The Big Picture: writing the history of the Greeks under Ottoman rule

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 13
Room: 
001
Thursday, March 1, 2012 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Thursday, March 1, 2012 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm

In this talk I will discuss the challenges of writing a synthetic history of the Greek experience under Ottoman rule, a period which stretches from 1400 until 1922 (although in this talk I will limit myself to the pre Tanzimat period.) A key focus will be the new historiography, which (correctly, in my view) rejects the traditional approach of "communal history." The new historiography asserts that the Ottoman administration was not external to a clear cut communal body, but was part and parcel of the new Greek reality that emerged under Ottoman rule.

Molly Greene is a Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University, with a joint appointment in the Program for Hellenic Studies. The experience of the Greeks under Ottoman rule is at the center of her work. Her first book, A Shared World: Muslims and Christians in the Early Modern Mediterranean, was published with Princeton University Press in 2000. In 2010 she published her second book, also with Princeton University Press, entitled Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean. This book was co winner of the 2011 Runciman Award, awarded annually by the Anglo Hellenic League for the best book published in English on some aspect of the Hellenic world. She is currently under contract with University of Edinburgh Press for a synthetic study of the Greeks under Ottoman rule.