28/11/2018
We are happy to announce the publication of one more project deliverable: Antonis Hadjikyriacou (ed.) Islands of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2018)! The collection originally appreared as a special issue of the journal Princeton Papers 18 (2017) under the title Insularity in the Ottoman Empire. You can purchase the volume here: https://www.alibris.com/Islands-of-the-Ottoman-Empire/book/40332254
Summary:
Islands have no single obvious attribute, geographic or otherwise. Insularity, then, should not be taken literally and imply isolation; rather, it is about what it means to be an island. This volume employs this concept analytically to study islands as a constituent part of the Ottoman world. Drawing attention to the interplay between the material and the mental, it explores how historical actors experience, imagine, and project their engagements with, and within, the spatial setting of islands.
Islands are most commonly conceptualized as oscillating between connectivity and isolation. Contributions to this volume transcend this dichotomy by enquiring into alternative ways to understand insular space. Divided in three parts, the volume explores various historiographical conceptualizations of islands; the manifestations of violence and law in terraqueous spaces; and different ways in which the state has historically tried to regulate insular space.
The volume includes a contribution by the late Spyros Asdrachas, the renowned Greek historian who sadly passed away when this collection was in press, and to whose memory it is dedicated.
Table of contents:
Antonis Hadjikyriacou, "Envisioning Insularity in the Ottoman World"
PART I: CONCEPTUALIZING INSULARITY
Spyros Asdrachas, "Observations on Insularity in the Greek World"
Eleftheria Zei, "The Historiography of Aegean insularity"
PART II: VIOLENCE AND LAW IN TERRAQUEOUS SPACE
Michael Talbot, "Separating the Waters from the Sea: The Place of Islands in Ottoman Maritime Territoriality during the Eighteenth Century"
Murat Cem Mengüç, "Maritime Warfare in the Aegean and Ionian Islandscapes: Safai’s History of the 1499 Lepanto Expedition"
PART III: REGULATING ISLANDS
Fatma Şimşek, "Blockading an Island: Collective Punishment, Islanders, and the State in the “Largest” Island at the End of the Nineteenth Century"
Kahraman Sakul, "The Ottoman Peloponnese before the Greek Revolution: “A Republic of Ayan, Hakim and Kocabaşı” in “the Sea of Humans and Valley of Castles”"
The volume was copy-edited by Annoushka Papaetova, who also translated part of Spyros Asdrachas' contribution.
The Ottoman Empire stretched from the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. It included islands such as Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, and many smaller ones in the Aegean, Adriatic, and Black Seas. These islands were its frontiers, and many of the battles against Christian enemies were fought here...
