ΕΝΑΣ ΑΡΜΕΝΙΟΣ, ΕΝΑΣ ΤΟΥΡΚΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΝΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΑΣ ΝΗΣΙΩΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΠΙΚΗ ΕΞΟΥΣΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΟΘΩΜΑΝΙΚΗ ΚΥΠΡΟ

Abstract

This article examines three Cypriot local intermediaries during the tran si tion from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century: Hadjiyorgakis Kornesios, dragoman of Cyprus; Hacı Abdülbaki Ağa, the muhassıl (tax-farming governor) of the island; and Sarkis, an Armenian con sular dragoman-cum-merchant. Their remarkable economic, social and political power, even by the standards of Cyprus, makes them parti cularly con ducive for studying the redistribution of wealth and power in the Ottoman Empire during that period. This was a time when imperial gover nance faced a range of challenges, and vertical as well as horizontal rela tions of power were being renegotiated and restructured. Cases like the three intermediaries studied here have traditionally been studied in the context of centre-province interactions. Seeking analy tical categories that go beyond such a rigid dichotomy, this article makes an initial attempt towards articulating an alternative scheme for understanding imperial space, and move beyond a spatial imagination confined to conventional administrative organization. Utilizing the Braudelian concept of ‘miniature continents’ allows an envisioning of the Cy priot insularity that sheds light on the nature of economic relations, mo des of production, and patterns of concentration of the rural surplus. The three local intermediaries examined here are ideal case studies that can facilitate, or indeed instigate, this sort of inquiry.