The muslim millet of autonomous Crete: An exploration into its origins and implications

Abstract

This work is a reevaluation of nineteenth-century Cretan history. It aims to examine the manifold transformations of the island society during its transition from Ottoman rule to a brief period of autonomy and ultimate integration into Greece. The time period studied in this dissertation captures some of the variables that continue to vex modern historiography. While there is a tendency to think of the Ottoman Empire exclusively as an Islamic or perhaps proto- Turkish polity that ruled over non-Muslim minorities foreign to the essential character of the Ottomans, the history of Muslim populations in provinces that did not end up being part of the Republic of Turkey—such as Crete—is identified with imaginary minorities foreign to the locals. My exploration of Cretan history challenges the above approach by focusing on the continually evolving profiles of Muslims and Christians in Ottoman and Autonomous Crete through the examination of data collected from primary archival sources and published material produced during this period in the Ottoman Empire, Greece, western Europe, and Crete. This dissertation suggests that ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ in the Eastern Mediterranean were not clear-cut, monolithic, protonational categories, but constantly changing communities that interacted with each other through networks influenced by a variety of contingencies. The period deserves to be studied in its own right, rather than to continue to use it to legitimize certain ‘truths.’