Call for Papers by Constanze Kolbe
Dissertation Abstract by Constanze Kolbe
This is a history of how the Corfiote Jews created a regional commercial and cultural network in ... more This is a history of how the Corfiote Jews created a regional commercial and cultural network in the Adriatic during the nineteenth century. The protagonists are merchants, publishers and rabbis who lived in Corfu and had created intimate ties with Corfiote and non-Corfiote Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Christian Orthodox peoples in Padua, Scutari, and Trieste. Through continued interactions in the nineteenth century Adriatic, circulating discourses, commodities and peoples created a distinct Jewish space, which was regional. The analysis of diverse networks shows that the nineteenth century Adriatic in many ways was a post-Venetian space. Polycentric connections that most often are associated with the early modern period also hold true for the nineteenth century and regional mobility remained key in the upholding of the diverse networks Corfiote Jews forged. Chapter one focuses on Jewish Publishing networks centered around Corfu, Padua, and Trieste between 1860-1880. The chapter argues that Corfiote Jewish newspapers did not support unification with Greece until very late. After unification, Corfiote publishers created a publishing network that centered around the Collegio Rabbinico in Padua and Corfiote Jewish merchant enclaves in Austrian Trieste and Alexandria, Egypt. Even after unification with Greece in 1864, Corfiote Jewish publishing forged not only national but also regional identities by cultivating a transnational Corfiote reading public. The second chapter moves to commodities and looks at the ways in which the soap trade was executed. Using private merchant correspondences between the soap merchant family Coen of Corfu and various merchants in Scutari, Albania, I examine the legal and extra-legal means that were used to settle trade disputes and the ways in which those merchants navigated shifting imperial borders. The chapter argues that the Jews of Corfu drew on different legal and extra-legal mechanisms to pursue their trade relationships, challenging our understanding of how legal institutions functioned in the nineteenth-century Mediterranean. Secondly, they creatively used different ports to circumnavigate shifting trade regulations. Chapter three looks at the Etrog trade network, which was reactivated on a yearly basis. The Etrog was both a sacred fruit and a profitable commodity as it passed from Ottoman Christian growers to Italian Jewish merchants, Habsburg rabbis and finally Ashkenazi consumers on its way from its place of production in mainland Ottoman Greece to its places of consumption in Northern and Central Europe during the long nineteenth century. Crossing different empires, I link the Mediterranean to its hinterland and show the diverse interests different actors had in its trade and examine how conflict in these trade relationships was arbitrated in court. Chapter four explores how Corfiote merchants abroad used philanthropy to maintain ties to Corfu. These ties collapsed in the wake of the Blood Libel of 1891 when thousands left the island to resettle in Manchester, Paris and Alexandria, a shift that strained the resources of the already existing Corfiote diaspora communities. The chapter argues that there was nothing " Jewish " about the merchant Philanthropy, but that it was part of a broader merchant diaspora philanthropic setting.
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Call for Papers by Constanze Kolbe
Dissertation Abstract by Constanze Kolbe