Andrea Umberto Gritti
PhD in History and Civilizations, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2023
Τύπος: Διατριβές

Abstract

My thesis explores the origins and development of a network of relationships connecting the trading houses of Salonica with landowners and independent peasants in Macedonia and Kosovo from the 1830s to the Great Depression. The first part of my study delves into the consolidation, both in material and ideological terms, of economic ties between the port city and its hinterlands. I start by examining the geographical evolution of these connections, which were influenced by economic contexts and the waning influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Subsequently, I consider the financial bonds between the rural population and the merchants of Salonica, which facilitated a steady flow of commodities destined for the international market. Between the 1840s and 1860s, the export of specific products became increasingly lucrative. Capitalizing on the favorable international political climate, merchants contended that the growth of these businesses benefited not only themselves but also the local population and the state. The government endorsed their arguments and actively encouraged their initiatives, initiating a trend that persisted and intensified until the Young Turk revolution. The second part of my work centers on the crisis that beset this system during the Long Depression. Centrifugal pressures mounted in the late 1860s, coinciding with the collapse of foreign trade profits. The stock market crash in Vienna in 1873 precipitated a financial crisis across the entire eastern Mediterranean, which also affected Macedonia and Kosovo. Critics of prevailing commercial practices in the interior bemoaned the unequal distribution of profits, which disproportionately favored Salonica and its merchants. New industrial and financial ventures were launched to enhance the economic self-sufficiency of the hinterland, while Salonica’s trade receded. The heirs of its golden era responded in various ways, both practical and intellectual, to the port’s isolation. Their ties with the Ottoman government and European finance institutions were strengthened. From abroad, notably from France, came the cultural paradigms that supported a consistent reflection on the dashed aspirations of economic modernization. The third part of my thesis endeavors to delineate more clearly the social and political transformations wrought by the nineteenth-century foreign trade boom in Macedonia and Kosovo. To discern the original features of the Salonica-centered system, I situate it within the broader context of the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Comparative analyses with other merchant cities in the Levant and less commercialized Balkan regions illuminate transformations in the status of Salonica’s merchants and their partners. This analysis draws upon three key paradigms in historical sociology. The first paradigm focuses on the impact of growing export revenues on the living conditions of laborers subject to feudal constraints, akin to a “second serfdom.” The second paradigm explores the role of compradors and investigates whether the accusations levelled against Salonica’s merchants, accusing them of indifference to national communities, influenced their economic activity. Finally, the third paradigm delves into the nexus between Jews’ involvement in international trade and their legal emancipation.

Supervisor:

Marc Aymes (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)

Defense Committee:

Guillaume Calafat, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University

Edhem Eldem, Boğaziçi University

Svetla Ianeva, New Bulgarian University

Alp Yücel Kaya, Ege University

Costas Lapavitsas, SOAS, University of London

Claire Lemercier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / Sciences Po