Early Influences of the Enlightenment in the Ottoman World and Ioannis Pringos (1725-1789)

One of the most important channels of interaction with the 18th-century Europe, commercialization of the Ottoman Greek Orthodox community is often regarded as a phase when the intellectual groundwork of nationalism is formed. According to this view, having acquainted themselves with the ideas of the Enlightenment that envisaged a change in Europe, these merchants began to imagine an alternative world to the Ottoman order. This article analyses these issues through Ioannis Pringos, who hailed from the rising Thessalian settlement of Zagora, traded in various Ottoman and European port cities, settled in Amsterdam and with the fortune he accumulated there, he established a library in his native Zagora upon his return. The article puts forward the view that the manners in which the Enlightenment ideas infiltrated among the Ottoman Greek Orthodox can be fully grasped by paying due attention to the dynamics of the Ottoman, as well as the European worlds. Therefore, when those Ottoman non-Muslims who were supposed to be under the exclusive influence of European intellectual movements are analysed in both European and Ottoman contexts, it appears that in some cases early influences of the Enlightenment in the Ottoman world were extremely limited