When a young Zionist activist, Leon Armariglio, would go on collection drives in late Ottoman Salonica, he would sometimes encounter dismissive reactions from local Jews, who would retort to him, ‘What Palestine are you talking about? This is Palestine!’ The history of what is today the Greek city of Thessaloniki is a complex, multi-ethnic, revolutionary and is what Paris Papamichos Chronakis explores in his new book, The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule. For Jews, in particular, Salonica was a key epicentre of Jewish commerce, culture and thought. Thriving under Ottoman tolerance, Greek Orthodox, Sephardic and Italian Jews, Bulgarians, Turks and Muslims made the port city their home. Binding the residence together was commerce, as Chronakis explains, ‘In Ottoman and post-Ottoman Salonica, then, commerce was more than just a trade; merchants were integral to the city’s psyche and were mytheologized accordingly.’ How the different communities shaped and were shaped by the late Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks revolution, the Balkans War, First World War, 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War, Hellenisation and the Second World War, is the journey the book takes the reader on.
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In 1912, Salonica had a population of 150,000 people; Jews made up 70,000 and were a slight majority of the population. Muslims reached 30,000, Greeks 10,000 and Bulgarians 6,000. The capture of the city by Greek troops from the Ottomans triggered major shifts within the city. While all communities participated in commerce, due to their demographic weight and freedom to trade, Jews made up the majority of traders. The ascent of Greek nationalism and being placed under the control of distant Athens, led to concerns the power dynamics within the city was about to shift. The Hellenisation of the city posed a challenge to the Jewish community, who had to shift from a semi-autonomous community or millet, to a minority group. Chronakis reminds us that, while the change in status was a key change in the history of the city, the actual relationship between the Greek population and Jews is more complex, multi-layered and negotiable – both groups have agency – and unveiling this history becomes simpler when we move away from viewing the making of modern Greece from the perspective of a centralising state in Athens and view it through the lens of the local communities.
To be a merchant in late Ottoman Salonica was an ethnic marker, as Chronakis argues, ‘the transition of Salonica from Ottoman Empire to Greek nation-state involved not just a shift in the ethnic identity of its merchants, but also a profound transformation of their class identity.’ What Chronakis means here is that, in the late Ottoman Empire, to be a merchant in Salonica, was close to synonymous with being Jewish, but the transition to Greek rule not only changed the composition of the merchant class to Greek, but also to be a merchant changed to being about class status, too. The Balkans War and fear of Greek rule led some local Jewish intellectuals to imagine Salonica to become an autonomous Jewish republic; these concerns were compounded by worries that the new Greek state had many port cities already and Salonica might lose out. Prior to the 20th century, local Jews and Greeks had both their own distinct identities and associations, but the two communities also intermingled and Jews and Greeks would often work in each other’s businesses. The 1880s saw a boom in social clubs, entertainment venues and new educational institutions, where all communities mixed together.
The Business of Transition forces us to reconsider the history of minoristation. A persistent theme is that the move from Ottoman millet to the Greek nation state system was not merely a forced process from the outside. While the new system turned the Jews of Salonica from a semi-autonomous group into a minority within a nation state, the process of becoming a minority was partly a result of Jews responding to the new political environment and carving out a new role for themselves. While second fiddle to Greeks, the new nation model did offer a role for the Jewish minority and much of this role came about through the efforts of the Jewish community itself. This forces us to think about becoming a minority in other contexts and historians interested in the impact of the emergence of the nation state will find this study edifying. The book is certainly a must read for anyone interested in the emergence of modern Greece.
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