Studying the relationship between foreignness and social bonding illuminates the logics of integration. In eighteenth century Vienna, the Ottoman presence was inscribed above all within the socio-political history of the city. The Ottoman presence played a part in the Kameralismus of the Imperial administration and in the development of Viennese enlightened absolutism, to the detriment of municipal freedoms. It reinforced the social position of the established ministerial elite against their rival clienteles. It fitted into a trans-imperial familiarity between the Holy Roman Empire and the Sublime Porte, and into the rise of a cosmopolitan oriental milieu in Vienna. In such a situation, the status of foreigners was no longer a hindrance to integration, but a pre-requisite and a catalyst for it instead.