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“Port Cities, Diaspora Communities and Emerging Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire: Balkan Merchants in Odessa and Their Network in the Early Nineteenth Century”

Oliver Schulz
Affiliation:
Düsseldorf University
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Summary

Introduction and Methodological Remarks

Port cities are an interesting subject for historical studies due to their inherent cosmopolitan character, with a multitude of different communities living together as a result of foreign trade and international trading contacts. These links led not only to the exchange of goods and money but also to the migration of significant groups of people between different port cities. Odessa, in the present-day Ukraine, is a particularly attractive subject for an historical study because the migration and settlement of foreigners formed a deliberate part of Russian policy in the newly-conquered territories on the Black Sea shore in the late eighteenth century, when Catherine Ð founded the city on the spot of a former Tatar village. My interest in the topic evolved during research for a PhD thesis on the intervention of the “European Concert” in the Greek War of Independence (1826-1832). To gain a full understanding of Russian foreign policy in the Ottoman Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and the emergence of Greek nationalism, a number of issues had to be taken into account, including Russian southward expansion to the Black Sea, settlement and population policy in Novorossija and the subsequent role of the Greek diaspora in Odessa and its contribution to the rise of a national identity. In fact, the Greek diaspora set a pattern for other Orthodox Balkan people living under Ottoman domination. The Bulgarian merchants in Odessa in the early nineteenth century, who are unfortunately much less known and studied than their Greek “colleagues,” will receive particular attention here. Previous articles have already pointed out how the Bulgarian diaspora in the nineteenth century modelled its own national movement on the Greek experience and often even participated in the Greek national movement against the Ottomans before emancipating itself from Greek tutelage in its fight for an independent Bulgarian state.

This essay cannot examine this question in detail on the basis of extensive archival research. It seeks instead to present a synthesis of this huge subject and to develop perspectives for future research. Before exploring the topic, however, it is necessary to make some methodological remarks about the study of the history of Odessa and its communities in the nineteenth century.

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Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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