Defiant Servitude: Consuls and free agents in Ottoman North Africa and the Levant, 1710-1770

This thesis examines and analyses the agency and various relations of consuls in Swedish service active along the Ottoman Mediterranean frontier in the first three quarters of the 18th century. Although the Mediterranean has been considered geographically, commercially and politically important during the early modern period, there are to date little scholarly research on the consuls themselves, especially during the formative period of the Scandinavian consular systems. The study is done by plotting, juxtaposing and analysing the independency of consuls and their relations as well as the responsive mechanisms exercised for or against various forms of increased state and/or chartered company ordained prerogatives. By employing an agency-based approach, the study will challenge prevailing state centred models of explanation, e.g. on the driving forces of commercial expansion, state formation and the evolution of consular systems. The analysis will make visible the consuls’ and associated agents’ activities that have remained undisclosed due to the methodological nationalism in the field and display that the circulation of people, so particular to the 18th century and the Mediterranean, also affected macro-level contexts in Sweden and the Mediterranean through the extensive room for manoeuvre exercised among the consuls.