Christians, especially under the guidance of the Vatican, made a difference. The Vatican increased its Christian missions to the Middle East, and there was a significant preference for Arabspeaking Christians among European Christian traders, who started to dominate Middle Eastern trade in the eighteenth century ( Raymond 1974: 282, 463, 490; Lewis 1982: 107-9). Silk cultivation enriched the rural Christian community in Lebanon and Westernized the Maronite community as they renewed contact with the Papacy ( Khalaf 1982: 113). Hence, through the nineteenth century, many minorities continued to "easily acquire a foreign nationality, and thus enjoy the advantages of extraterritoriality, while probably maintaining their local contacts" ( Frangakis- Syrett 1991a: 1 98); 1991b: 413-14).