Alexandre Testanegra: An Ottoman Spy in the New World?

• In Event: Nuevas exploraciones y lecturas del corpus y el archivo coloniales

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the espionage networks between the Ottoman Empire and Spanish America during the sixteenth century. The historiography has shown the measures the Spanish crown took to prevent the arrival of non-Christian and non-Hispanic travelers into America and the entrance of some forbidden diasporas, such as Jews. However, it has not considered the hundreds of Greek travelers –vassals of the Ottoman empire– as networks between these enemy worlds. This study sheds new light on how these Mediterranean sailors connected the Ottoman empire and Spanish America by establishing espionage networks. Drawing on Inquisitorial, municipal, and Royal Audience’s records, this study reconstructs the journey of Alexandre Testanegra, a Greek sailor and former Ottoman janissary, processed for the charges of spying and creating maps and charts of the Spanish dominions for his master Sultan Selim II. Authorities gathered twenty-one testimonies of Testanegra’s journey across the Hispanic and Ottoman empires, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The Hispanic authorities feared Ottoman expansion not only in Asia and Europe but also in North-Africa. However, this study suggests that the Ottomans were also collecting intelligence to arrive in America across the Pacific Ocean and Greeks were their instruments to reach the goal.

Author

• Stephannie Coix, University of Texas at Austin