The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700–1820) (review)

Abstract

Reviews 159 about his impending death is to give only a half-picture, and perhaps to miss a chance to develop further insights into the lament as a female genre. Again, Palamas is rather taken to task here for failing to reproduce in «Ο τάφος» the virtues of the folk lament, when the power of his new poem perhaps lies in its very innovation and even its disturbing relation to the death-wish. Inevitably, perhaps, these are not the only cases where Gail HolstWarhaft 's exposition tries to cover too much ground too quickly. Chapter 5, which takes in much of Attic tragedy, clearly runs that risk; we sometimes find rather important issues (like, for example, the relative priority of Homer and the folk tradition) swept into a footnote. Yet the author powerfully makes her overall case for a reading of the Greek lament in the light of all the extant examples, ancient and modern, literary and non-literary. Above all, the basic contrast made in this book between men's and women's ways of articulating the fact of death—a nettle which the author unflinchingly grasps—gives the study not only sufficient unity but continual interest. And if we were in danger of considering the topic to be merely an academic one, the book's dedication is a reminder that, in thinking about the lament, we are thinking about something of more than academic significance. David Ricks King's College London Elena Frangakis-Syrett, TL· Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700— 1820). Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies. 1992. Pp. xix + 375. 5 Appendices. 25 Figures. Illustrated. In the eighteenth century, the city of Smyrna ( Izmir) became the major trading entrepôt of the eastern Mediterranean. Merchants from western Europe purchased cotton, wool, mohair, and dried fruits, the agricultural output of the city's Aegean hinterlands. In turn, they sold cloth manufactured in Europe as well as colonial products such as sugar, coffee, and indigo. It was a commerce in which both sides participated freely and profited. In an age of European expansion, the commerce of Smyrna stands out both for its absence of coercion and for its potential for the intercultural exchange of ideas and technologies. Although its story has been discussed in part by some of the early historians of trade in the eastern Mediterranean—namely, Paul Masson (HL·toire du commerce françaL· dans Ie Levant au XVIIIe siècle [Paris: Hachette, 1911]), Alfred Cecil Wood (A H^ory of the Levant Company [London: Oxford University Press, 1935]), and, more recently, Necmi Ülker—Elena Frangakis-Syrett provides the fullest account to date of both the volume of the trade and the ways in which commerce was conducted in the city. She has researched her subject extensively, employing archival materials 160 Reviews from the British Levant Company, the Chambre de Commerce of Marseilles, the French Foreign Office, and various other papers left by the European merchants in the city. Curiously, however, considering the thoroughness with which she obviously approached her research project, she has left out Dutch archival materials, which have been utilized by scholars such as G. R. Bosscha Erdbrink (At the Threshold of Felicity: Ottoman-Dutch Relations During the Embassy of CornelL· Calkoen at the Sublime Porte, 1726-1744 [Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1975]) and Niels Steensgaard (The Asian Trade Revolution of the 17th Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974]). Despite that omission, this work will undoubtedly stand for some time as the authoritative source for the European side of Smyrna's trade. In particular, Frangakis-Syrett's narrative characterizations of the nature and quantity of the trade of Smyrna with France are amply supported by numerous graphs and appendices that plot the annual trade figures both for imports to Smyrna and for exports from it. Owing to its wealth of statistical documentation, this monograph will serve as a key reference source for economic historians of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. Although she discusses other western European traders in Smyrna, the author concentrates on France. As she explains, Smyrna emerged over the course of the eighteenth century as the...