Insularity and Empire in Ottoman Cyprus

with Antonis Hadjikyriacou

hosted by Michael Talbot

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The history of Mediterranean islands offers a dynamic paradox of insularity engendered by geographical isolation and connectivity fostered by access to ports and maritime networks. In this podcast, we discuss those themes through a conversation about the transformation of Cyprus over the centuries of Ottoman imperial rule. Our guest Antonis Hadjikyriacou has studied the history of Cyprus from the earliest years of Ottoman rule during the late 16th century into the 19th century. In the interview, we explore agricultural production and political economy in Cyprus through geo-spatial analysis of early Ottoman documentation and consider how the local politics and economy of Cyprus were situated in a changing Mediterranean.

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PARTICIPANT BIOS

Antonis Hadjikyriacou is Marie Curie Intra-European fellow at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas. He earned his Ph.D. in History from SOAS, University of London, and he has previously worked and taught at Princeton University, SOAS, the University of Crete, and the University of Cyprus. Ηe is currently completing his monograph entitled "Insularity and Empire: Ottoman Cyprus in the Early Modern Mediterranean."

Michael Talbot received his PhD from SOAS in 2013 for a thesis on Ottoman-British relations in the eighteenth century, and now lectures and researches on a range of topics in Ottoman history at the University of Greenwich in London.

CREDITS

Episode No. 284
Release Date: 29 November 2016
Recording Location: Rethymno, Greece
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: from archive.org - Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Special thanks to Monsieur Doumani for allowing us to use "The System/Το σύστημαν"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Antonis Hadjikyriacou

To learn more about the Mediterranean Insularities project, visit http://medins.ims.forth.gr/

IMAGES

Map of the Mediterranean Sea from The Book of Curiosities: Book 2, Chapter 10: “On the Western Sea, that is the Syrian Sea, its harbours, islands and anchorages” (MS. Arab. c. 90, fols. 30b-31a). Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

 Gardens and orchards in Lord Kitchener's 1881 "Plan of Nicosia". All rights reserved. (c) Copyright by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, 2016.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aymes, Marc. A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Adrian Morfee. (London and New York, 2014) 

Bentley, Jerry H., Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen, (eds.) Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges (Honolulu, 2007)

Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. 2 Vols. Translated by Siân Reynolds. (London-New York, 1972).

Cadogan, Gerald, Maria Iacovou, Katerina Kopaka and James Whitley (eds), Parallel Lives: Ancient Island Societies in Crete and Cyprus (London, 2012)

Constantakopoulou, Christy, The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World (Oxford, 2007)

Fletcher, Lisa, ““...some distance to go”: A Critical Survey of Island Studies,” in New Literatures Review 47-48 (2011), 17-34.

Given, Micael and Marios Hadjianastasis, “Landholding and Landscape in Ottoman Cyprus” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 34:1 (2010), 38-60

Hadjianastasis, Marios, “Between the Porte and the Lion: identity, politics and opportunism in seventeenth century Cyprus” in Frontiers of the Ottoman imagination: Studies in Honour of Rhoads Murphey, Marios Hadjianastasis, ed., (Leiden, 2014), 139-167

Hadjikyriacou, Antonis, “Local Intermediaries and Insular Space in Late–18th Century Ottoman Cyprus,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 44 (2014), 427–456

Hadjikyriacou, Antonis and Elias Kolovos, “Rural Economies and Digital Humanities: Prospects and Challenges,” in Ottoman Rural Societies and Economies: Halcyon Days in Crete VIII (Rethymno, 2015), 415-423 

Hadjikyriacou, Antonis, (ed.) Insularity in the Ottoman World (Princeton, 2017); also published as a special issue of Princeton Papers 18 (2017)

Kolovos, Elias, “Insularity and Island Society in the Ottoman Context: The Case of the Aegean Island of Andros (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” Turcica 39 (2007), 49-122

Lewis, Martin and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley, 1997)

Margariti, Roxani, “An Ocean of Islands: Islands, Insularity, and Historiography of the Indian Ocean,” in The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, Peter N. Miller, ed. (Ann Arbor, 2013), 198-229

Michael, Michalis N., Eftychios Gavriel, and Matthias Kappler, eds., Ottoman Cyprus: A Collection of Studies in History and Culture. (Wiesbaden, 2009)

Sivasundaram, Sujit, Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony (Chicago, 2013)

Steinberg, Philip E., The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge, 2001)

Tabak, Faruk, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870: A Geohistorical Approach (Baltimore, 2008)

Vatin, Nicolas and Gilles Veinstein, (eds.) Insularités ottomanes (Paris, 2004).

Wigen, Kären, A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600–1912 (Berkeley, 2010)

Yaycioglu, Ali, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, 2016).