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Compradors to Cosmopolitans? The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports
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1830-7728
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EUI MWP; 2008/29
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GEKAS, Athanasios, Compradors to Cosmopolitans? The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports, EUI MWP, 2008/29 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/9015
Abstract
This paper examines a complex and occasionally much debated issue: whether class
analysis is a suitable analytical tool when studying the history of the merchant groups
that developed in Eastern Mediterranean ports in the second half of the nineteenthcentury
or whether historians, taking note of the ethnic composition of these merchant
groups (primarily Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, but in some instances, also, both
Muslim and Christian Arabs) should rely on the language and approaches of (what we
can broadly define as ) communitarian studies. The paper aims both to provide a broad
coverage of the historiographical debate on these issues and to offer some insights into
avenues worth exploring in future research. The first part concentrates on a critical
discussion of approaches that can broadly be considered as privileging the category of
class; the second part addresses some of the issues of subjectivity, identity and values
that have recently engaged the attention of historians. The paper concludes but does not
resolve with the issue whether historians can accommodate in their interpretation both
class and cosmopolitanism as analytical tools for studying the history of Eastern
Mediterranean ports (assuming that cosmopolitanism is an analytical tool).