Learning outcomes: With the successful completion of the course, students will
• familiarize themselves with the main theoretical approaches to the historical study and analysis of the “crisis of the 17th century”
• acquire new knowledge about the social and economic history of early modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire
• gain an in-depth understanding of the processes leading to the transformation of the Ottoman state and its societies
• study in depth particular aspects of the seventeenth-century crisis and its impact (in the course of writing the essay).
General Competences: Knowledge, understanding and critical review of
• historical developments in governance, society, economy and ideas
• social and cultural developments and mentality shifts that shaped the modern world
• uses of the past in the present
• Greek history within its broader contexts.
• Production of free, creative and inductive thinking.
• Working independently.
The 17th century was a time of generalized crisis, manifested in demographic decline, economic hardship, social unrest, political conflicts and harsh wars. In the Ottoman Empire – as in the rest of Europe, although in a different way – the so-called “crisis of the 17th century” ushered large-scale transformation of institutions, socio-economic structures and power relations, as well as inter-community relations. The course examines the fields of manifestation of the crisis in the Ottoman world, as well as the institutional and socio-economic changes that led to the transformation of the Ottoman Empire and its societies.
Thematic units:
- The world in the 17th century
- The 17th century as a time of crisis
- Climate and environmental factors
- Ottoman state and institutions
- The Ottoman 17th century: from decline to crisis
- Rebellions in the imperial center
- The Celali revolts and their aftermath
- The Great Church in crisis
- Fundamentalism and messianism
- Religion, ideology and governance
- Institutional and socio-economic transformations
Suggested bibliography:
1. Abou El-Haj, Rifa’at, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,, Albany: SUNY University Press, 1991.
2. Baer, Marc David, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
3. Faroqhi, Suraiya, (επιμ.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, τόμ. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
4. Gara, Eleni, and Ovidiu Olar, “Confession-Building and Authority: The Great Church and the Ottoman State in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century”. Στο Entangled Confessionalizations? Dialogic Perspectives on the Politics of Piety and Community Building in the Ottoman Empire, 15th–18th centuries, επιμ. Tijana Krstić και Derin Terzioǧlu, Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2022, 159–214.
5. İnalcık, Halil, “Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700”, Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980), 283-337.
6. Κουτζακιώτης, Γιώργος, Αναμένοντας το τέλος του κόσμου τον 17ο αιώνα: Ο εβραίος μεσσίας και ο μέγας διερμηνέας, Αθήνα: Εθνικό Ίδρυμα Ερευνών, 2011.
7. McGowan, Bruce, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land, 1600-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
8. Parker, Geoffrey, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, Νιού Χέιβεν – Λονδίνο: Yale University Press, 2013.
9. Tezcan, Baki, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
10. White, Sam, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Related academic journals:
- Comparative Studies in Society and History
- International Journal of Middle East Studies
- Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
- Past & Present
- Τα Ιστορικά
