The Business of Transition

Reviews / Votes

"A fascinating examination of a vitally important city moving through the critical transition from Ottoman Imperial to Greek national rule, The Business of Transition provides a new and textured account of the period, showing that the mercantile classes were both central to and tremendously skillful at navigating this shift. Equally rich in sources and interpretation, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of Greeks, Jews, and the emergence of the 'New Greece.'"
-Katherine Fleming, author of Greece: A Jewish History "Richly documented, The Business of Transition charts the profound transformations that affected the economic and political elites of one of the Mediterranean's great commercial hubs. Paris Papamichos Chronakis sheds new light on a singular chapter in the history of nationalism that reshaped the modern Jewish world."
-Francesca Trivellato, author of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells us about the Making of European Commercial Society "In a field that has historically focused only on minority groups' transition, Chronakis examines the lived experiences and interactions between both groups. In addition, he rejects traditional studies' sole focus on ethnoreligious identity and argues that identity is multifaceted and, in this case, includes social class and local Salonican identity."-Linda Kantor-Swerdlow, Jewish Book Council "Paris Papamichos Chronakis's The Business of Transition is a tour de force: Deeply researched and beautifully written, it offers an unprecedented window into the worldsofJewish and Greek merchants in Salonica during the first decades of the twentieth century. This period was oneofdizzying change, which included revolution, war, occupation, and a massive fire that remade the city and dislocated most of the city's Jews. A relational history, the book provides thick descriptions of how different actors-and groups-navigated thetransitionfrom Ottoman to Greek rule, forging alliances and rivalries not only along ethnoreligious lines but also according to class, professional, political, urban, and regional formsofidentification. With his erudite analysis and ability to uncover subtle and shifting patterns of behavior and belonging, Chronakis pushes us to move beyond unilinear descriptions of the transition from empire to nation or majority to minority. Instead, we are left with an image of Hellenization as a 'more crooked line than straight path,' an approach made concrete through the book's fine-grained analysisofthe various twists and turns taken along the way."
- Julia Phillips Cohen, author of Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era "This well-plotted book is an interesting mix of national and business history concerning the vicissitudes of Salonica (today's Thessaloniki), the commercial center of the emerging Greek state from the late 19th century through the early 1920s.... Recommended."-S. Bowman, CHOICE "The Business of Transition forces us to reconsider the history of minoritisation.... The book is certainly a must read for anyone interested in the emergence of modern Greece."-Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor