The Caucasus - An Introduction

The Caucasus - An Introduction
Author: Frederik Coene
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2009-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135203024

This book presents a comprehensive introduction to the Caucasus. It covers the geography and the historical development of the region, economics, politics and government, population, religion and society, culture and traditions, and conflicts and international relations. It is written throughout in an accessible style and requires no prior knowledge.

Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism

Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism
Author: Anton Popov
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016-06-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317155807

This book addresses the issue of emerging transnationalism in the conditions of post-socialism through focusing on migrants’ identity as a social construction resulting from their experience of the ‘transnational circuit of culture’ as well as from post-Soviet shifts in political and economic conditions in their home regions. Anton Popov draws upon ethnographic research conducted among Greek transnational migrants living on the Black Sea coast and in the North Caucasus regions of Russia who have become involved in extensive cross-border migration between the former Soviet Union (the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Georgia) and Greece (as well as Cyprus). It is estimated that more than 150,000 former Soviet citizens of Greek origin have resettled in Greece since the late 1980s. Yet, many of those who emigrate do not cut their connections with the home communities in Russia but instead establish their own transnational circuit of travel between Greece and Russia. This study demonstrates how migrants employ their ethnicity as symbolic capital available for investment in transnational migration. Simultaneously they rework their practices of family networking, property relations and political participation in a way which strengthens their attachment to the local territory. The findings presented in the book imply that the social identities, economic strategies, political practices and cultural representation of the Russia’s Pontic Greeks are all deeply embedded in the shifting social and cultural landscape of post-Soviet Russia and extensively influenced by the global movement of ideas, goods and people.

World and Its Peoples

World and Its Peoples
Author: Marshall Cavendish
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Total Pages: 1712
Release: 2006-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780761475712

An eleven-volume guide to the geography, history, economy, government, culture and daily life of countries of the Middle East, western Asia and northern Africa.

A Nation of Empire

A Nation of Empire
Author: Michael Meeker
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2002-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520234826

A history of the political transformation of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century to the present by an anthropologist who has spent 30 years studying Turkish history and culture.

The Gattilusio Lordships and the Aegean World 1355-1462

The Gattilusio Lordships and the Aegean World 1355-1462
Author: Christopher Wright
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2014-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004264817

In The Gattilusio Lordships and the Aegean World 1355-1462, Christopher Wright offers a window into the culturally and politically diverse late medieval Aegean. The overlapping influences of the contrasting networks of power at work in the region are explored through the history of one of many small and distinctive political units that flourished in this fragmented environment, the lordships of the Gattilusio family, centred on Lesbos. Though Genoese in origin, they owed their position to Byzantine authority. Though active in crusading, they cultivated congenial relations with the Ottomans. Though Catholic, they afforded exceptional freedom to the Orthodox Church. Their regime is shown to represent both a unique fusion of influences and a revealing microcosm of its times.

The Hemshin

The Hemshin
Author: Hovann Simonian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2007-01-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113579829X

The Hemshin are without doubt one of the most enigmatic peoples of Turkey and the Caucasus. As former Christians who converted to Islam centuries ago yet did not assimilate into the culture of the surrounding Muslim populations, as Turks who speak Armenian yet are often not aware of it, as Muslims who continue to celebrate feasts that are part of the calendar of the Armenian Church, and as descendants of Armenians who, for the most part, have chosen to deny their Armenian origins in favour of recently invented myths of Turkic ancestry, the Hemshin and the seemingly irreconcilable differences within their group identity have generated curiosity and often controversy. The Hemshin is the first scholarly work to provide an in-depth study of these people living in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. This groundbreaking volume brings together chapters written by an international group of scholars that cover the history, language, economy, culture and identity of the Hemshin. It is further enriched with an unprecedented collection of maps, pictures and appendices of up-to-date statistics. The Hemshin forms part of the Peoples of the Caucasus series, an indispensable and yet accessible resource for all those with an interest in the Caucasus.

The Turkish Dialects of Trabzon: Analysis

The Turkish Dialects of Trabzon: Analysis
Author: Bernt Brendemoen
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2002
Genre: Turkish language
ISBN: 9783447045704

The dialects spoken in Trabzon on the Eastern Black Sea Coast are the Anatolian dialects that have preserved the most archaic features. At the same time, they are the ones that display the greatest number of innovations, due to the influence of other languages in the region. The archaisms indicate that the first speakers of Turkish must have settled in the area more than a hundred years before the Ottoman conquest, i.e. in the 14th century, although historical sources give no information on Turkish settlements at that time.The main aim of this study is to analyze the Trabzon dialects synchronically and diachronically and to explain the features that distinguish them from other Anatolian dialects. The study also makes a hypothesis about the turkization of the area. The second volume contains dialect texts which constitute the material for the analyses in the first volume. These texts, which have been recorded and transcribed by the author, are provided with numerous foot-notes, and give a unique impression of the folkloristic and historical richness of the region.

An Orthodox Commonwealth

An Orthodox Commonwealth
Author: Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000327388

This collection brings together fifteen studies on the survival and adaptation of the Orthodox religious and cultural tradition in the societies of Southeastern Europe after the fall of Constantinople, a world so often misunderstood and misinterpreted. This problem of cultural history is examined in a diversity of contexts and on multiple levels of analysis in order to elucidate issues of broader concern to social theory such as the fluidity and dynamic character of identity, the intricate encounter of religion and politics and the challenge of secular world views such as the Enlightenment and nationalism to traditional religious outlooks. The author argues consistently against all forms of reductionism, converses at length with the sources in order to pose questions to conventional views and invites the historical imagination to recover and understand a world submerged by the nationalist interpretation of the past. This task involves the recovery of the geographical pluralism that made Orthodox culture a truly transnational phenomenon. The collection accordingly brings into focus both the epicentres of Orthodox culture and symbolism such as Mt Athos and Constantinople, but also its hinterlands in Asia Minor and the Balkans.

The Black Sea

The Black Sea
Author: Charles King
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2005-07-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191647772

The lands surrounding the Black Sea share a colourful past. Though in recent decades they have experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalry, their common heritage and common interests go deep. Now, as a region at the meeting point of the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Black Sea is more important than ever. In this lively and entertaining book, which is based on extensive research in multiple languages, Charles King investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states.