Dissertation
Capitalism, Migration, War and Nationalism in an Aegean Port Town: The Rise and Fall of a Belle Époque in the Ottoman county of Foçateyn
This dissertation describes the history of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn as a case study of the process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation states.
- Author
- Emre Erol
- Date
- 09 September 2014
- Links
- Full text available in Leiden University Repository
The process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation states witnessed dramatic changes in the demographic and socio-economic structures of the once imperial lands. The history of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn, and its boomtown Eski Foça, in Western Anatolia, represents a microcosm of this larger transition.
Foçateyn initially expanded and transformed as a result of the incorporation into world capitalist markets and the Ottoman reform movement. Eski Foça became a cosmopolitan boomtown. However, after the end of the Balkan Wars in 1913, Foçateyn became one of the contested zones of Greek and Ottoman Muslim nationalisms. In 1914, Young Turk clandestine operations ousted the Greek majority of Foçateyn right before to outbreak of the World War I. This marked the beginning of the local transition from empire to nation-state. In the end, in 1922, the economy and the demography of Foçateyn were 'nationalised'. The history of Foçateyn is thus an important contribution to understanding non-Western modernisation and nation-state building