Travel and Classical Antiquities in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Greece

Exploring Marginalised Perspectives

Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040264843
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Western travel and collecting classical antiquities in the nineteenth century informed European understandings of Greece's past and present, and enriched private collections and museums. Travel and collecting have typically been studied separately by literary scholars, historians of archaeology, and historians of the Ottoman Empire and modern Greece. Similarly, publications have largely prioritised evidence from and about elite social groups.

This book breaks new ground through its interdisciplinary approach, its insistence on the interweaving of the phenomena of travel and collecting, and its emphasis on marginalised perspectives. Contributors drawn from art history, classics, history of architecture, Ottoman history and modern Greek history foreground diversity and small-scale engagements with the landscape and material past of Ottoman Greece. The book explores the perspectives of both foreign travellers and local inhabitants through case studies, keeping a sharp focus on ethnicity and social status. Diaries, visual art, and rich archival material are analysed, often from a novel perspective, to give voice to a range of people including English servants, Albanian peasants, an illiterate Greek fighter, and the Ottoman Sultan. The result is a micro-cultural history of travel and classical collecting which expands existing narratives. As such, it changes the simplistic dichotomy between collecting as 'pillaging' or 'saving', and nuances the important current debate surrounding repatriation.

Travel and Classical Antiquities in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Greece addresses scholars in the areas of classical reception studies, classical archaeology, material culture studies, nineteenth-century studies, Ottoman studies and modern Greek studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience of people interested in travel writing, the history of archaeology and the history of Greece.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Foregrounding the Marginal
• 1 A Granular Approach to Ioannis Makriyannis (1797–1864) and Antiquities: Replication, Domesticity and Multivalence
• 2 “Viewing and Admiring” (Seyr ü Temaşa): Foreign Travellers and Antiquarians in Ottoman Documents, c.1790–1830
• 3 Entering the Peasant’s Cottage: Vernacular Architecture of Ottoman Greece through the Eyes of Western and Local Travellers
• 4 Ethiopians and Arrowheads: Marginal Perspectives on the Marathon Soros
• 5 Collections of Antiquities in Athens on the Eve of the Greek Revolution
• 6 Marginal Voices, Ethnographic Judgement and Antiquarian Self-Definition in Edward Daniel Clarke’s Travels
• 7 Travelling in Europe, Exploring Greek Identity: Orientalism and ‘Occidentalism’ in the Diary of Constantine Karatzas (1790–1792)
• 8 Perceptions of Ancient Remains in Ottoman Anatolia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Modernity, Local Society, and Diverse Ways of Being Greek
• 9 The Travel Journal of James Thoburn in the Ottoman Empire (1793–1798)
• Index