Ottoman diplomatic modernization began only when foreign policy became crucial

Evidence

But it was no longer considered safe to entrust what had become a crucial post, in the newly important field of foreign policy, to non-Muslims. The basic change was in the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the western world. In the new balance of power, the Ottomans could no longer afford the attitude of easy disdain, of contemptuous unconcern for the barbarous peoples of Europe and their absurd dialects. It became necessary to learn languages. After the hanging of the chief dragoman, Aristarchi, we are told by the contemporary Turkish historians that there was total confusion in the office of the grand drag­ oman; papers were piling up and there was no one that could read them. So they brought the chief professor of the naval school, a Jew converted to Islam who knew several European languages, and he held this office for a while. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Said-adjacent cluster: this shows the Orientalist ‘contempt’ was reciprocal — Ottomans viewed European languages as ‘absurd dialects’ — a two-directional knowledge-production dynamic often flattened in Saidian accounts.
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the standard Orientalism narrative: the moment of Western knowledge-empire over Ottoman diplomacy began not in Western initiative but in the Ottomans’ own loss of ‘easy disdain’ — the subaltern’s contempt for the barbarian is itself a knowledge regime that collapsed.