Island and Empire: How Civil War in Crete Mobilized the Ottoman World (Stanford Ottoman World Series: Critical Studies in Empire, Nature, and Knowledge)

by: Uğur Z. Peçe (Author)

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Edition: 1st

Publication Date: 2024/6/25

Language: English

Print Length: 272 pages

ISBN-10: 1503639231

ISBN-13: 9781503639232

Book Description

In the 1890s, conflict erupted on the Ottoman island of Crete. At the heart of the Crete Question, as it came to be known around the world, were clashing claims of sovereignty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The island was of tremendous geostrategic value, boasting one of the deepest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, and the conflict quickly gained inteational dimensions with an unprecedented collective military intervention by six European powers. Island and Empire shows how events in Crete ultimately transformed the Middle East. Uğur Zekeriya Peçe narrates a connected history of inteational intervention, mass displacement, and popular mobilization. The conflict drove a wedge between the island’s Muslims and Christians, quickly acquiring a character of civil war. Civil war in tu unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe with the displacement of more than seventy thousand Muslims from Crete. In years following, many of those refugees took to the streets across the Ottoman world, driving the largest organized mode protest the empire had ever seen. Exploring both the emergence and legacies of violence, Island and Empire demonstrates how Cretan refugees became the engine of protest across the empire from Salonica to Libya, sending ripples farther afield beyond imperial borders. This history that begins within an island becomes a story about the end of an empire.

About the Author

In the 1890s, conflict erupted on the Ottoman island of Crete. At the heart of the Crete Question, as it came to be known around the world, were clashing claims of sovereignty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The island was of tremendous geostrategic value, boasting one of the deepest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, and the conflict quickly gained inteational dimensions with an unprecedented collective military intervention by six European powers. Island and Empire shows how events in Crete ultimately transformed the Middle East. Uğur Zekeriya Peçe narrates a connected history of inteational intervention, mass displacement, and popular mobilization. The conflict drove a wedge between the island’s Muslims and Christians, quickly acquiring a character of civil war. Civil war in tu unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe with the displacement of more than seventy thousand Muslims from Crete. In years following, many of those refugees took to the streets across the Ottoman world, driving the largest organized mode protest the empire had ever seen. Exploring both the emergence and legacies of violence, Island and Empire demonstrates how Cretan refugees became the engine of protest across the empire from Salonica to Libya, sending ripples farther afield beyond imperial borders. This history that begins within an island becomes a story about the end of an empire.