Paris Chronakis lecture at Yale University

[Syrimis, George]

Please join us for the upcoming lecture on

“Seeing Like a Merchant: Jews and Greeks from Ottoman to Greek Rule”

Paris Chronakis, Lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London

 

How did the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigate the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century? In this lunch-time talk, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Jewish and Greek merchants of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) skillfully managed the tumultuous shift from Ottoman to Greek rule amidst rising ethnic tensions and heightened class conflict. Bringing their once powerful voices back into the historical narrative, he traces their entangled trajectories as businessmen, community members, and civic leaders to illustrate how the self-reinvention of a Jewish-led bourgeoisie made a city Greek. Salonica’s merchants were present in their own—and their city’s—remaking.

Paris Papamichos Chronakis is Lecturer in Modern Greek History at Royal Holloway University of London. His research explores the entangled histories and divided memories of Jews and Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean from the late Ottoman Empire to the Holocaust. His first book, The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule, was published by Stanford University Press in October 2024 winning that year’s National Jewish Book Awards – JDC-Herbert Katzki Award (Writing Based on Archival Material).

Monday, April 6, 12:00-1:00 PM. Luce Hall 202, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven.

This talk is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the MacMillan Center’s Hellenic Studies Program and the Yale Program in Jewish Studies. Lunch will be served.

 

The activities of the Hellenic Studies Program are generously funded by the Stavros Niarchos Center for Hellenic Studies at Yale University.