Ottoman History Podcast - Greeks in the Ottoman Empire

Episode Date: December 18, 2015

with Molly Greene hosted by Chris Gratien Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Hipcast | Soundcloud Nearly two centuries ago, Greece achieved its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Yet for centuries before, and for many Greeks even a century after, the story of Greek history was deeply intertwined with that of the Ottoman state, its institutions, and its other subjects. In this episode, we sit down with Molly Greene to discuss her new work on the history of Greeks from the beginning of the Ottoman period into the 18th century, which is a contribution to the The Edinburgh History of the Greeks series. We explore how recent research is changing the picture of the Greek experience of Ottoman rule and the complex relations between state and society throughout the transformation of the imperial structure, and we reflect on the ways in which the history of Ottoman Greeks enriches our understanding of the empire as a whole. « Click for More »

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Chris Greighton. Today, the subject of our podcast is a sort of broad look at the history of Greeks or Greek Orthodox communities in the Ottoman Empire, sort of really from the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's history and into the 18th century. Our guest today is certainly someone who's qualified to speak on that topic, Professor Molly Green. She's professor of history at Princeton University and a faculty member at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. Professor Green, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me.

I'm very happy to be recording with you here today on the Upper West Side, actually right across the street from a pretty sizable Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. I hadn't thought of that. That's nice. I saw it on my way over here. I was like, wow, look at that. Kind of piecing the puzzles together. But Professor Green is the author of a number of books relevant to the history of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean. Her book, A Shared World, which came out in 2000, looked at Christians and Muslims in

the Mediterranean living together and interacting, we could say. Mediterranean, living together and interacting, we could say. In a more recent book, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants looked at similar themes in the Mediterranean and focusing on that borderlands region that is the maritime space of the Mediterranean during the Ottoman period. Our subject today is her new book with Edinburgh University Press. It's called The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768. And this book is more of a survey, and indeed it is a survey of what the state of the literature is on Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. And I think for the period that it covers, it's really a survey of where the historiography is at in terms of thinking about what the Ottoman Empire

was as a polity and its relationship vis-a-vis non-Muslim subjects. So, Professor Green, I want to start out with a question that isn't at all a criticism, but it's a question that comes out of the title, actually, the 1453 to 1768. Because one of the interesting things you do in the work is after starting with that 1453, the conquest of Istanbul in the title is say, actually, the starting point for our subject is before the conquest, and it's in the Balkans. I thought this is a very interesting way of framing the history of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. It's a different way of looking at the question. Why don't you tell us why you set it up that way and explain the context?

So first, I should say a little bit about the context of the publication of the book. I was approached to write this book. This is my first commission book. And the University of Edinburgh Press is doing a history of the Greeks from antiquity to the present. And this is one of the decisions that you have to make in your career. The premise is something I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, because it implies the continuity thesis, which I'm very much opposed to, and I think intellectually can't be supported. But of course, I did want to write the volume. So there were, and I was pleased to be asked. But there were

certain constraints, and these are the dates that they gave. And I actually, in the beginning, thought that I would write a beginning in 1453, and the book does end around 1768. I don't have a problem with that. But the more I read, the more I realized that the conquest of the Greek world was a gradual one, taking place over many decades, if not centuries. one, taking place over many decades, if not centuries. And it was really this detail about Thessaly that caught my attention when I realized that by the time the city had fallen, the Ottomans had been in Thessaly at least since the 1420s, and one could say even going back to the end of the 14th century. I realized that there was the interregnum with the defeat of Bayezid in Anatolia.

Even there, it's not clear how much the Ottomans actually moved out of Thessaly. At any rate, by the time the city fell, there were third-generation Christian Sepahis who had been there since the time of Evernos Bey, the conqueror of Thessaly. And here we're speaking about the plain of Thessaly and particularly the city of Larissa or Yenisehir.

And we know this from the cadastral surveys, so this has to mean, I mean, this is my conclusion, that by the time the city fell, of course it was important symbolically, but the Christian elite in Thessaly had already made its arrangements with the Ottomans. Yeah. I mean, that's a very fascinating way of reframing the historiography for a lot of reasons. I mean, we can talk about the implications of that for our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, if you want to talk to the Ottoman historians out there who are listening. And this is a development that's been happening sort of in the literature, looking at the pre-conquest Ottoman state and just what it was made of, which is actually a lot of,

conquest the ottoman state and just what it was made of which is actually a lot of um i mean a lot of it was uh sort of bringing in local christian elite into the ruling structure and as you said it might seem like a small amount of time on paper but we're talking about generations of interaction there it's actually interesting that you talk about that trend of speaking about the pre-ottoman conquest or the the the pre-1453 conquest i hadn't thought about that but of speaking about the pre-Ottoman conquest, or the pre-1453 conquest. I hadn't thought about that. But of course, there's other work, if I can reference my student, Helen Pfeiffer, who has also blurred, and others, who has also blurred that 1516-1517 line, that in fact, there were Ottoman scholars going to Cairo, Arab scholars going to Istanbul before 1416, 1417, so people already knew each other. And as you see in the book, I make this comment that even as regards the patriarch in

Istanbul, there were contacts before 1453. This is not the coming together of two strangers. The other thing that I drew inspiration from for that first chapter and with the decision to start in Thessaly long before the conquest was the work of Byzantine historians who have, in the last several decades, really drawn into question the significance

of 1204-1261 and the idea that 1261 restored the Byzantine Empire. More and more the scholarship points to the fact that like Humpty Dumpty, what had been broken apart could not be put back together. And that after 1261, yes, we speak about the Byzantine Empire, but what we really have is one small state around Constantinople and a bunch of other regional power centers, which means that the Greek world was fragmented politically, culturally. So it makes no sense that Fatima Ahmed in 1453 inherited this sort of homogenous Greek world when Byzantine historians are writing the exact opposite. But one of the interesting points that that raises, I think, for thinking about Greek

history and thinking about Ottoman history, is that with the ottoman conquest of this large region suddenly uh most of what we would say is the the whether you think about it as an ethno-linguistic group or a religious group the greek world is united by uh a polity the ottoman empire uh by the uh 16th century right so one of the things that I think is important is when we say the Greek world, again, yes, it is a Greek world and there's a very particular place for a Hellenic culture. But I would say that various regional power centers come under the control of one state.

To say the Greek world is, I think, to imply kind of homogeneity, which I'm trying to break apart. And the other thing that I would say more concretely, and I try and bring this out in the book, is that the conquest of the Greek world, of course, goes on even after 1453 and up through the 17th century. And I've written about this more in my other two books. A significant part of the Greek world is still under Latin control. So it really takes a long time for most Greek subjects,

for most people that we would identify as Greek, admittedly a difficult question, to be subjects of the Sultan, and that has consequences. Well, okay, so let's talk about what it means. What are Greeks in the Ottoman Empire? What does it mean to be Greek in the Ottoman Empire? What are we talking about here? Certainly, if we want to think in terms of the ecclesiastical structure, we have the Greek Patriarchate, which is like a religious and political body

that kind of unites greeks throughout the ottoman empire but conversely what is the diversity or different um communities of greeks that we're talking about when we're talking about the greeks under ottoman rule as you are in this survey um one of the things that i liked about the approach of the series uh under the under the directorship of tom gallant whoant, who has written the volume now out for the 19th century, is that this is very much a history of the Greeks, not of Greece. And most histories of Greece focus on a part of the empire, the large part of which was

marginal to the empire. a part of the empire, the large part of which was marginal to the empire. What became the modern Greek state was a backwater of the empire, and the centers of Greek life, I mean, in terms of Greek elite culture, had long ago shifted further north and to the east. I mean, places like Thessaloniki, Istanbul, of course, and places in Anatolia. One of the things that I argue in the book is that the patriarchy continues to be the bearer of elite Greek culture. So I disagree with Anthony Kardelis, who says that this Byzantine historian, who when looking at the relative weight of Byzantine identity, which is Roman, Greek, and Christian,

says that there was a kind of mix of these three, and after the Ottomans, this identity becomes wholly Christian. I mean, entirely Christian. Yeah. Entirely Christian. Which makes sense, given that the Ottomans, of course, classified people according to religion, not ethnicity. Yeah. And he's right that it becomes more so however there's there's good evidence that

in Istanbul itself um the patriarchy uh continued of course to be a Greek speaking institution and that this room identity um uh um continued to be the identity that elites in Istanbul held on to. Let me give an example of this. Qadeli shows that late in Byzantine history, this Roman identity, this Rome identity, was still very strong in Constantinople. However, and this is here referencing the work of Teresa Charcross, amongst others, further further south let's

say in the Morea and the Peloponnesos this room identity is not important there's other types of identities there's not this adherence to a Roman identity so the so the the room or Roman identity is something that is a feature of Anatolia and Syria, but not, where's the line there? It's a feature of Constantinople. Ah, okay. So that never goes away. What happens over time is that beginning from the late 17th century, this room identity,

this adherence to something that has that has a greek flavor beyond uh plain christianity um starts to spread across the empire and one of the things i argue about helenism i won't go into all the ways we can define this but let's say about helenism about greekness as opposed to say the serbians or the bul Bulgarians, is that it waxes and wanes because Greek civilization is a civilization as opposed to simply an ethnic group. People can join it and people can leave it. And the Ottoman period,

when the Ottomans conquered the city, I would say that the room identity, the specifically Greek identity in addition to a Christian identity, is very much on the decline. And over time, under Ottoman patronage, it gradually expands. So that by the 18th century in the far western Balkans around the city of Ohrid, you once again have Greek-speaking elites in there

staffing the church as opposed to Serbian. Or you have the beginning of the Hellenizing mission, let's say, in the far east, in Trebzon or in places like Smyrna. But this is the particular development under the Ottomans. But if we go back to the 9th century when the Byzantine emperors re-Hellenized southern Greece from the Slavs, this is something that I think is quite fascinating about Hellenic civilization, is that it shrinks and grows and shrinks and grows.

It's an option that is always there for the Christians of the Balkans and of Anatolia, and even to a certain extent of the Middle East. Welcome back to Ottoman History Podcast. Chris Grayton here talking with Professor Molly Green about her new work, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768. I want to remind our listeners that you can check out our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com, to find the link where you could either look up that book or purchase that book, as well as a few other useful pieces of background reading

for the bibliography for this podcast. Professor Green, I want to continue with what we were just talking about, which is the waxing and waning of what you call Hellenic civilization, or at least Hellenism is sort of this identity that resurges during the Ottoman period. How do you explain this resurgence? What is the context of the rising Greek identity? Because a lot of our listeners will be familiar with the more nationalist version of history, the awakening and whatnot,

but I think what you're referring to is an earlier resurgence, so to speak. So could you open that up a little bit? Yeah. Let me say a bit more about the word Ruhm and my assertion that an association with Ruhm as opposed to simply Christian never left the elites of Istanbul. And we know that at the end of the 15th century, one of the very few times

that a Slav was appointed to the patriarchy, he was chased out and his inability to speak Greek properly was made fun of. So this is one example we have, despite the fact that you won't see this reflected in Ottoman official records, a Christian is a Christian. We know that a sense of Greekness and Hellenism was always strong in Constantinople. However, it was definitely on the decline

in the early Ottoman centuries. And in fact, I discuss the instability of this word room, and how in the 16th century, it comes to be applied more and more to the Ottomans themselves. They start to say, we are the room. And it's also interesting, we can't prove the connection, but it's interesting that around the time, and Jamal Kafadar has pointed this out,

at the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman Turks less and less refer to themselves as room. And we see this term appear more and more amongst the Greeks, the Greek elite. So it sort of moves around at any rate. And this is after the conquest of the Arab provinces, which changes a little bit the image of the Ottoman dynasty.

Right, right. So the resurgence of Greek identity is very much related to the growing strength of the church second half of the 17th century the patriarch couldn't even get an audience with the sultan by the 18th century the barats are getting longer and longer as he secures more and more privileges this to a certain extent is known the resurgence of greek identity has in the past been linked to the return of the nation, the rise of the nation. This, I think, has been effectively demolished

by Greek scholars like Socrates, Petmasas, Eleni Gara, many, many people. And what's clear is that the resurgence of Greek identity at the elite level, at the lowest level, of course, it's hard to know what people, is very much related to the growing strength of the church. And the growing strength of the church is not related to anything as amorphous as the return of the nation. It is related to the increasing importance of the church in helping the Ottomans run the empire.

And yeah, so why does the church become so important in governance? Well, the Ottomans, and this is a story that's sort of well known for the Muslim side, but it's not often appreciated that there's a parallel development on the Christian side. The Ottomans, with the end of the Sipahi class, as you know, are looking for new partners to help them run the empire. And the church is there, and the church steps into the breach. So how do you see this trend? Do you see this as a decentralization? What is the change that's taking place in the Ottoman state during the 17th century? I mean, what is this example of the Greek patriarchy? Tell us about the larger

Ottoman world at this time. Right. I mean, one of the things that I try and do in the book with the patriarchy and with other things is to argue, and I think it's correct, that Christian society, at least before 1770, is not going off on some sort of alternative path to Muslim society. Their paths tend to be running parallel, and that institutional developments in the Ottoman Empire have far more to do, tell us far more about the patriarchy and about Christian institutions than some sort of separate Christian fate or the rise of the nation. So when the Ottoman Empire is looking for communities, as they turn more and more to communities to pay the taxes, you have bishops and metropolitans and church elites across the Balkans saying, you know, we'll collect the taxes for you. So the church adds the administrative

responsibilities to its other responsibilities, which are sort of a little bit less clear-cut than we used to think. So just as a Muslim merchant, a Muslim qadi, different pre-existing social elites in the Arab and the Balkan provinces step in, so too do church officials. Welcome back. Chris Grayton here, talking with Professor Molly Green about her new history of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. This is a general survey, so I want to ask another general question of broad relevance to our listeners who might be curious about how your discussion of the rise of the Patriarchate as a political

and administrative institution is related to the changing understanding of the millet system in the Ottoman Empire. There has been quite a bit of historiographical debate surrounding what the millet system really is, if it was a system, and when it came about. So what is the relationship here? Is what we came to call the millet system in the 19th century a product of this transformation?

Is this transformation brought about by the creation of the millet system? What is the causal relationship, or what is the link? This is what Socrates Petmosas wrote in 1996. He says, the formation of a formal set of prerogatives and privileges belonging to the Greek Orthodox patriarchy, recognized by the sublime port, as well as the consolidation and the enlargement of his power over his suffragists and his peers, the other patriarchs, the archbishops of the autocephalous churches, was the patient work of three centuries. So if you do the math, 1453, it's in the 18th century that the patriarch has really consolidated his power to the in a way that

reminds us of the millet system although this was still i would say de facto rather than de euro which is what became the case in the 19th century when the ottoman state like all modernizing states wants to make society more legible yeah exactly prior to that one of the things i've tried to bring out and i and i have to i don tried to bring out, and I don't think I succeeded entirely, and I don't think the scholarship is still there yet, I've talked about the rather limited and contingent and always contested prerogatives that were given to the patriarch. And I did try and bring out in the book the extent to which we shouldn't take the Greek Orthodox community for granted, but look at how it is, how are there many communities,

and how community leadership throughout the centuries has to be constantly reestablished and contested, which sort of makes sense when you think about communities in the pre-modern world, but we have given Christian elites a natural authority. Let me just give you one example. The wonderful work of Sophia Laou has shown, usually we see monasteries as sort of bastions of Christian identity or Greek Orthodox identity, and she has shown how relatives of,

we know that peasants donated their property to monasteries, and we know they did a lot of that because monastic property grows during the Ottoman period. She has shown that relatives of peasants who donated their land to monasteries went to the Islamic court to protest those donations, and saying, you know, those lands should have gone to us, according to Islamic laws of inheritance, things like this. those lands should have gone to us, according to Islamic laws of inheritance, things like this. This shows that this thing that we call the community is in fact a very contested,

what we still don't know too much about, although this is a wonderful example that Sofayla, is how community was lived and contested at the local level. And I think that's something that we absolutely have to do more with going forward. But I would reject the idea that sort of Fatima Ahmed sort of handed the keys to the castle over to Gennadios and said, okay, you're in charge of the Christians from now on. That is absolutely not what happened. That's a very interesting way of framing it. And, you know, this book as a whole, I went through a lot of it on my way over here. And it's almost like every paragraph is a historiographical discussion unto itself that's taking place off somewhere with some scholars and definitely in your head. opens up one of these complex questions that you can look at, again, on the local level and in new

ways. And it really opens up a lot of exciting avenues for research, actually, for a student getting into the topic. Which brings me to maybe a larger point, which I think is sort of the spirit driving this work, at least. And I like that Edinburgh Press chose to go this direction with the history of the Greeks. This book, a lot of it is about the Ottoman Empire, actually. A lot of it is about what was happening in the Ottoman Empire, and a lot of it is bringing together what's happened in the historiography of how we think about the Ottoman state

that's been developing over the past two decades. Obviously, it can't be summed up in a sentence, but what do you think the example of looking at the history of the Greeks up until the mid 18th century is telling us about the Ottoman empire as a whole, as an entity, as a political space and as a social world, you know, sort of turning it on the, looking at the other side of the coin. What are some of the insights that for you have come out of this work?

That's a great question. And one of the reasons I wanted to write this book was I wanted to write the history of the Greeks in conversation with major debates in Ottoman history. The last time a general narrative of the Greeks under the Ottomans was written was 1961. And you can imagine that at that time, it was a great work, Apostolos Vakalopoulos' work, but this was not even on the horizon, the idea of engaging with Ottoman debates. So I wanted to write about the Christians as subjects of the Sultan and as part

of Ottoman society. What do we learn about the Ottomans? For instance, the 18th century, I take issue with, I mean, it's a great work, but I take issue with Baki Tezcan and Karen Barkey's assertion that in the 18th century, a kind of proto-Muslim polity is forming, which alienates the Greeks and leads to their gradual exit. Yeah. And I think, and I've talked about this with Bakke, I think one of the reasons this can be asserted is that it's almost an aside. And Bakke said to me, yeah, he said, actually, you know, I mean, he doesn't work on the Christians. And Bakke said to me, yeah, he said, actually, you know, I mean, he doesn't work on the Christians. But I think oftentimes people who work on, quote unquote, mainstream Ottoman history and don't work on the Christian communities do make these kind of asides.

And they need to be developed, which is what I tried to do in my book. So my argument about the 18th century is that for the Christians, the future very much looked imperial. is that for the Christians, the future very much looked imperial. And I don't see any evidence for, prior to 1768, of a significant uptick in alienation from the empire. And what I argue is not so much that Christians felt equal to the Muslims. Of course they didn't. And it might even have been the case that Muslims were amassing privileges in the way that Bakke argues.

But what I do argue is that Christian institutions found a more secure home within the empire. And that this must have always been their primary concern, not relations with Muslims, not whether they were equal, they were never going to be equal, but that they stabilized their position in the 18th century. And this was the major development, which works very much against any sort of idea that they're being alienated and sort of you know

looking to head out head out i mean it for me as somebody who works more on the the later ottoman period it really puts it it makes a much longer uh historical context for stuff we talk about right up until the last years of the ottoman empire you know we had vangelis kechriotis on the podcast unfortunately he sadly passed away recently. But he studied how even right up until the very last days of the empire, there were many, many Greeks or Rum who did see an imperial future for themselves as well because that was their status quo,

and they tried to find a way of fitting into that. I mean, the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive until after World War I, the nation and the state aren't really firmly linked. But anyway, it's a separate issue. Yeah, if I could jump in on that, and I'm very much building, one of the ironies,

and I talk about this in Chapter 7, is that it's quote-unquote mainstream Ottoman historians, someone like Karen Barkey or Baki Tesjan, and I cite them again just because they're the ones who've made this general statement about the 18th century. They're the ones who are saying, you know, look, the Christians were beginning, you know, we're looking for a way out. And funnily enough, it's the new generation of Greek historians, people like Vangelis and Cagriotis, who are saying, actually, no, Greeks are still pretty attached to the empire. It's kind of a strange flip of roles.

Well, you know, when we try to look at the big picture, it's hard because you have to generalize. And obviously, it's very complex. Vangelis looked at Cappadocian Greeks who don't speak Greek. Their situation is much different than people who live in modern day Greece. But yes, certainly. Actually, along those lines, there isn't too much, but I try and sort of at least make a few references to that in the book about how we think about the Greek world, that there are people who are Greek Orthodox Christians

who don't speak Greek. There are Christians who convert to Islam who continue to speak greek there are muslims who can they're they're christians who convert to islam uh who continue to speak to speak greek so i also try and raise that issue of getting out of the boxes of language and um uh and religion and speaking about this um ongoing attachment to the empire which again i'm not trying to argue that there was any sort of um sort of greater tolerance or anything like that. I'm just talking about stabilizing your position as part of Ottoman decentralization. There's been some great work recently on the 18th century Peloponnesos.

And here I'm thinking particularly of the work of Gundu, showing that right up until 1768, with the outbreak of the Orlov Rebellion, there was widespread holding of office by Christians, there were political alliances that crossed regional lines. And so I bring up that article simply because it's an excellent study of a particular region and the participation of Christians in Ottoman governance. And I hope that doesn't sound too – I'm not trying to sort of paint a rosy picture or say anything about convivencia. I'm trying to say that maybe we shouldn't think about how much privilege Muslims had versus how much privilege Christians had. It might be more productive to think about how much privilege Christians had in the 18th century relative to earlier centuries.

Interesting. Okay, welcome back. Chris Creighton here with Professor Molly Green. We're talking about her new work, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768. We won't be able to cover the entire contents of that work in the podcast, and indeed that's not the point. We encourage you all to check out our website, autumnhistorypodcast.com, to get the link for that work on Edinburgh University Press' website. I did want to ask one last question, Professor Green, before concluding our conversation, because I know that a lot of your previous research that many of our listeners are familiar with dealt with issues of the margins. I mean, you looked at pirates, for example, who are kind of marginal actors in these very transitional spaces. I know from my own conversations with Amritsar Gurkhan

that in the Mediterranean, people are going back and forth across what was considered a firm boundary, which is the boundary between Christianity and Islam. Clearly not. I want to know how your work on the, you know, what role does the margins, we've talked a lot about the Greek patriarch, we've talked a lot about the structures, what role do the margins play in the story of the history of the Greeks and understanding their relationship with Adam the State? Well, actually, I would say that this is the first book that I have written that is not about the margins. This is a book about a population that was, at the very least,

an important minority and even a substantial part of the population of the empire, depending on how you define Hellenism. And we all know that from the late 14th century up until 1516, Christians were the majority population. So here I'm writing much more about the center. Now, of course, one of the things I've tried to do in this book, and people will decide if I have or have not, is to argue that writing about the Christians of the Ottoman Empire

is writing Ottoman history, just as much as if one writes about Muslims. So this book is very much actually writing against the tradition of margins that I've done in the two other books, because Christians are absolutely fundamental to Ottoman history. Christians are absolutely fundamental to Ottoman history. I mean, this book is an attempt also to rethink geographies and what the empire looks like if we go outside of Istanbul. One of the things I try and talk about, again, for the 17th and 18th centuries is how the view of the empire shifts depending on if we're looking at the Balkans or Anatolia.

Sure. Again, one of the things that's said about the 18th century is that it ushers in a long age of stability, whereas the 17th century is a century of turmoil and upheaval with the jelali revolts for the balkans and here is not just me but other people are writing about this i i guess i want to make the balkans more central to ottoman history uh as they were of course to the ottomans um and and in fact it's the it's the reverse if you look at the Balkans. The 17th century is relatively quiet. There is the flight to the mountains, but we have no discussion of the wholesale destruction of cities. A place like Cedars was very quiet as opposed to what goes on in Anatolia.

And then in the 18th century, I'm trying to work through the consequences of the destabilization of the northern Balkans. And what does that mean? I think Fred Anscombe is correct when he says that the destruction and then the recapture of a city like Belgrade destroyed previous Christian Muslim sort of relative equanimity. I don't think that happened further south in the Balkans. A place like Sed is a place like Veria, very quiet. At the same time, the upheaval in the northern Balkans

allowed the patriarchy to extend his influence to the detriment of the Serbs and various centrifugal forces. So it's also, the book sort of talks about looking at the empire from the point of view of the Balkans versus looking at the empire from the point of view of Anatolia. Interesting. This has been a really fascinating conversation. Most of the guests we have on the podcast are talking either about an article or a mon you know, maybe their dissertation research or their first book to talk about a survey book on the podcast is relatively rare for us. And it's raised a lot of, uh, issues. I mean, there's a lot of points that people will want to discuss further, uh, after

listening to, uh, your talk and hopefully reading a little in your book, um, really touching on a lot of the fundamental debates in the field of Ottoman history. So I'm really glad that you came on the podcast today and discussed these points with us and shared your work. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Now, for those who want to find out more, as I've said, on ottomanhistorypodcast.com, we have a bibliography that contains a link to Molly Green's The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, as well as a few other works for background reading that have been mentioned in the podcast. That's a space where you can leave your comments and questions and hopefully get in touch with our Facebook group,

where over 20,000 people are looking at our posts and sharing and occasionally commenting on some of the content. We want you all to join us there for the conversation. and occasionally commenting on some of the content. We want you all to join us there for the conversation. I want to invite you to join in next time for our next episode. Thank you for listening, and until our next episode, take care.