Greek Young Turks and Visions of an Orthodox-Ottoman Empire 1876–1950

The main results of my research under the project consist in a number of studies of the transition from Empire to nation state. The focus has been on the bottom-up experience of members of the Greek Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire and the ways in which they trod their way through the substantial changes that effected their life in their local settings in the Ottoman Empire and later in their new adopted homelands in the nation state.

A particular area of interest has been how such major transformative experiences can shape the life and career of an individual and the impact people such a background can make on the new enter into which they enter.

The main case has been the Ottoman Greek businessman Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiadis (1890-1979) and the ways in he managed to transfer his Ottoman experience into the post-Ottoman world of the inter-war period and his inter-war experience into the post-war era of the Cold War. His career offers an exceptional case for an examination of this sort as it transcends his own time and place and because his individual agency links issues connected with high politics, business, ideology and culture in a time of epochal crisis and rapid change. In this way, and in addition to the story that passed before the eyes of contemporaries, his story is also one of the impersonal forces, of an economic, social, political and cultural nature, a story that precedes and succeeds the life of the individual, of the group and the singular event.