Transregional Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-196
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Political ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Political Borders ◽  
Great Pressure ◽  
Polish Crisis ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter examines how the transregional aspects of the captive crisis gave it great significance for the Jewish world. The appearance on the slave markets of Istanbul of thousands of Jews, destitute and desperate, as well as the news coming in of the enormous destruction in Poland–Lithuania and the stream of emissaries and refugees traveling from town to town in search of help, forced Jewish communities across Europe to make a concerted effort to step up their charitable activity on their behalf. At the heart of all the activity was a transregional fundraising network run by the Jewish communities of Venice, the major Jewish center in the eastern Mediterranean. The Polish crisis put this system under great pressure. The calls on it multiplied and came from a number of different directions. Averse to turning away these needy Jews empty-handed, it adopted the policy it used for supporting the Jewish communities in the Land of Israel. The needs of the Polish Jewish captives challenged the fundraising network in other ways. For example, the fundraising crossed the cultural border within Jewish society, since Sephardi Jews were being called on to support Ashkenazim. Even more striking, however, was the way the network positioned itself vis-à-vis the political borders of Europe and the Mediterranean world. These were, perhaps, the first steps toward the development of an institutional Jewish world.

Ransoming Captives

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter describes the process of ransoming Jewish captives. Jewish captives had to be ransomed with money raised by the Jewish communities themselves and paid by them to the captors. Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jewish society succeeded in creating a broad transregional economic network whose goal was to ransom its members being held captive to be sold as slaves. Largely centered in Venice, from where much of the fundraising was organized, the Jewish ransoming network had other important hubs, particularly in Istanbul and Livorno. This network had grown and developed in the decades before 1648, but it was the flood of eastern European Jewish captives that really put it to the test and tightened the connections between its various components. The ransoming crisis also led to tensions with a second Jewish transregional economic network that was active in the Mediterranean: one tasked with raising funds to support Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. The chapter then assesses why ransoming captives was so important for the Jews of the early modern world, looking at Jewish law and Jewish culture.

Sicily between Constantinople and Rome

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Davis-Secord
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Western Frontier ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The Web

This chapter examines the web of connections linking Sicily to the Greek Christian world of the eastern Mediterranean and, simultaneously, to the Latin Christendom of Rome and the Franks during the Byzantine period. It describes travel along the Sicily–Constantinople route under Byzantine rule and how the island served as a useful tool for Constantinople in its diplomatic and military relationships with the western regions. It shows that Sicily could and often did function as an extension of the political authority of Constantinople into Italy, which was both useful and necessary as part of the larger program of the Byzantine empire at the time. Finally, it considers how Sicily operated both as the far western frontier of the empire and as a center of official communication between Constantinople and the western Mediterranean world—particularly, Latin Rome and the emergent powers of Muslim North Africa and Frankish Europe.

Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800-146 BC

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Early Archaic ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Orthodox View

The orthodox view of ancient Mediterranean slavery holds that Greece and Rome were the only ‘genuine slave societies’ of the ancient world, that is, societies in which slave labour contributed significantly to the economy and underpinned the wealth of elites. Other societies, labelled as ‘societies with slaves’, apparently made little use of slave labour, and have therefore been largely ignored in recent work. Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800–146 BC presents a radically different view. Slavery was indeed particularly highly developed in Greece and Rome; but it was also highly developed in Carthage and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, and played a not insignificant role in the affairs of elites in Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. This new study portrays the Eastern Mediterranean world as a patchwork of regional slave systems. In Greece, diversity was the rule: from the early archaic period onwards, differing historical trajectories in various regions shaped the institution of slavery in manifold ways, producing very different slave systems in regions such as Sparta, Crete, and Attica. In the wider Eastern Mediterranean world, we find a similar level of diversity. Slavery was exploited to different degrees across all of these regions, and was the outcome of a complex interplay between cultural, economic, political, geographic, and demographic variables.

The Jews in the Land of Israel and the Spread of Sabbatheanism

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-179
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Religious System ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter explains that alongside the pidyon shevuyim network, there existed another economic and religious system covering the entire Jewish world that was focused on the eastern Mediterranean. This was the philanthropic network dedicated to supporting Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. Though its goals were different, it overlapped with the pidyon shevuyim network: most communities collected money for both causes, sometimes even combining them into a single fund. The two systems thus acted in parallel, always in tension, and sometimes even in competition with each other. To understand this phenomenon and its broad significance for the Jewish world in both philanthropic and religious terms, the chapter looks at the issue of raising money for the Jews in the early modern Land of Israel. It also considers the spread of Sabbatheanism.

Issues in international affairs

2001 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Negotiation ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Reading Materials ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Universiti Utara Malaysia

The book is a spin-off from an academic seminar held by the School of Social Development, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) from September 17-19, 1998. It is concerted effort, in particular, by those who are involved in teaching of the International Affairs Management (IAM) programme to enrich reading materials on global affairs. Key features of the book are as follows: Can there be a Science of International Relations?, International Negotiation: The Skills and Qualities Required of a Diplomat, Isu Populasi dan Kesannya Terhadap Persekitaran, Relocation of Hazardous Industries in Developing Countries: A General Scenario, Security in the NewWorld Order: Changes in Southeast Asias Security Pattern, Pengecualian Asia Tenggara: Latar belakang Sejarah, and ASEAN Economic Cooperation: The Political Reality of an Economic Integration

An Era of Transition

2010 ◽  
pp. 255-262
Author(s):  
Yaron Harel
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Leadership And Organization ◽  
The Persian Gulf

This chapter examines the Jewish minority in Syria in 1840, when the Damascus affair took place and ended when economic disaster overtook Damascus Jewry. It highlights profound changes in Ottoman imperial rule and society in Syria from 1840, when Ottoman rule was reinstated. It also analyses shifts in Jewish society against the broad background of the political, social, and economic changes that took place in Syria. The chapter looks at the difference between the Jewish communities of Damascus and Aleppo with regard to social structure, economic endeavour, communal leadership and organization, and education. It recounts Jewish merchants in both Damascus and Aleppo in 1840 that engaged in international trade via the camel caravans that travelled between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.

1918–1920

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
National Movements ◽  
Southern Russia ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The sub-chapter traces major military and political developments in the eastern Mediterranean in 1918–1920, beginning with the arrival of British and Allied forces in Istanbul. It sketches out the political debate over the future of the city and wider Ottoman Empire through the series of Allied diplomatic meetings that set out the terms of what would become the Treaty of Sèvres. The chapter also summarises developments in Anatolia following the Greek occupation of Izmir in May 1919, the reaction to which crystalized the emerging nationalist movement in Anatolia, and in southern Russia and the Caucasus, where Bolshevik and White Russian forces competed for control with non-Russian national movements. Finally, it outlines the political debate over the future of Egypt and the impact of the revolution of 1919, one of a growing number of anti-colonial uprisings which Britain was forced to contend with in the period.

Mothers and Children in Ottoman Jewish Society as Reflected in Hebrew Sources of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Ruth Lamdan
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Family Stability ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Mothers And Children

This chapter investigates an array of Ottoman Hebrew sources written following the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and focuses on the interplay between rabbinic sages and mothers in the arena of family law and relationships. It explains how the Ottoman Hebrew sources offer a more nuanced view of family life in Ottoman Jewish culture. It also examines how mothers are associated with childbirth and childrearing, as well as how they are portrayed as women who took the initiative in their role as mothers with respect to marriage, divorce, levirate marriage, and the financial stability of their family and children. The chapter considers Hebrew that honours mothers and acknowledges the active role that mothers assumed in maintaining family stability at times of crisis. It recounts families who were torn apart and forced to abandon their homes and join Jewish communities outside Spain in the period after the expulsion.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Primary Mode

This chapter introduces the main question of the book: how did mass violence come to be a primary—perhaps the primary—mode of making political claims in the twentieth and twenty-first century Middle East? It asks when mass violence became a constitutive aspect of the political landscape of the region, why it took precedence over other strategies of state building and establishing political authority, and how governments, armies, and civilians alike came to think of mass violence as a viable and legitimate mode of claiming political space and national rights. Drawing on several different and largely separate historiographies, this introduction argues, makes it possible to produce a synthetic account of violence in the twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean that takes account of regional developments as much as individual national histories.

New Testament Archaeology Beyond the Gospels

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Methodologies

New Testament archaeology outside of the gospels traditionally focused on the eastern Mediterranean world and was directed to recovering inscriptional material, identifying sites, and documenting individuals mentioned in the New Testament. In the course of the twentieth century, archaeologists of the New Testament used archaeology to establish the backdrop to the New Testament (which frequently meant the urban worlds of Paul and the first Christians), and to reconstruct social and cultural contexts in the Pauline world. This chapter surveys these different approaches and considers how new methodologies and ways of thinking have provided a wealth of data beyond the physical space of the urban world. The chapter considers case studies from Cyprus, Asia Minor, Greece and Macedonia, and Crete.

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