European merchants in their factories (‘nations’) in the Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman rule were not really colonizers; in early modern times, they were somehow privileged guests. However, they deserve an important part in a long-term history of types of ‘close distance’ and forms of segregational coexistence. Different from recent studies that stress a strong overall interaction, understanding, sharing, and exchange between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, it is proposed to distinguish three levels: (1) The daily commercial interaction of Western Europeans with their Ottoman counterparts; (2) the stronger involvement in some politico-religious struggles (the 1724 schism in the patriarchate of Antioch serves as example): also here, one has still to distinguish between real interest in the religious cause and other activities as credit lending; (3) the care for and maintenance by the Europeans of their own Western national culture abroad: these cultural activities served more to (eventually unconsciously) perform ‘boundary work’ and to close up the ‘nation’. These early modern forms of close distance and segregation were only isomorphic but not homologous with later highly conscious colonial and modern imperial forms of contact between ‘West’ and ‘East’ as in the nineteenth-century European settlements in Istanbul.

中文翻译：

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相互作用和边界工作：黎凡特和东方教会的西方商业殖民地，1650-1800

在奥斯曼帝国统治下的东地中海工厂（“国家”）中的欧洲商人并不是真正的殖民者。在近代早期，他们不知何故是有特权的客人。然而，在“近距离”类型和隔离共存形式的长期历史中，它们应该扮演重要的角色。与最近的研究强调欧洲人和奥斯曼帝国主体之间强烈的整体互动、理解、分享和交流不同，建议区分三个层次：（1）西欧人与奥斯曼帝国同行的日常商业互动；(2) 更强烈地参与一些政治宗教斗争（1724 年安提阿宗主教区的分裂就是一个例子）：同样在这里，人们仍然需要区分对宗教事业的真正兴趣和其他活动，如信贷；(3)欧洲人在国外对自己的西方民族文化的关心和维护：这些文化活动更多地（最终在不知不觉中）起到了“边界工作”和封闭“民族”的作用。这些近代早期的近距离和隔离形式只是同构的，但与后来高度自觉的殖民和现代帝国形式的“西方”和“东方”之间的接触形式并不相同，就像 19 世纪伊斯坦布尔的欧洲定居点一样。