Between Istanbul and Venice: Agency, Faith, and Empire in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Noel Malcolm’s Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World brilliantly excavates and reconstructs the lives of the members of the Bruni and the Bruti, two prominent Albanian families, whose members played significant roles in the political and military history of the Ottoman and Venetian Empires. This review essay attempts to place this important work in the broader context of Malcolm’s oeuvre and, in particular, to assess the book’s contributions to our understanding of agency, religion, and empire in the early modern period.