Το βιβλίο αυτό, από τις πρώτες οθωμανολογικές μελέτες γραμμένες από έλληνες ιστορικούς, είναι μια σημαντική συμβολή στην κοινωνική ιστορία της προεπαναστατικής Πελοποννήσου. Παρά τη συμπλήρωση σαράντα ετών από την πρώτη κυκλοφορία του, παραμένει ως σήμερα τομή στην ελληνική οθωμανολογική παράδοση, καθώς αποτελεί υπόδειγμα χρήσης πλήθους πηγών ποικίλης γλωσσικής ταυτότητας αλλά και υψηλής στοχαστικής και θεωρητικής ανάλυσης. Με αντικείμενο το ληστρικό φαινόμενο, η αφήγηση εστιάζει κυρίως σε διεργασίες, συγκρούσεις και μετασχηματισμούς, χωρίς να περιορίζεται από τα στεγανά μίας εθνοκεντρικής ή οικονομοκεντρικής πρόσληψης, ενώ αναπτύσσεται σε όλο το πλάτος της πελοποννησιακής κοινωνίας ανεξάρτητα από θρησκευτικές διαχωριστικές γραμμές, εθνοτική ένταξη ή ταξικούς διαχωρισμούς. Στο βιβλίο περιγράφονται με τον πλέον εναργή τρόπο οι εσωτερικοί κραδασμοί και οι ρήξεις μίας τοπικής κοινωνίας στο σύνολό της. Πρόκειται για μία προσέγγιση με λιγότερο ποσοτικά και περισσότερο ποιοτικά γνωρίσματα, κοντά στις αναλυτικές και θεωρητικές αρχές της σύγχρονης ιστορικής κοινωνιολογίας.

Summary/Abstract In this paper we’ll examine through the archives of the Allatini enterprises, the Orient Bank, and others how the owners of Allatini enterprises managed to overcome difficulties and problems which caused the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of national states in Balkans. The Allatinis were a family of doctors, rabbis, and intellectuals who came to Salonica from Tuscany in 18th century. From 1880 to 1906, they created several enterprises: one of the most modern industrial mills in the Ottoman Empire and in Europe, a bank, a tile factory, a prosperous tobacco company, mining companies, several commercial agencies all over Europe, a real estate company, etc. They had a strong influence on society – together with other social and economic changes of the era – by bringing modernity into the city: clubs, schools, extended charities, new work practices, industrial buildings – true models of technology for that time, new ways of communication for the workers, and new identities. However, it seems that from 1906 they started facing problems: the gradual dominance of Greek banking capital in the city, the financial crisis of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire, the financial crash of 1911 (the Italio-Turkish War) and the ensuing incorporation of Salonica into the Greek state (new taxes, the intervention of the Greek state, etc.), a ten-year war period (1912–1922) led to the relocation of the Allatini, as well as of other big Jewish industrialists, and the merging of their companies, or their appropriation by Greek businessmen (in 1923, K. Panoutsos became the main shareholder of the Allatini mills and in 1926, he bought them).

My thesis explores the origins and development of a network of relationships connecting the trading houses of Salonica with landowners and independent peasants in Macedonia and Kosovo from the 1830s to the Great Depression. The first part of my study delves into the consolidation, both in material and ideological terms, of economic ties between the port city and its hinterlands. I start by examining the geographical evolution of these connections, which were influenced by economic contexts and the waning influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Subsequently, I consider the financial bonds between the rural population and the merchants of Salonica, which facilitated a steady flow of commodities destined for the international market. Between the 1840s and 1860s, the export of specific products became increasingly lucrative. Capitalizing on the favorable international political climate, merchants contended that the growth of these businesses benefited not only themselves but also the local population and the state. The government endorsed their arguments and actively encouraged their initiatives, initiating a trend that persisted and intensified until the Young Turk revolution. The second part of my work centers on the crisis that beset this system during the Long Depression. Centrifugal pressures mounted in the late 1860s, coinciding with the collapse of foreign trade profits. The stock market crash in Vienna in 1873 precipitated a financial crisis across the entire eastern Mediterranean, which also affected Macedonia and Kosovo. Critics of prevailing commercial practices in the interior bemoaned the unequal distribution of profits, which disproportionately favored Salonica and its merchants. New industrial and financial ventures were launched to enhance the economic self-sufficiency of the hinterland, while Salonica’s trade receded. The heirs of its golden era responded in various ways, both practical and intellectual, to the port’s isolation. Their ties with the Ottoman government and European finance institutions were strengthened. From abroad, notably from France, came the cultural paradigms that supported a consistent reflection on the dashed aspirations of economic modernization. The third part of my thesis endeavors to delineate more clearly the social and political transformations wrought by the nineteenth-century foreign trade boom in Macedonia and Kosovo.

Abstract Recently, the history of consumer co-operatives attracted scholars’ attention. J.S. Mill is one of the first political economists to anticipate the importance of consumer co-operatives. In his Principles of Political Economy (1848), he narrates the history of the Rochdale Pioneers, the most successful example of consumer co-operatives during the nineteenth century. In Greece, the constitution of the Greek kingdom during the mid-1820s’ accelerated the overdue capitalist transformation of the Greek economy. This slow transformation was associated with a hesitant introduction of European practices and the diffusion of classical and radical economic ideas. The Rochdale experiment and Mill’s co-operative ideas heavily influenced the formation of Self-Help by the People, the initial seed of consumer co-operativism in Greece, in 1869. In discussing the birth, development and decline of Self-Help by the People, we delineate the role of co-operative economic ideas in influencing the co-operative movement during the nineteenth century. Keywords: J.S. Mill; consumer cooperatives; Rochdale Pioneers; Self-Help by the People