The 18th century is also known in intellectual history as the Age of Enlightenment. It was a period in which natural science attained the respect in intellectual circles that it has enjoyed ever since. It was also an era of relative calm and prosperity in Europe. This was reflected in its self-confident literature written in a style that is composed and often brilliantly satirical as well as being of a vigorous clarity that makes it a pleasure to read.
Nevertheless, the Enlightenment is today often seen as a hegemonic movement that sought to impose what it regarded as its truths on the nations in which it developed as well as across the rest of the world. There were certainly intolerant strands within the Enlightenment, but as with any other widespread intellectual movement that defines a whole era, there will always be thinkers within it whose approach differs from the mainstream current. A close reading of the Enlightenment texts of its main adherents and especially those of Voltaire, who more than any other figure of the 18th century seems to personify the Enlightenment, reveals that the core approach of the Enlightenment was one of skepticism toward claims of absolute knowledge. Moreover, the Enlightenment is an era of intellectual inquisitiveness and openness to other cultures.
It is not surprising that this should be the case. After all, a movement that evinces skepticism toward the absolutist claims of its own traditional authorities will also be skeptical toward the traditional enmity targeting other cultures and civilizations resulting from those claims. Thus, it is certainly true that the Enlightenment is marked by hostility toward traditional dogmatic Christianity, but this does not mean it is an anti-religious movement per se. Hence it is unsurprising that during the Enlightenment, Islam and the Ottoman Empire, which was then its greatest geographical manifestation, are subject to disinterest for the first time in European history.
The Enlightenment is seemingly tied to another myth that a scientific approach somehow became the sole property of the enlightened Europeans of that century and that those from other parts of the world who sought a more scientific solution to the myriad problems around them needed to reject all their own learning and abjectly prostrate themselves before the superior wisdom of Europe. It is true that there might be some recognition of the fact that in the Middle Ages scientific flourishing occurred in the Islamic world under the aegis of such polymaths as al-Buruni and Avicenna (Ibn Sina), but even when this fact is recognized, the idea is that the torch of knowledge from this vibrant period kindled that of Europe in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and having done so, its original flame soon burned itself out. That of the latter, fed also by its native talents from Copernicus onward, roared up into a pillar of fire as an exclusive possession of that civilization.
The first portrait in this series of famous visitors to Türkiye is both a representative of the Enlightenment as well as a rebuke to the two aforementioned misrepresentations of the Enlightenment that have been laid out above.
The English noblewoman Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) became an ardent Turcophile by spending many pleasant months living in Istanbul from the spring of 1717 to the early summer of 1718. Her visit thus coincided with an era – that of the Tulip Period – which would have made the city even more spectacular for a visitor to behold than in more normal times. Her reason for being in the city was that her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, with whom she had earlier eloped to escape an arranged marriage, had been appointed as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He was not overly qualified for the position though, which is why Montagu has been described by the historian Andrew Wheatcroft as “a clever woman chained to a dull man.”
Allied with her intelligence is her curiosity. Montagu writes of herself that, “I would be content to endure some inconvenience to content a passion so powerful with me as curiosity.” Concomitantly, she reveals herself as disdainful of the “little minds” that have no interest outside their limited spheres.
The opinions of Istanbul that she formed during her stay there are known to us because this traveler who was both, in the historian Richard Stoneman’s delightful observation, “interesting” and “interested,” left a series of brilliant letters behind. While her letters, which were published in the year after her death, cover much of her life, it has been claimed that the greatest of them are those written from Istanbul. It is also to be noted that, as the historian Philip Mansel reveals, the letters do not contain a patronizing Orientalist attitude but rather show Montagu is an open-minded individual. As such he summarizes the letters as praising “the ease and elegance of Ottoman life, the practical advantages of Islam” and “the freedom of Muslim women.”
In the first letter that Montagu writes from Istanbul, she reveals how wonderful the view is from her residence in Pera. She avers that it is “perhaps altogether the most beautiful prospect in the world.” It is not only the beauty of the cityscape that makes such an impression on her, though. She also notes that “the young women” are “all beauties and their beauty highly improved by the good taste of their dress.” Indeed, the feminine beauty of the women of Türkiye is a repeated theme in her letters. On a par with other comparisons of hers between her homeland and Istanbul in which the former comes off the worse, she compares the appearance of the women in Istanbul positively with those of England.
She compliments one Turkish lady who visits by telling her “what a noise such a face as hers would make in London or Paris” and in return is told by this lady that “if beauty was so much valued in your country as you say they would never have suffered you to leave it.”
It may seem as if so far this sketch of Montagu is resting overly heavily on her interests in what is quite literally a superficial subject and as such does no credit to her reputation as a writer of significance. However, Montagu’s interest in complexion and her evident pleasure in being praised for her own appearance – though she is certainly sceptical of the compliment – is of intellectual interest when properly contextualized.
At the time of her travels, smallpox remained a scourge in many parts of the world. It was particularly fatal to children. Montagu herself had been impacted by it in two different ways. She had lost her younger brother to it in 1713, then, in 1715, about a year and a half before setting out for Istanbul, she contracted it herself and although she survived, it left her with pockmarks on her face and the loss of her eyelashes. Montagu’s having been permanently disfigured by the disease surely explains her fascination with the beauty of the uninfected Turkish women that she encountered on her sojourn in Ottoman lands. But, more significantly, it also surely inspired her ardent determination that her children would never suffer from it as she had.
While her husband was out of Istanbul on a visit to Edirne, Montagu writes to tell him that their son had been “engrafted last Tuesday” but that he had already recovered so well that he “is at this time singing and playing and very impatient for his supper.” A week later, she reaffirms that he is completely fine following this procedure. The procedure she puts her son through is an inoculation against smallpox. Before having the procedure carried out on her son, Montague had taken a deep interest in it. As she writes: "The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting ... There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation. Every autumn in the month of September when the great heat is abated, people send one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox. They make parties for this purpose and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what veins you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much venom as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins."
This form of inoculation is now known as variolation. Montagu states that it causes the children to fall ill but the effects only keep them bedridden for usually two days, occasionally three. Within eight days, it is all over, and no mark is left upon them. Montagu noted that “every year thousands undergo this operation” and claimed that “there is no example of any one that has died in it.” It is then that she reveals her intention “to try it on my dear little son” and also to attempt “to bring this useful invention into fashion in England.”
After she had returned to England from Türkiye, Montagu embarked on her literary career, which included the writing of poetry and essays. She also continued to travel, spending much of the rest of her life in Italy before returning to England in 1761, where she died the following year. However, back in 1726, before she recommenced her travels, Voltaire began his exile in England that was to last for about 2 1/2 years. Some of the observations that he made there are recorded in his "Letters on England." While in England, Voltaire’s interest in Islam and the culture of the Near East made him wish to meet Montagu. Voltaire was deeply impressed by her, describing her in the "Letters on England" as “one of the most intelligent women in England,” a woman with “a powerful intellect.” The biographer Roger Pearson reveals that Voltaire even granted her “the highest praise,” regarding her as a philosophe, or Enlightenment philosopher.
Voltaire is an interesting source to use for the continuation of the story of Montagu as regards her promotion of the variolation procedure she had learned and made use of in Türkiye. Voltaire relates in "Letters on England" that Montagu had inoculated her child in Istanbul, and that he had been fine. Voltaire then relates that when Montagu had returned to London, she told of what she had done to the then-Princess of Wales, who at the time Voltaire was writing had become Queen of England, another woman to earn praise from Voltaire for her discernment.
Voltaire goes on to relate that the then-princess, who herself had almost lost one of her daughters to the disease, tested the inoculation method on “four criminals condemned to death” and found that it worked – the criminals being subsequently reprieved. Voltaire imparts that the then-princess subsequently used the inoculation procedure on her own children and that “England followed her example.” Voltaire then notes that this in turn has meant that “since then at least ten thousand children of good family ... owe their lives to the Queen and Lady Wortley Montagu, and as many girls are indebted to them for their beauty.”
He also makes the following observation: "Out of a hundred people in the world at least sixty have smallpox, and of these sixty, twenty dies of it in the flower of their youth and twenty keep the unpleasant marks for ever. This makes one fifth of all human beings that this disease kills or permanently disfigures. Of all those inoculated in Türkiye or England not one dies unless he is infirm and predisposed to die anyway, nobody is disfigured, nobody has smallpox a second time, assuming that the inoculation was properly done."
He then names some of the famous Frenchman who would have lived had inoculation also been introduced into his native France as well as averring that it would have saved thousands of other French lives. However, Voltaire is aware that at the time in which he is writing, the English are seen in France as “mad and maniacs” for deliberately infecting their children with smallpox even if it is “to prevent their getting it.”
Voltaire demonstrates the Enlightenment view that it is possible to beneficially learn from other cultures and that on certain questions, those outside Europe may be more scientifically advanced than those within it. Consequently, Voltaire describes Turks as “sensible people” open to introducing inoculation in their own territory. Indeed, Voltaire regards stubborn unscientific nativism as being responsible for the failure to introduce inoculation into France to the great detriment of his home country.
The term vaccination is usually preferred to inoculation today although the two terms carry the same meaning when used in the context of deliberately creating immunity to a disease. The etymology of vaccination comes from “vacca” meaning “cow” in Latin. Toward the end of the 18th century, 34 years after Montagu’s death, an English surgeon Edward Jenner pioneered a different approach to smallpox. Despite Montagu and Voltaire’s protestations, the variolation procedure was not risk-free. An inoculated person had their risk of death reduced by around 90%, but that still meant a significant number of those who underwent it would not survive the procedure. Like Montagu, Jenner was an observant individual and had noticed that those who came down with cowpox did not contract smallpox. He, therefore, experimented with an inoculation of cowpox on a young boy who then proved to be immune from smallpox. This success eventually led to the replacement of the riskier variolation with the far safer form of vaccination. Montagu would surely have approved of this change. She would also surely have welcomed the eradication of smallpox in the second half of the 20th century with a developed form of the aforementioned vaccine.
Having just come out of a pandemic ourselves, even if the disease in question was never as lethal as smallpox had been, the story of Montagu surely has an extra piquancy for us, especially, perhaps, as many of us have been immunized with a vaccine that was itself developed by two scientists in Germany who are themselves of Turkish origin. This demonstrates that the scientific approach that became so revered in the time of Montagu and that was bolstered by what she herself brought back from Türkiye has continued to help humankind actively protect itself from infectious diseases rather than remaining passive victims of them, and as such she and her Turkish exemplars have played a notably important role in the betterment of the condition of humanity.
