Political Ideology in the Context of the Grand Vision of Marana’s Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy

This paper begins where it shall end; that is, considering the significance of a presentation on 15 April 1683 of a draft manuscript by a Genoese political refugee, Giovanni Paolo Marana, to Louis XIV, a man who has become synonymous with foundations of modern political absolutism. This guiding consideration frames an analysis of uses of the image of the “Turk” as a mode of critical engagement of culture in late 17th and early 18th century France to assess the political ideology of the eight volumes of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in the broader context of the its Enlightenment narrative. Titled L’esploratore turco e le di liu pratiche segrete con la Porta Ottomana. Scoperte in Parigi nel regno di Luiggi [sic] in Grande, L’anno 1683. Tomo primo, the manuscript contained 30 letters purportedly written by a Turkish spy who had lived in Paris undetected for some 45 years. All the while this mysterious figure had carried on a voluminous body of correspondence with family, friends, and figures of note throughout the Ottoman Empire. Marana claimed to have happened upon the letters lying in a pile in the corner of an abandoned lodging purely by chance; the author by all accounts had mysteriously vanished sometime during the previous 12 months. The originals were said to have been composed in Arabic, and thus were in need of a translator—the role in which Marana cast himself. He claimed to have immediately recognized their significance: “that they treated of affairs of state: That they contained relations of war and peace; and discoursed not only of the affairs of France, but those of all Christendom, till the year 1682.”[1] Towards the conclusion of 1683, Marana published the first collection by permission of the king in Italian and French. Shortly thereafter the publications of a second and a third collection, delayed for a short time by royal censors, followed in 1684 and 1686, respectively. Bound together, these three collections comprised the first volume of L’espion du Grand-Seigneur or Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, which all of the subsequent translations, whether English, French, or other, share in common.[2]

Brief discussions of the authorship and the content of the Turkish Spy will serve as an entry points into an analysis of its use of the “Turk.” Virginia Aksan has asked, “Is There a Turk in the Turkish Spy?”[3] The straightforward answer to this question must be negative. Marana’s claim to have discovered the letters by chance is a fiction, nothing more than a literary strategy aimed at convincing the reading public of the validity of the perspective forwarded by its contents via the illusion of the author’s origin. But it is a useful fiction. Mahmut the Arabian, the Turkish spy, is endowed with the mantle of “objectivity” by virtue of his cultural distance from the Occidental object. By styling himself a translator instead of author, however, Marana gifted historians with the problem of establishing the authorship of the subsequent volumes, of which there are seven in the English or five in the French. The total number of letters in the eight English volumes which are examined in the essay is 634. Universally acknowledged as the author of the original French version of the first volume, Marana is replaced by an anonymous English translator (or author?) in volumes two through eight of the English edition. The unidentified translator of the later volumes claimed to have gained direct access of the letters in the original Arabic, thus doing away with the need for an intermediate. The purpose of the fiction of the Arabic originals remained the same as that of Marana in the first volume—to preserve the illusion of authenticity. C.D. Lee believes that “it was decided to suppress the identity of Marana, the original writer, altogether, but to retain the fiction of the discovery of the Letters in an attic in Paris.”[4] Something like this seems to have been necessary to maintain the fiction since the literary pedigree of the Turkish Spy is such that the later volumes appeared in English before they did in French. Thus the question of whether Marana had anything at all to do with the composition of the last seven volumes must be posed. Lee’s conclusion that the author of the later seven volumes was an Englishmen aside, the documentary evidence available to the present author makes it unwise to decide either for or against Marana.[5] Regardless, it is indeed an historical irony that the authorship of the entirety of the Turkish Spy should be lost in an illusion of Marana’s own creation.

Cases for and against Marana’s authorship of all eight volumes of the English version of the Turkish Spy all utilize its content as evidence to bolster their claims. Given the presence of conflicting, though inconclusive, claims, recourse to demonstrating the continuity or discontinuity of ideological perspective between the first and second through eight volumes is entirely appropriate—even if not in any sense absolutely compelling. A comparison of two treatments yields some rather surprising results: historians not only disagree on the authorship, but the ideological bent of its content as well. For instance, William H. McBurney lists among his arguments for Marana’s authorship of the entire work “the pro-French bias of all the Turkish letters; and the continuity of design characterization, and style throughout the contested work.”[6] The aforementioned Lee, by contrast, holds that after “work began on the second and subsequent volumes, the stories showed a more robust anti-French and anti-popish stance” in addition to a markedly difference in character and style of the prose.[7] To be sure, the reader will notice a transition between the first and second volume. McBurney dismisses this as inevitable due to the difficulties attending any translation.[8] The anti-popish stance is unmistakable; but what about it views of the French? Considerably more ground will be gained for mediating between these two characterizations, however, if the appraisal of the French political culture in the Turkish Spy is paid closer attention.

The historical significance assigned to the Turkish Spy typically is that of being the inspiration behind Montesquieu’s highly critical parody of what he considered to be an increasingly despotic French monarchy in his The Persian Letters (1720). In such assessments the form and narrative structure are emphasized, but the content of Turkish Spy’s political and cultural commentary are paid little attention. A fuller account is developed by Aksan, who argues that it had an appreciable role to play in the formation of an “emerging social consensus about non-Western governments in general, part of “a conscious act to change the common way of thinking, by comparison and contrast with European monarchies.”[9] To qualify exactly how “appreciable”—my characterization—was that role is difficult, but one should consider the tremendous popular success the collection of letters experienced; it was translated into many of the major European languages and republished through a number of editions.[10] (More will be said about the relation to Montesquieu in the conclusion.) A second major reason for assigning historical significance is found in the Turkish Spy’s relationship to the career of Reason through the Enlightenment, the intellectual genealogy of an anti-clerical tradition of free-thinking. Marana seems the prefect candidate to author such a work. As a Genoese political refugee living in Paris, his life symbolically spans two periods of the traditionally conceived progress of Reason through Renaissance Italy to Revolutionary France. C.J. Betts finds Mahmut vacillating between a sort of universal theism, that is, not specifically Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, and a rationalist deism, and so labels the Turkish Spy a forerunner of later French deist thought.[11] As valuable as this approach may be for intellectual history, the difficulty encountered here is that of assigning the work significant as a commentary on contemporary cultural and political issues. Robin Howells, who draws on the work’s “enlightened” content, claims to find in the secret life of Mahmut in Paris a “growing resistance, initially aristocratic but increasingly bourgeois, to the monarchical order.”[12] As this paper will demonstrate, however, this sort of anti-monarchical conclusion is historically premature by at least a half a century, if not more. The Turkish Spy’s shares much more in common with Voltaire’s high praise of the 17th century French political order in his The Age of Louis XIV (1752) than it does with a later generation of French revolutionaries.

After a lengthy introduction, we return briefly to the scene with which we began: that of Marana’s presentation of a sample collection of the letters to Louis XIV in 1683. Notable parallels may be drawn between Marana and his creation Mahmut. The former, a political and military historian, eagerly sought royal patronage; while the later lived in the shadows of the royal court, claiming to have had personal contact with both Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Indeed, for evidence of an intimate connection with the Sun King, one needs look no further than the date attached to the first letter. Mahmut reports his arrival in Paris on 25 October 1637, a little less of a year prior to Louis’ birth in 1638, giving himself enough time to familiarize himself with his new surrounding before reporting on that momentous occasion. (I.i.28.) The range of topics on which Mahmut discourses in the letters that follow is cosmographic in scale, even if the fragmentary epistolary medium prevents the pretentious synthesis of the entire corpus of human knowledge typically associated with cosmography. The result is a work of cultural criticism in the widest sense of the word cultural—an attempt to engage all facets of human life deemed relevant to the construction of society. Sensitivity to the unfolding narrative in the letters, however, allows the reader to discern a several themes and an underlying thematic unity at the center of which may be found a portrait of an enlightened monarch. By way of comparison and contrast, the France during the reign of Louis XIV through to 1682 is measured against the ideal rule of a regal potentate directed by the final authority of Reason.

The voice of Reason throughout the Turkish Spy is the voice of the fictional Mahmut through whom the author (or authors) is able to speak. This essay will examine how Mahmut’s “Turkishness” is used by the author to gain a critical distance for Reason to arbitrate between a variety of cultural irrationalities. Looking forward a few decades to the composition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Rebecca Joubin argues “the philosophes established a subgenre of Orientalist discourse in 18th century French literature that used the topos of the Oriental as Other as a lens through which to provide an indirect, albeit potent, means of cultural self-criticism.[13] It will be argued here that the literary strategies of the philosophes have an intellectual god-parent in Marana’s Turkish Spy, for the protagonist’s identity as an outsider, a “Turk,” lends credibility to the critical lens of Reason through which Mahmut’s views French and more broadly European affairs. But something more must be added. Viewed as a whole, the narrative trajectory of the correspondence may be described as an ascent to Reason, a journey on which the reader is invited to join. The voice of the Oriental as Other become the Self the reader ought to aspire to be, Mahmut is recruited by the Occidental author to lay the groundwork for an alternative social order in which those things which divide humanity are reasoned away. In short, the reader is encouraged to make Mahmut’s struggles and solutions their own. The role of the “Turk” in constructing the vision of the Turkish Spy will be explored through an analysis of several different themes running through the letters. Mahmut’s spiritual journey from a skeptical Muslim faith to enlightened rationality—albeit a rationality pious enough to skirt around the condemnation of religious censors—drawn from the biographical portions of the letters is a narrative of the triumph of Reason. Through continuing commentary on various features of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, Mahmut plays the role of a reasonable arbiter in religious matters while laying the foundations for a universal monotheism. A seemingly naïve defense of Turkish despotism by Mahmut, “vilest of the Grand Seignior’s slaves,” (I.i.1.) [14] plays foil to the policies and practices of European states to accentuate the ideal of enlightened monarchy. Finally, the entire narrative of the Turkish Spy can be found building towards the novel composition of a universal history culminating universal peace which can for the first time embrace the whole of humankind through Reason’s triumph over superstition and dogma, not only among Christians, but Muslims and Jews as well.





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[1] Giovanni Paolo Marana, “To the Reader,” Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy who Lived Five and Forty Years Undiscovered in Paris, Vol. I (London: Printed for A Wilde, J. Botherton and Sewell, C. Bathrust, E. Ballard, J. and F. Rivington, W. Johnston, S. Crowder, E. and C. Dilly, J. Wilkie, C. Corbett, S. Bladon, W. Harris, and B. Collins, 1770, II. Sequent reference to the text will be made in parentheses.

[2] The single notable exception was the understandable omission of an explicitly pro-Stuart letter in the first English edition published in 1687, just prior to the political foment of the Revolution of 1688.

[3] Virginia H. Aksan, “Is There a Turk in the Turkish Spy?” Eighteenth Century Fiction 6.3 (Apr. 1994), 201-214.

[4] C.D. Lee, “The Authorship of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy — The Oxford Connection,” Bodleian Library Record 18.4 (Fall 2004), 333-364, at 351.

[5] For an analysis arguing for Marana’s authorship of the entire body of letters belonging to the Turkish Spy see William H. McBurney, “The Authorship of the Turkish Spy,” PMLA 72.5 (Dec., 1957), 915-935. Additionally, C.J. Betts, Early Deism in France: From the so-called ‘deists’ of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire’s ‘Lettres philosophiques’ (1734) (Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1984), 97-114 provides a good synthesis of more recent scholarship advocating for the same.

[6] McBurney 928.

[7] Lee 351; he attributes the work to one John Bradshaw, a well-read and -educated, though “ill-mannered” man, whose authorship, if known to the public, would have done sales of the Turkish Spy considerable harm.

[8] McBurney 934.

[9] Aksan 57.

[10] The exact numbers are difficult to discern. The imprimatur of the version I am using claims to be the 26th English edition (1770). This may be a ploy on the part of publishers to overplay its popularity, or it is possible that some editions simply no longer exist. The more likely number provided by McBurney is 15 English editions and at least as many French.

[11] Betts 114.

[12] Robin Howells, “The Secret Life: Marana’s Espion du Grand-Seigneur (1684-86), French Studies 52 (1999), 153-166, at 160.

[13] Rebecca Joubin, “Islam and Arabs through the Eyes of the Encyclopedie: The “Other” as a Case of French Cultural Self-Criticism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32.2 (May, 2000), 197-217, at 198.

[14] Mahmut refers to himself as nothing more than a slave of the slaves of the Turkish sultan on numerous occasions throughout the letters.