Ottoman dragomans formed kinship networks that crossed embassy loyalties

Evidence

A more serious complaint is disloyalty: they are accused of serving their own interests, of selling their services to the highest bidder, of forming a sort of selfcontained, coherent Levantine dragoman group which owed no real loyalty to anybody. Certainly there are quite awful stories told by many ambassadors about dragomans selling secrets to another embassy, or exchanging secrets with col­ leagues. They were mostly related to each other, so that a dragoman of the British embassy might be the first cousin of a dragoman of the French embassy. At a time of acute Anglo-French rivalry, this would give rise to interesting possibil­ ities for both of them. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 175

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on trust and reputational enforcement in trading communities — kin-based mutual surveillance that reduces monitoring costs but complicates factional loyalty.