The End of Ottoman Crete

with Uğur Z. Peçe

hosted by Sam Dolbee

| In the 1890s, Ottoman Crete descended into communal violence between its Christian and Muslim inhabitants, abetted by foreign powers and Ottoman officials alike. In this episode, Uğur Z. Peçe explains how this conflict--which he calls a civil war--came about, what it meant in people's intimately connected everyday lives, and how it shaped the end of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, Cretan refugees resettled elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire became a key part of various protest movements including boycotts. Uğur speaks with us about these topics while traveling through present-day Crete, considering, among other things, the unexpected connections between the Eastern Black Sea and Crete, the island's distinctive landscape, and snails.        

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In the 1890s, Ottoman Crete descended into communal violence between its Christian and Muslim inhabitants, abetted by foreign powers and Ottoman officials alike. In this episode, Uğur Z. Peçe explains how this conflict--which he calls a civil war--came about, what it meant in people's intimately connected everyday lives, and how it shaped the end of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, Cretan refugees resettled elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire became a key part of various protest movements including boycotts. Uğur speaks with us about these topics while traveling through present-day Crete, considering, among other things, the unexpected connections between the Eastern Black Sea and Crete, the island's distinctive landscape, and snails.

    

Contributor Bios

	Uğur Z. Peçe is an assistant professor of history at Lehigh University, where he teaches classes on empire, migration, revolution, and the Middle East. He is the author of Island and Empire: How Civil War in Crete Mobilized the Ottoman World (Stanford University Press, 2024).
	Sam Dolbee is Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches classes on environment, disease, and the modern Middle East. His book Locusts of Power is out now with Cambridge University Press.

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Credits

Episode No. 570

Release Date: 29 December 2024
Recording location: Chamaizi, Sougia, Chania 

Sound production by Sam Dolbee and Chris Gratien

Music: Zé Trigueiros, "Petite Route, "ΓΙΑΛΕΛΕΛΙ,""Chiaroscuro," "Big Road of Burravoe"  

Images and bibliography courtesy of Uğur Z. Peçe

Further Listening

	Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky	566 8/29/24	North Caucasian Refugees and the Late Ottoman State
	Ella Fratantuono	331 9/1/17	Migrants in the Late Ottoman Empire
	Panayotis League	463 5/3/20	The Journeys of Ottoman Greek Music
	Şölen Şanlı Vasquez	513 9/16/21	The Circassian Diaspora
	Devin Naar	314 5/19/17	Jewish Salonica and the Greek Nation

Images

Survivors of the Sarakina massacre in Selino, Crete, 1897 (Courtesy of Istanbul University Rare Documents Library, Yıldız Albums)

Locals and European soldiers in the Hania waterfront, Crete, 1897 (Courtesy of Austrian State Archives)

European soldiers at a concert at the cafe European Concert, Hania, Crete, 1896 (Courtesy of Periklis Diamantopoulos Archive)

Olive harvest in a Cretan village, c. 1899 (Courtesy of Historical Archives of Crete)

Map of Crete showing administrative divisions by European powers, 1899 (Courtesy of British National Archives)

A group of islanders against the Ottoman government, Platanias, Crete, 1896 (Courtesy of Ioannis Mourellos Archive)

A protest rally for Crete, Izmir, 1911 (Courtesy of Resimli Kitap)

Select Bibliography

Adıyeke, Ayşe Nükhet, and Nuri Adıyeke, Osmanlı Dönemi Kısa Girit Tarihi (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2021).

Andriotis, Nikos, “Les querelles ethnoreligieuses en Crète et l’intervention des puissances européennes (seconde moitié du XIXe siècle),” in Anastassios Anastassiadis, ed., Voisinages fragiles: Les relations interconfessionnelles dans le Sud-Est européen et la Méditerranée orientale, 1854–1923. Contraintes locales et enjeux internationaux, (Athens: EFA, 2013).

Armitage, David, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (New York: Vintage, 2017).

Corbin, Alain, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

Detorakis, Theoharis and Alexis Kalokerinos, eds., Ē Teleutaia Fasē tou Krētikou Zētēmatos (Iraklio: Etairia Krētikōn Historikōn Meletōn, 2001).

Eldem, Edhem, İstanbul’da Ölüm: Osmanlı-İslam Kültüründe Ölüm ve Ritüelleri (Istanbul: Osmanlı Bankası Arşiv ve Araştırma Merkezi, 2005).

Hadjikyriacou, Antonis, “Envisioning Insularity in the Ottoman World,” Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, no. 18 (2017): vii–xix.

Kallivretakis, Leonidas, “A Century of Revolutions: The Cretan Question between European and Near Eastern Politics,” in Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ed., Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship, 11–35 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

Kechriotis, Vangelis, “Experience and Performance in a Shifting Political Landscape: The Greek-Orthodox Community of Izmir/Smyrna at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies 17 (2011).

Koliopoulos, John S., and Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1921 (Chichester:Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

Kostopoulou, Elektra, “The Island That Wasn’t: Autonomous Crete (1898–1912) and Experiments of Federalization,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 6 (2016): 550–66.

Malkki, Liisa H., Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Mansur, Fatma, Bodrum: A Town in the Aegean (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972).

Perakis, Manos, “An Eastern Mediterranean Economy under Transformation: Crete in the Late Ottoman Era,” Journal of European Economic History 40, no. 3 (2011): 483–525.

Plamper, Jan, “Sounds of February, Smells of October: The Russian Revolution as Sensory Experience,” American Historical Review 126, no. 1 (2021): 140–65.

Şenışık, Pınar, The Transformation of Ottoman Crete: Revolts, Politics and Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011).