Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe

"Yes, this is a very important point. Looking from the Middle East, Eurocentrism looks unified, but there are also these nationalist historiographies. If we were doing this interview in French, you would be telling me that you studied Francis I, Charles V was the enemy, the Turks reluctant allies and Henry was a madman who tried to invade France. There’s also an Islamocentrism we have to push back against. If you study in the Middle East, you rarely get to hear about any of these European characters, or even the Safavids. They are shadowy presences on the margins of the Ottoman Empire. But Charles V was in Süleyman’s thoughts every day—and vice versa—for three decades. This is a book that does push against those nationalist understandings of the 16th century. For the British reader, Norwich does a great job because he talks about the limitations of a British understanding of history. He wrote the book when he was older, and wanted to revisit and reconsider his own education in the 1950s. Things may be better now, but he says they would rarely hear about Charles, and when they did hear about him it was mostly as him being a Spaniard, which he wasn’t. He was from Burgundy. Charles learned to speak Spanish because he had to, but he communicated in French. The book is very readable, and Norwich does a wonderful job of identifying, beyond national concerns, the kinds of challenges that these four figures faced in a 16th-century environment. Norwich was not a professional historian and he tells their stories from a personal perspective. There’s a risk to his book because it places the individual person at the center, but it’s a great introduction to a global understanding of 16th-century history. As you’re reading you notice, ‘Oh! this happened to Süleyman. Then the same thing happened to Francis I. How come?’ And you start thinking about the dynamics of the period. These people lived in the same space and they—or their agents—interacted in a variety of ways. They lived at a time after the Mongol invasions, after the Black Death, after the feudal violence of late medieval Europe, when you saw the consolidation of new kinds of empires and states. They lived at a time when, as a result of the widespread use of gunpowder, warfare became much more costly and more violent. There are a number of threads that unify these rulers. As I said, Norwich is not a professional historian and the bibliography is very short. There are a couple of mistakes in the Ottoman sections. But it’s entertaining to read and I enjoyed it tremendously. He was a great writer. It shows that with the right mindset, you don’t have to know Ottoman Turkish to have a decent understanding of the Ottomans. Norwich is a good starting point against Eurocentric as well as nationalist understandings of the period and it pulls in the reader interested in biography and in history into a much wider understanding of the 16th century. It creates curiosity. It’s a really well-done book in that regard. They all had money problems. They had issues with dynastic reproduction, they had issues with their children. They had health issues. They burned out as a result of their imperial ventures. When you go beyond the personal and the national, you start seeing, structurally, what it entailed to be a ruler. Also, what it meant to live in that particular period, as a member of a wealthy, military-political elite that was constantly in competition. It was very male, very patriarchal, and very paternalistic and that played an important role in the lives of all of them. This was a time of state building and bureaucratization and new kinds of warfare. They were competing against each other; competition was required to survive in this environment. They also had to compete with members of their elite and aristocracies because, at a time of state building, the power of the crown and of the dynasty was increasing. They had all sorts of problems with how to incorporate local elites and aristocracies. Süleyman was luckier than the others because the Ottomans had exterminated local aristocracies and created their own upper elite through conversion, this service class that was mostly made up of slaves. But Süleyman still had to manage that class, to keep them happy. He had to pay them on time because they received stipends. He couldn’t keep them on campaign too long because they would rebel. They were elite soldiers. Charles had the same problems: the Spanish cities rebelled. Henry had the same problems and Francis had the same problems. As you think about the individuals as well as the time and society they lived in, you develop more of a historical understanding in the scholarly sense. That’s a great point. My wife Rita and I have been discussing these things. We were in Upsala for almost a year in the middle of the pandemic, at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, while I was writing this biography of Süleyman. I wrote it, Rita read it, we edited it together a number of times. We had long conversations wondering, ‘What kind of a person are we looking at? Am I going to have some ethical second thoughts after publishing this biography?’ We decided not to over-psychologize these characters, either for good reasons or bad. Otherwise, you think, ‘What a decent man Süleyman was! He spent millions of gold coins in charitable works.’ Or ‘What a bastard Süleyman was! He had two of his sons and many grandchildren executed.’ Henry had two of his wives executed; Süleyman had his own children and grandchildren executed. As rulers they were compelled to do those things, but they also did it to maximize their power. That is the moment where individual will breaks against tradition. Henry could have said, ‘OK, no male heir, that’s fine. The House of York can come back to the throne after I die.’ He didn’t do that. That’s the nasty part. Süleyman didn’t say, ‘You know what, I’m going to designate one of my sons as the next sultan.’ He didn’t do that. They were stuck in these structures that also shaped them. It was partly their own fault, but it partly wasn’t. They were born into this dynastic, male environment. By the time they came to the throne, they had already been molded so much it was impossible for them to change those major structures. It’s one of the tragic aspects of their lives. Süleyman is credited with creating a new bureaucratic system which was revolutionary, but he couldn’t change the succession practice to save his own sons. He didn’t even try. [1] Note from Kaya Şahin: “ Shortly after this interview, we lost Cornell H. Fleischer. During my training with him and later, in many conversations, the five books discussed above were often mentioned. Cornell’s legacy lives in his book and articles and through the work of his students.”"