The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule

by Paris Papamichos Chronakis

Overview

The Business of Transition examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigated the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. In this social and cultural history, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Jewish and Greek merchants of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) skillfully managed the tumultuous shift from Ottoman to Greek rule amidst revolution and war, rising ethnic tensions, and heightened class conflict. Bringing their once powerful voices back into the historical narrative, he traces their entangled trajectories as businessmen, community members, and civic leaders to illustrate how the self-reinvention of a Jewish-led bourgeoisie made a city Greek.

Papamichos Chronakis draws on previously untapped local archival material to weave a rich narrative of individual portraits, introducing us to revered philanthropists and committed patriots as well as vilified profiteers and victimized Salonicans. Offering a kaleidoscopic view of a city in transition, this book reveals how the collapse of empire shook all the constitutive elements of Jewish and Greek identities, and how Jews and Greeks reinvented themselves amidst these larger political and economic disruptions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503639669
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Series:	Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Paris Papamichos Chronakis is Lecturer in Modern Greek History at the Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

A Note on Languages, Places, Names, and Dates
List of Maps and Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Salonica's Merchants between Empire and Nation-State
Part I: Making Salonica Jewish and Bourgeois, 1882–1908
Jacob Cazes
1. Merchants, Jews, Greeks
2. Merchants, Bourgeois, Salonicans
Part II: Maelstrom: Revolution and War, 1908–1918
Abram and David Errera
3. Revolutionary Hopes, Merchant Fears
4. The Balkan Wars: Politics in Times of Conflict
5. The Great (Class) War, 1914–1918
Part III: Remaking Salonica Greek and Bourgeois, 1912–1922
Joseph Misrahi
6. Toward Hellenization: Coming, Going, Staying, Becoming
7. From Clubs to Associations: New Sociabilities, New Identities
Conclusion: "My end is my beginning"
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating examination of a vitally important city moving through the critical transition from Ottoman Imperial to Greek national rule, The Business of Transition provides a new and textured account of the period, showing that the mercantile classes were both central to and tremendously skillful at navigating this shift. Equally rich in sources and interpretation, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of Greeks, Jews, and the emergence of the 'New Greece.'" —Katherine Fleming, author of Greece: A Jewish History

"Richly documented, The Business of Transition charts the profound transformations that affected the economic and political elites of one of the Mediterranean's great commercial hubs. Paris Papamichos Chronakis sheds new light on a singular chapter in the history of nationalism that reshaped the modern Jewish world." —Francesca Trivellato, author of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells us about the Making of European Commercial Society

"In a field that has historically focused only on minority groups' transition, Chronakis examines the lived experiences and interactions between both groups. In addition, he rejects traditional studies' sole focus on ethnoreligious identity and argues that identity is multifaceted and, in this case, includes social class and local Salonican identity."—Linda Kantor-Swerdlow, Jewish Book Council

"Paris Papamichos Chronakis's The Business of Transition is a tour de force: Deeply researched and beautifully written, it offers an unprecedented window into the worldsofJewish and Greek merchants in Salonica during the first decades of the twentieth century. This period was oneofdizzying change, which included revolution, war, occupation, and a massive fire that remade the city and dislocated most of the city's Jews. A relational history, the book provides thick descriptions of how different actors—and groups—navigated thetransitionfrom Ottoman to Greek rule, forging alliances and rivalries not only along ethnoreligious lines but also according to class, professional, political, urban, and regional formsofidentification. With his erudite analysis and ability to uncover subtle and shifting patterns of behavior and belonging, Chronakis pushes us to move beyond unilinear descriptions of the transition from empire to nation or majority to minority. Instead, we are left with an image of Hellenization as a 'more crooked line than straight path,' an approach made concrete through the book's fine-grained analysisofthe various twists and turns taken along the way." – Julia Phillips Cohen, author of Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era

"This well-plotted book is an interesting mix of national and business history concerning the vicissitudes of Salonica (today's Thessaloniki), the commercial center of the emerging Greek state from the late 19th century through the early 1920s.... Recommended."—S. Bowman, CHOICE

"The Business of Transition forces us to reconsider the history of minoritisation.... The book is certainly a must read for anyone interested in the emergence of modern Greece."—Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor

From the Publisher