ΠΕΙΡΑΤΕΙΑ, ΠΕΡΙΠΛΑΝΗΣΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ΣΤΙΣ ΑΚΤΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΧΑΛΚΙΔΙΚΗΣ: ΜΙΑ ΟΡΙΕΝΤΑΛΙΣΤΙΚΗ ΜΙΚΡΟΪΣΤΟΡΙΑ ΕΝ ΕΤΕΙ 1830

Abstract

The study involves a well documented and common incident of piracy off the coast of Halkidiki in 1830 and the attempted abduction of a famous protestant missionary Joseph Wolff. The participants were local notables, Ottoman administrators, pirates and armatoles who, after a decade of warfare, social disintegration and dislocation, discuss the difficult –almost impossible– transition to normal life with David Urquhart, a philhellene traveler working for the British Embassy and captured by the same crew. The variety of the available sources and the quality of information for an otherwise unimportant event give us the necessary ground to turn this microhistory into a case study of Orientalism; i.e. a discussion of the conditions which would allow the decaying Ottoman Empire to recover and reform, to the extend that this was a feasible and desirable option. The key issue from the British point of view was the kind of leadership required to rehabilitate these seemingly uninterested, unmotivated, broken-hearted and bitterly disappointed Orientals, Christian and Muslims alike. Surprisingly but not inexplicably, the recipe for their progress was not Europeanisation but the restoration of Ottoman tradition.