I am a historian of the early modern Middle East and southeastern Europe, with a focus on the politics and economy of the Ottoman Empire. My work analyzes the roles of military elites in the empire’s finance administration, and how conflicts over those roles gave rise to factionalism and rebellions in the seventeenth century. Additional areas of interest include elite networking and migration, cultural attitudes toward bribery and corruption, and the trans-imperial financial relationships linking the Ottoman Empire to the broader early modern world. I received my Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 2023 and am the recipient of a 2024-25 NEH-ARIT postdoctoral fellowship. 

My publications include “The Veledeş Conflict: A Reassessment of the Mid-Seventeenth-Century Rebellions of the Altı Bölük Halkı,” in the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 8/1 (2021): 291–310; “The Reluctant Pasha: Çerkes Dilaver and Elite Localization in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire,” Turcica 53 (2022): 3–43; “The Early Career of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha: An Archival Reconstruction,” Review of Middle East Studies 57(2024): 73–97, and “An Ottoman Governor’s Agent at the Sublime Porte: The Letters of Kuşçu Mahmud Ağa, 1652–7,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 68 (2025): 92–120.

I can be reached via email at crwhitehead@comcast.net.