Levantine Heritage The story of a community

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The purpose of this page is to provide links to web sites that directly or indirectly concern achievements of the Levantines.

Web sites / Publications

Institutions: The British Embassy at Ankara, a good overview of the history of the British in Turkey & a newspaper article on the history of the Turco-British relations. The Anglican church at Alsancak, Izmir St John the Evangelist. The Catholic St. Rosario church in Alsancak, Izmir The Baptist Church of Buca, Izmir, the former Anglican church of All Saints - web site. Haidar Pasha cemetery Istanbul information sheet (in html)- Commonwealth war graves commission Venetian Museum – Della Rocca Barozzi - Naxos island, Greece - photos  Historical The story of Maltese migrations The diaries of Gertrude Bell, who paid 3 visits to Smyrna meeting with the Levantines. Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, memoirs of the American ambassador in Istanbul between 1913-16. Turkey and Britain in the 18th century - site for a class project Chios and beyond, families and stories & forum Dragomans’ career change: change of status in some families connected with the British and Dutch embassies at Istanbul 1785-1829 – Alexander H. de Groot – Department of Turkish studies University of Leiden, Holland The Jews of Smyrna - research article The research project on Gerald Fitzmaurice of Constantinople: The rise and fall of a chief dragoman, 1865-1939 Forging new spaces for a new identity: review of ‘19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Galata ve Pera’ [Galata and Pera in the second half of the 19th century] (Nur Akın, Istanbul literatür yayıncılık, 1998, 354p) - Gülay Yarıkkaya - Journal of historical studies (2003). Cyrus Hamlin and the Founding of Robert College and an account of Smyrna by John L. Stephens. “Ghiaour Smyrna” Cultural Dialogues of the Encounter between British Mercantile Communities of Smyrna and Bournabat and Local Ethnicities in the 18th to Early 20th Century - Susan Heuck Allen - Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Providence College, Rhode Island. The “Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England - The Journal of the American Oriental Society; 1/1/1997; Saliba, George. The Russells of Aleppo - John M. Munro, 1982 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive The Bonfils Story - William H. Rockett, 1983 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive Merchantile gentelman and inquisitive travellers: constructing the natural history of Aleppo - Janet C.M. Starkey - 2004 TB, a Levant Company Factor on Pilgrimage, 1669 - Jonathan Picarsic Belgians of Egypt -Samir Raafat - Egyptian mail, 1995 Izmir in the XIX century - Turkish ministry of culture Concept of Westernisation and the role of foreign architects in 19th century Ottoman architecture – Ayşe Nadir “The Ambassador, the Sultan and the Artist, an Audience in Istanbul” - archive information on an exhibition in Holland held in 2003 of the relationship between the Dutch envoy Cornelis Calkoen, the Sultan Ahmed III, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, and the painter the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Vanmour. The West and the Middle East - Bernard Lewis - Foreign Affairs v. 76 (Jan./Feb. 1997) p. 114-30 Art and diplomacy in Ottoman Constantinople - Philip Mansel, 1996. A College on the Bosporus - Malcolm P. & Marcia R. Stevens, 1984 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive An American Judge in Egypt: Jasper Yeates Brinton - William Tracy, 1970 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive Orientalist Travelers - Michael Simpson, 1989 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive The million dollar bet (includes impresssions of Buck Whaley’s visit to Smyrna and Constantinople on his way to Jerusalem for a wager) - John Brinton, 1967 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive ‘Boudja past and present’ - Hilda Voltera Barff - ‘Candlesticks’ Izmir Anglican church magazine, winter 1951-52 History of the British colony at Smyrna by Hyde Clarke - 1862 Levantins - French Wikipedia article - ‘babelfish’ translation to English effort From Smyrna to Stewartstown, Ireland: A numistatist’s epigraphic notebook - a study of the work of Henry Perigal Borell (1795-1831) by David Whitehead - 1999 - family history - Ottoman official attitudes towards American missionaries - Çağrı Erhan - research paper, Yale university Cosmopolitan imperialists and the Ottoman port cities: conflicting logics in the urban social fabric - Malte Fuhrmann, University of Berlin (vol. 67 Cashiers de la Méditeranée - 2003) Coexistences et réseaux de relations à Smyrne aux XVIII et XIX siècles - Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis (vol. 67 Cashiers de la Méditeranée - 2003) Smyrne à la fin de l’Empire Ottoman un cosmopolitism si voyant - Hervé Georgolin (vol. 67 Cashiers de la Méditeranée - 2003) British Merchants at Alexandretta, 17th-18th Centuries - Major I.E. Gray - Genealogists’ Magazine, March 1945, vol 9, no:12 Smyrna in the seventeenth century - Blackwood magazine, vol CCXII July/Dec 1922- A.C. Wratislaw English Dragomans and Oriental Secretaries: The Early Nineteenth Century Origins of the Anglicization of the British Drogmanat in Constantinople - G.R. Berridge - Diplomacy and Statecraft, volume 14, Dec. 2003, number 4, Frank Cass Journal, London ‘Bosphorus Germans’ The marble sarcophagus cover of Sir William Hussey, images A Levantine life: Giuseppe Donizetti at the Ottoman court - Emre Arıcı 2002 ‘The Cultural Contributions of the Levantines of Izmir’ - İnci Kuyulu Ersoy 2002 The Man Who Put His Signature On Izmir: Raymond Charles Péré - Cenk Berkant 2006 Les Greco-Catholiques à Istanbul - Fr. Ange Michel 2007 Information about the Greek educational institutions of Smyrna - George Vassiadis, 2007  Genealogical / Testimonial The Maltass & related Whittall, La Fontaine, De Cramer etc. family trees ‘I met a Turk’ by Katherine Creon Wilkin / Wilkinson etc partial family tree Aliotti family - photos The Joly and Hadkinson family Van Lennep family Cercle du Levant - authored by a descendant of Armenian-Catholic Mirzan family, with good overviews of many Levantine families. Roots web - Whittall, Maltass, La Fontaine etc. D’Andria family history research by Paul Ellis, synopsis of his upcoming book. Maxime Fidao’s recollections of the Smyrna years - segment - Grace Williamson’s diary of the September 1922 events in Smyrna, and that for the period 1914-20 A Potpourri of Sidelights and Shadows from Turkey – Alexander MacLachlan – 1938, segment of his diary covering his 36 years in Smyrna Ashe family of Boudja Autobiographical sketch by George C. McVittie, astronomer and scientist La Fontaine family Holton family Henry James Hanson Collection (1838-1935), family archives covering 3 generations The national archives of uk and on-line 1901 census records - sample returns Ancestry.co.uk search facility (1837 onwards) & UK phone books (1880-1984) Family records centre, UK  Church registry listings Baptism, Marriage and Burial Records of the British Chapel, Smyrna - Turkey 1795 - 1832  Historical trade Carpet trade in Smyrna The story of liquorice trading History of the Oriental carpet manufacturers - old image Opium trade and the Dutch community of Izmir, 1820-1940, a review The European merchants in Angora - R. D. Barnett - Anatolian studies annual academic journal 1974 A Gift for the Sultan - Peter English, 1983 - Saudi Aramco world magazine on-line archive A late eighteenth-century Austrian attempt to develop the Red Sea trade route - Middle Eastern Studies; 4/1/1994; Crecelius, Daniel. History of the Ottoman bank - Ottoman bank archives and research centre The beginning of Dutch navigation and trade with the Levant - Daniel Koster The Profit Tax Rolls of Non-Ottoman Subjects at Izmir - Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Turkish historical society bulletin, December 1999. Making of an Ottoman port: The quay of Izmir in the nineteenth century - The Journal of Transport History - Mar 2001 - Elena Fangakis-Syrett Travelling to Jerusalem; TB, a Levant Company Factor on Pilgrimage, 1669 - Jonathan Picarsic - Seminar paper for the Colorado state university The Danish Flag in the Mediterranean Shipping and Trade, 1747-1807 - Dan H. Andersen - University of Copenhagen 2001 php thesis 1906 British Consular Report on Trade in Smyrna - segment The history of the British Chamber of Commerce of Turkey - Desmond Whittall, 1987  Archive trade catalogues Oriental Carpet Manufacturers The C.J. Giraud company founded in 1914 by Charlton James Giraud (1869-1955) Indicateur Commercial - Smyrna trade registry of 1898-1899 and 1920  Photographic archives Pascal Sebah’s (1823-1886) photos of the Levant The Blatchford Collection of Photographs at the American University of Beirut, including those of Rubellin, Bonfils Chusseau Flaviens - active 1890s-1910s University of Pennsylvania Library photo archive collection The US Library of Congress photo collection - Abdul-Hamid II Collection (list view)  Conference / workshops (date order) Izmir au miroir des voyageurs français et de l’histoire - Smyrne, la France et Malte au XVIIIe siècle - Alain BLONDY (Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)) - audio web site ‘Izmir and France (1600-1900) - 3 centuries of privileged relations’ - in French [info in Turkish] - French Cultural Centre, Izmir, Turkey 18-19-20 Oct. 2006 ‘The Italians of Istanbul and the Italian Labour Society of Mutual Aid, representative nucleus of the Comunity. From the nineteenth-century reforms (Tanzimat) to the Turkish Republic (1839-1923)’, Casa d’Italia, Istanbul, 18-19-20 Oct. 2006 - in Italian with simutaneous Turkish translations, Click for details here: The Late Ottoman Port Cities and Their Inhabitants: Subjectivity, Urbanity,and Conflicting Orders’, directed by Malte Fuhrmann & Vangelis Kechriotis, 22-24 March 2007, 8th Mediterranean Research Meeting Christians Missionaries in the Middle East: Re-Thinking Colonial Encounters, North Carolina State University on May 4 & 5, 2007 Migration and Urban Institutions in the Late Ottoman Reform Period, May 10-11, 2007 - Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin Precarious neighborhood: Interconfessional Relations in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean 1854-1923: Local Constraints and International Power Games - hosted by the French School of Athens, 26 - 28 September 2007 Constantinople/Istanbul: Destination, Way-Station, City of Renegades, Faculty Weekend Seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library Washington, DC, 28-29 September, 2007 Italian Architects in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean: the role of Italians in the South of the Mediterranean and North Africa - Alex-Med (The Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Center), Alexandria, Egypt, 15-16 November, 2007 - (in association with the ‘Architectures modernes en Méditerranée groupment de recherche international’) The Minorities of Cyprus: Past, Present and Future - 24 & 25 November 2007 - Cyprus College , Nicosia Cosmopolitanism in the Ottoman Empire and Beyond - Ottoman Urban Studies Seminar, Oct 29 2007 - June 16 2008, ZMO-EUME-Colloquium, Berlin Cognitive approaches to the concept of food in the Mediterranean cultures, Girne American University, Cyprus, an international symposium - 7th – 8th May 2008 Europe and Turkey in the Eighteenth Century: Annual Conference of the German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (DGEJ), October 9-11, 2008, Bonn H-Net discussion networks on Turkey & the Levant & the Mediterranean

Books - in date (publication) chronological order

Constantinople and the scenery of the seven churches of Asia Minor – Rev. Robert Walsh LL.D. chaplain to the British Embassy at the Ottoman Porte - London - 1838 - segment -  The Beauties of the Bosphorus - Miss Julia Pardoe (London 1839)  Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) - ebook   “Travels and Discoveries in the Levant” - C.T. Newton, M.A. - Day & Son Ltd., London 1865  Travels in little known parts of Asia Minor, with illustrations of Biblical literature and researches in archaeology - Henry John van Lennep - London, 1870 - lithograph  Among the Turks - Cyrus Hamlin - Boğaziçi - (Cyrus Hamlin’s reminiscences of 35 years in Turkey, beginning in January, 1839. Originally published in 1878 by Robert Carter and Brothers, New York) Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor, or notes from the Levant - William Cochran - London, 1887- segment -  Early voyages and travels in the Levant - Thomas Dallam; John Covel; J Theodore Bent - London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1893 (later re-print: New York, B. Franklin [1964?])  In the Levant – Charles Dudley Warner – Atlantic Monthly Library of Travel, volume six, 1907 (a travelogue covering the year 1875) - segment -  The Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece, 1204-1566 - William Miller (1908, reprinted 1979)  Saint Polycarpe et son tombeau – le Pere Jean-Baptist, Capucin (1911)  Forty Years in Constantinople Sir Edwin Pears 1873-1915 - New York: D. Appleton & Company - 1916 - segment -  Under the Turk in Constantinople – a record of Sir John Finch’s embassy 1674-1681, by G.F. Abbott - London 1920 - segment -  A consul in the East - A.C. Wratislaw C.B., C.M.G., C.B.E. – William Blackwood and sons - 1924 - segment  ‘Family Records - A record of the origin of Whittall families of Turkey and a short history of the La Fontaine family by James La Fontaine’ - Edmund H. Giraud - 1934 (unavailable) - segment -  Les Anciennes Familles Italiennes de Turquie – Willy Sperco - Istanbul - translated segment -  The Last of the Dragomans - Sir Andrew Ryan K.B.E. C.M.G.- London: Geoffrey Bles - 1951 - segment -  Anglican Church life in Smyrna and its neighbourhood 1636-1952 Donald H. Simpson, F.L.A. Honorary Research Librarian, Diocese of Gibraltar -1952 (unavailable) - segment -  Bournovas - Nikos Kararas, 1955, Athens - translated segment -  And Unto Smyrna - The Story of a Church in Asia Minor S.W.H. Bird (Anglican chaplain of Izmir 1949-1958) (unavailable)  Boutzas: the flower village of Smyrni - Nikos Kararas, pub. Association of Smyrnians, 1962 - translated segment -  To Sevdikioi - Nikos Kararas, 1964, pub. Association of Smyrnians - translated segment -  A history of the Levant company, Alfred Cecil Wood, New York, Barnes and Noble, 1964 Allepo & Devonshire square, English traders in the Levant in the eighteenth century [with plates] - pp 258. Macmillan, London, 1967 - Ralph Davis, professor of economic history at the university of Leicester (BML X.519/4645)  Early history of the Levant company - Mortimer Epstein - New York - A.M.Kelly - 1968  The English Levant company, its foundation and history to 1640 - Mortimer Epstein - New York - B.Franklin - 1968  Perfidious Albion – The origins of Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant 1763-1841 – John Marlowe – Elek books, London – 1971 - segment -  Kordelio - Nikos Kararas, 1971, pub. Association of Smyrnians - translated segment -  The Whittalls of Turkey 1809-1973 – Hugh Whittall (unavailable) - segment -  The British in the Middle East - Sarah Searight - Published by East- West, London, 1979 - segment -  Gateways to the Past - Houses and gardens of Old Bornova Evelyn Lyle Kalças – 1983 - segment -  Catholics and Sultans: the Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1923 - Charles A. Frazee - London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983 - 388 p., ISBN: 0521246768.  Embassy to Constantinople, The travels of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – Introduced by Devla Murphy – 1987. As the wife of the British Ambassador to the Sultan’s court, she spent the years 1716-18 in Turkey and these travel letters full of observation were originally published a year after her death (she is credited with introducing to the west, innoculation and the ‘secret language of flowers’).  Scrap book 1809-1922 - Ray Turrell -1987 (memoirs of her life in Bornova) - segment -  An English consul in Turkey - Paul Rycaut at Smyrna 1667-1678 - Sonia P. Anderson - 1989  Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 - Daniel Goffman - 1990 - segment -  [Bir Levantenin Beyoğlu anıları] – The Beyoğlu [Pera] memories of a Levantine - Giovanni Scognamillo - 1991, and republished in expanded form in 2002 - Bilge Karınca yayınları - Istanbul  XIX Century Beyoğlu - Mustafa Cezar - Akbank 1991 - English summary -  The Commerce of Smyrna in the eighteenth century (1700-1820), Elena Frangakis-Syrett - Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens, 1992, 375 p. - review -  Anglo-Ottoman Encounters in the Age of Revolution, Vol. 1 - Allan Cunningham - Taylor & Francis, Inc. 1992 - google sample -  Aegean Masquearade - A Royal Air Force Odyssey - Stanley J. Beavan - Brewin books - 1994 - segment -  Constantinople - City of world’s desire 1453-1924 - Philip Mansel - Penguin books 1995 - segment -  The Franks in the Aegean, 1204-1500 - Peter Lock - author. Publisher: Pearson UK - London - 1995  The geneaology of the Whittall family of Turkey - Betty Ann McKernan - 1996  Britons in the Ottoman Empire - Daniel Goffman - 1998 - review  English Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Italy - Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Stephen Parkin (Translator) - Cambridge University Press 1998 - google sample  An Isle of Greece - The Noels of Euboea - Barbro Noel-Baker -1999 - Procopi, Greece  European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey - Kate Fleet - New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999  The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul - Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. - google