This project explores the collaborative efforts between
the Ottoman Empire and the newly emerging Italian nation in combating a transnational criminal network that emerged
during the Crimean War (1853-56). Amid the political upheaval of the Crimean conflict and Italian Risorgimento, a diverse
group of wartime profiteers – soldiers, artisans, and career lawyers - took the opportunity to engage in large-scale forgery.
The project examines the ways in which Ottoman diplomatic networks and communication channels across Mediterranean
port cities formed a close collaboration against this crime. By applying network analysis and digital tools to historical data,
this project traces social interactions, identifies key actors, and illustrates patterns of trans-imperial criminal network.
This project is conducted as part of Sabancı University PURE (Program for Undergraduate Research) program.
This project draws on a diverse array of primary sources from Ottoman archives, which include
diplomatic correspondences, police reports, court proceedings, consular dispatches, and newspaper articles.
The project employs historical network analysis as its core methodology. This method combines close reading of archival
documents with digital tools and computational analysis for mapping and analyzing relationships among people, locations
and state apparatus. Through careful examination of primary sources, we manually identified key actors, their roles and affiliations within the criminal network. These data are processed through network analysis software Gephi and Leaflet.js
to visualize the spatial and relational dimensions of the crime network and the diplomatic
communication channels to track them.