There has been a growing interest in recent years in reviewing the continued impact of the Ottoman empire even long after its demise at the end of the First World War. The wars in former Yugoslavia, following hot on the civil war in Lebanon, were reminders that the settlements of 1918-22 were not final. While many of the successor states to the Ottoman empire, in east and west, had been built on forms of nationalist ideology and rhetoric opposed to the empire, a newer trend among historians has been to look at these histories as Ottoman provincial history. The present volume is an attempt to bring some of those histories from across the former Ottoman space together. They cover from parts of former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece to Lebanon, including Turkey itself, providing rich material for comparing regions which normally are not compared.

Building on the work of a new generation of historians, this volume presents twelve papers from all parts of the former Ottoman space, from the Middle East to the Balkans, showing new approaches to Ottoman provincial history.

Whether defined as essentially 'Turkish', and therefore alien to the Lebanese experience, or remembered in its final years as a tyrannical and brutal dictatorship, the period has not been thought of fondly in most Lebanese historiography. In a far-reaching and much-needed analysis of this complex legacy, James A. Reilly looks at Arabic-language history writing emanating from Lebanon in the post-1975 period, focusing on the three main Ottoman administrative centres of Saida, Beirut and Tripoli. This examination highlights key aspects of Lebanon's current political and cultural climate, and emphasises important points of agreement and conflict in contemporary historical discourse. The 1989 Ta'if Accords, for example, which ended the Lebanese Civil War, were accompanied by calls for reinterpretation of how the country's history could assist in creating a sense of national cohesion. The Ottoman Cities of Lebanon is invaluable to all historians and researchers working on Lebanese history and politics, and wider issues of identity, post-imperialist discourse and nationhood in the Middle East.

Bulgaria is a country of extraordinary beauty, with high, wild mountains and gentle valleys, and with picturesque cities and idyllic villages. It’s bordered by Romania, Serbia Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea. After many years of communist rule, Bulgaria adopted a democratic constitution and began the process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Bulgaria.

This book explores the increasing interest in the Ottoman past in contemporary Greek society and its cultural sphere. It considers how the changing geo-political balances in South-East Europe since 1989 have offered Greek society an occasion to re-examine the transition from cultural diversity in the imperial context, to efforts to homogenize culture in the subsequent national contexts. This study shows how contemporary immigration and better relations with Turkey led to new directions in historiography, fiction and popular culture in the beginning of the twenty-first century. It focuses on how narratives about cultural co-existence under Ottoman rule are used as a prism of national self-awareness and argues that the interpretations of Greece’s Ottoman legacy are part of the cultural battles over national identity and belonging. The book examines these narratives within the context of tension between East and West and, not least, Greece’s place in Europe.

This volume highlights three intertwined aspects of the global context of Orthodox Christianity: religion, politics, and human rights. The chapters in Part I address the challenges of modern human rights discourse to Orthodox Christianity and examine conditions for active presence of Orthodox churches in the public sphere of plural societies. It suggests theoretical and empirical considerations about the relationship between politics and Orthodoxy by exploring topics such as globalization, participatory democracy, and the linkage of religious and political discourses in Russia, Greece, Belarus, Romania, and Cyprus. Part II looks at the issues of diaspora and identity in global Orthodoxy, presenting cases from Switzerland, America, Italy, and Germany. In doing so, the book ties in with the growing interest resulting from the novelty of socio-political, economic, and cultural changes which have forced religious groups and organizations to revise and redesign their own institutional structures, practices, and agendas.