Fw: Call for book chapters
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Roland Moore
12:49 PM (10 hours ago) 12:49 PM
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From: Sakis Gekas <age...@yorku.ca>
Please spread the word with posting on the list the attached call for book chapters, Michalis, Giorgos Kalpadakis and I are coediting.
C A L L F O R B O O K C H A P T E R S
Sovereignty and Statehood in the Greek world during the long 19th century
The editors have been in talks with publishers and series editors, who have indicated their interest in the book project. A book proposal will be submitted after the initial reviewing process.
This volume seeks to rethink the history of statehood, political authority, and sovereignty in the Greek world during the long nineteenth century. The key aim is move beyond the familiar story of the Greek nation-state to examine the broader landscape of political experimentation that took place in the Greek world from the Age of Revolutions to the early decades of the twentieth century. This experimentation was of course part of wider developments. Indeed, during this period, the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans witnessed the emergence of a remarkable variety of political formations: revolutionary republics and constitutional experiments, autonomous principalities and hybrid quasi-states, administrative laboratories within imperial frameworks, and unrealised projects that nonetheless shaped political imagination. The Greek world stood at the centre of these processes. Examples include the Ionian Islands and their complex history under successive regimes; the Greek revolutionary administrations during the 1820s; the Kingdom of Greece; the autonomous Principality of Samos; the Cretan polity in its various phases from the Egyptian interlude of the 1830s onwards; Eastern Rumelia; Cyprus under British rule; and the numerous other formations — realised or imagined — that structured political life beyond and beside the Greek Kingdom.
Most of these political entities have usually been studied as episodes in the broader story of national integration, with the Greek state as the center of gravity. The volume seeks to provide a more nuanced picture by analysing these political formations on their own terms. Rather than treating them– and this goes for the Greek state itself - as anomalies, transitional forms or incomplete versions of an ideal sovereign, western and centralised state, the book explores how they functioned, how they were imagined and legitimised, how state building worked in practice, how institutions produced new forms of belonging—if they did—, and how these entities interacted with wider imperial and international orders.
Two interlocking themes structure the volume.
First, state formation: this theme focuses on the changing meanings and practices of statehood and sovereignty across the Greek world. How did contemporaries conceptualise sovereignty and political authority? Did they associate statehood with territorial control, constitutional government, fiscal capacity, international recognition, bureaucracy, legal order, collective political subjectivity, or some combination of these? How did all of these formations (states, quasi-states, autonomous) operate within imperial and international order? The aim is to shift attention away from recognition as a single diplomatic moment and towards statehood as a prolonged, contested, and often surprising process.
Second, institution-building: this theme examines the administrative, legal, archival and social practices through which political authority was made tangible. What kind of institutions were created and how did they operate? What roles did administrative expertise, legal knowledge and political personnel play in the making of statehood? What forms of administration and administrative elites emerged? How did institutions shape, produce or fail to produce new forms of collective belonging? This theme also invites attention to the archival politics of new political entities, since the formation of archives was itself part of the making and stabilisation of authority.
Taken together, the volume asks what the Greek world looks like when we zoom out from the national state to the full range of political forms the era produced — and what that wider view contributes to comparative debates about imperial transformation, constitutional thought, and the making of modern political life.
We welcome contributions that examine these questions through case studies, comparative approaches or conceptual interventions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Revolutionary constitutionalism, judicial review, and the rule of law;
- State formation as process: sovereignty, recognition, and the construction of collective subjects;
- Administrative elites, technocratic networks, and the circulation of expertise across the eastern Mediterranean;
- The Tanzimat and its relationship to quasi-state formations in the Greek world;
- The Principality of Samos, the Cretan State, Eastern Rumelia, and other hybrid or state like polities;
- Post-imperial projects: Pontus, the Dodecanese, Cyprus, and early-twentieth-century formations;
- Archival politics: how the archives of nascent states were built and what they reveal about these cases;
- Economic thought, monetary policy, and the material dimensions of state-building;
- The monarchy, representation, and constitutional politics in the Greek Kingdom;
- Comparative and entangled histories: Greek cases alongside Balkan, Ottoman, and wider Mediterranean formations.
Note: Submissions drawing on multilingual primary sources and pursuing transnational or comparative methodologies will be prioritised. Researchers at all career stages, including doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, are encouraged to submit.
Please spread the word with posting on the list the attached call for book chapters, Michalis, Giorgos Kalpadakis and I are coediting.
C A L L F O R B O O K C H A P T E R S
Sovereignty and Statehood in the Greek world during the long 19th century
The editors have been in talks with publishers and series editors, who have indicated their interest in the book project. A book proposal will be submitted after the initial reviewing process.
This volume seeks to rethink the history of statehood, political authority, and sovereignty in the Greek world during the long nineteenth century. The key aim is move beyond the familiar story of the Greek nation-state to examine the broader landscape of political experimentation that took place in the Greek world from the Age of Revolutions to the early decades of the twentieth century. This experimentation was of course part of wider developments. Indeed, during this period, the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans witnessed the emergence of a remarkable variety of political formations: revolutionary republics and constitutional experiments, autonomous principalities and hybrid quasi-states, administrative laboratories within imperial frameworks, and unrealised projects that nonetheless shaped political imagination. The Greek world stood at the centre of these processes. Examples include the Ionian Islands and their complex history under successive regimes; the Greek revolutionary administrations during the 1820s; the Kingdom of Greece; the autonomous Principality of Samos; the Cretan polity in its various phases from the Egyptian interlude of the 1830s onwards; Eastern Rumelia; Cyprus under British rule; and the numerous other formations — realised or imagined — that structured political life beyond and beside the Greek Kingdom.
Most of these political entities have usually been studied as episodes in the broader story of national integration, with the Greek state as the center of gravity. The volume seeks to provide a more nuanced picture by analysing these political formations on their own terms. Rather than treating them– and this goes for the Greek state itself - as anomalies, transitional forms or incomplete versions of an ideal sovereign, western and centralised state, the book explores how they functioned, how they were imagined and legitimised, how state building worked in practice, how institutions produced new forms of belonging—if they did—, and how these entities interacted with wider imperial and international orders.
Two interlocking themes structure the volume.
First, state formation: this theme focuses on the changing meanings and practices of statehood and sovereignty across the Greek world. How did contemporaries conceptualise sovereignty and political authority? Did they associate statehood with territorial control, constitutional government, fiscal capacity, international recognition, bureaucracy, legal order, collective political subjectivity, or some combination of these? How did all of these formations (states, quasi-states, autonomous) operate within imperial and international order? The aim is to shift attention away from recognition as a single diplomatic moment and towards statehood as a prolonged, contested, and often surprising process.
Second, institution-building: this theme examines the administrative, legal, archival and social practices through which political authority was made tangible. What kind of institutions were created and how did they operate? What roles did administrative expertise, legal knowledge and political personnel play in the making of statehood? What forms of administration and administrative elites emerged? How did institutions shape, produce or fail to produce new forms of collective belonging? This theme also invites attention to the archival politics of new political entities, since the formation of archives was itself part of the making and stabilisation of authority.
Taken together, the volume asks what the Greek world looks like when we zoom out from the national state to the full range of political forms the era produced — and what that wider view contributes to comparative debates about imperial transformation, constitutional thought, and the making of modern political life.
We welcome contributions that examine these questions through case studies, comparative approaches or conceptual interventions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Revolutionary constitutionalism, judicial review, and the rule of law;
- State formation as process: sovereignty, recognition, and the construction of collective subjects;
- Administrative elites, technocratic networks, and the circulation of expertise across the eastern Mediterranean;
- The Tanzimat and its relationship to quasi-state formations in the Greek world;
- The Principality of Samos, the Cretan State, Eastern Rumelia, and other hybrid or state like polities;
- Post-imperial projects: Pontus, the Dodecanese, Cyprus, and early-twentieth-century formations;
- Archival politics: how the archives of nascent states were built and what they reveal about these cases;
- Economic thought, monetary policy, and the material dimensions of state-building;
- The monarchy, representation, and constitutional politics in the Greek Kingdom;
- Comparative and entangled histories: Greek cases alongside Balkan, Ottoman, and wider Mediterranean formations.
Note: Submissions drawing on multilingual primary sources and pursuing transnational or comparative methodologies will be prioritised. Researchers at all career stages, including doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, are encouraged to submit.
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