Seminars

The Ottomans seized Crete in the mid-seventeenth century following one of the longest sieges in history, a feat widely regarded as the last major Ottoman conquest. Two centuries later, imperial sovereignty in Crete was hanging on the balance. Multiple episodes of armed resistance against the empire throughout the nineteenth century loosened Istanbul's grip on this geostrategic island. The most sweeping upheaval occurred in the form of civil war during the 1890s, devolving into a war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and setting off the island's occupation by a European coalition. Drawing on Crete’s legacy of violence and tracing the displacement of Muslim islanders because of the civil war, this talk weaves together a story of intercommunal strife, environmental destruction, and mass protest. It explores the transformation of dislocated islanders from silenced refugees in the 1890s to loud protesters after 1908. Emphasizing that the unacknowledged tragedy of civil war carried seeds of protest, this lecture demonstrates how the uprooted islanders energized Ottoman politics and society on the eve of World War I.