9*Ukdzfe#,-X,Nn* LIT LIT Dominik Gutmeyr, Karl Kaser (Eds.) Europe and the Black Sea Region Studies on South East Europe
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Studies on South East Europe Studies on South East Europe Dominik Gutmeyr, Karl Kaser (eds.) When the scientific study of the Black Sea Region began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, initially commissioned by adjacent powers such as the Habsburg and the Russian empires, this terra incognita was not yet conside- Dominik Gutmeyr, Karl Kaser (eds.) Europe and the Black Sea Region red part of Europe. The eighteen chapters of this volume show a broad range Europe and the Black Sea Region of thematic foci and theoretical approaches – the result of the enormous rich- A History of Early Knowledge Exchange (1750-1850) ness of the European macrocosm and the BSR. The microcosms of the many different case studies under scrutiny, however, demonstrate the historical di- mension of exchange between the allegedly opposite poles of ‘East’ and ‘West’ and underscore the importance of mutual influences in the development of Eu- rope and the BSR. Dominik Gutmeyr is a historian at the Institute of History (Southeast European History and Anthropology) at the University of Graz, Austria. Karl Kaser is full Professor of Southeast European History and Anthropology at the University of Graz, Austria. 978-3-643-80286-6 LIT 9*ukdzfe#,-x,nn* www.lit-verlag.ch LIT LIT Dominik Gutmeyr, Karl Kaser (eds.) Europe and the Black Sea Region Studies on South East Europe edited by Prof. Dr. Karl Kaser (Graz) vol. 22 LIT Dominik Gutmeyr, Karl Kaser (eds.) Europe and the Black Sea Region A History of Early Knowledge Exchange (1750-1850) LIT Cover image: Sotzmann, Daniel Friedrich. Charte von den oberhalb und seitwärts dem Schwarzen Meere gelegenen Russischen und Türkischen Ländern. Royal Academy of Sciences Berlin, 1788 (Detail). This publication has received funding from the European Union’s Ho- rizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 734645. Printed with support of Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-643-80286-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library © LIT VERLAGGmbH&Co.KGWien, Zweigniederlassung Zürich 2018 Klosbachstr. 107 CH-8032 Zürich Tel. +41 (0) 44-251 75 05 E-Mail: [email protected] http://www.lit-verlag.ch Distribution: In the UK: Global Book Marketing, e-mail: [email protected] In North America: International Specialized Book Services, e-mail: [email protected] In Germany: LIT Verlag Fresnostr. 2, D-48159 Münster Tel. +49 (0) 2 51-620 32 22, Fax +49 (0) 2 51-922 60 99, e-mail: [email protected] e-books are available at www.litwebshop.de CONTENTS Introduction: Europe and the Black Sea Region. A History of Early Knowledge Exchange (1750–1850) Karl Kaser and Dominik Gutmeyr 9 I. KNOWLEDGE IN MOTION 31 A Voyage into Cultural Translation: Oscillating between East and West in Lady Mary Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) Michaela Wolf 33 The Prehistory of Knowledge Exchange between the Caucasus, the Black Sea Region and Central Europe: First Millennium BC Zaur Hasanov 51 Itinerant Informants and Circulating Information: Insights into the Black Sea Region in Central-European Media Andreas Golob 81 The Role of Trade in Macedonian Towns up to 1850: Modes and Methods for the Dissemination of Knowledge Vladimir Janev 101 The Macedonian Traditional Knowledge System at the Crossroads of Imperial Influences (from the early 18th to the mid-19th century) Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska 125 II. MATERIALISED KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE 153 Decentring Innovation: Circulation of Knowledge and Early (Russian) Photography Dominik Gutmeyr 155 The Depiction of the Western Black Sea Region in French Military Documents from the Napoleonic Era Wojciech Sajkowski 183 6 CONTENTS Knowledge Transfer among Muslim Communities in Ottoman Balkan Society: Cultural and Social Aspects based on the Case Study of Two Dictionaries from 1827 and 1836/37 Dragi Gjorgiev 201 Armenian Printing as a Means of Mastering European Thought and Knowledge (late 18th to mid-19th century) Gor H. Yeranyan 219 III. COMMUNITIES IN EXCHANGE 235 Minority Debates on the Future of the Ottoman Empire: Greek and Armenian Nationalist Thought Ioannis N. Grigoriadis 237 The Activities of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice and their Literary Translations from French to Armenian (late 18th and early 19th centuries) Greta Nikoghosyan 255 The Role of Diasporic Communities in the Development of the Odessa Region Yana Volkova 273 The National Self-Determination Projects of Greece and Bulgaria: The Role of Ethnic Bessarabian Diasporas Svetlana V. Koch 289 IV. INSTITUTIONALIZING EXCHANGE 311 Academic Studies of the Black Sea Region and the Northwest Caucasus (second half of the 18th to the early 19th century) Stavris Parastatov and Alla Kondrasheva 313 ‘The Russian Saint-Cyr’ and the Beginning of Female Education in Russia: Institutes for Noble Maidens (1764–1796) Anastasiya Pashova and Petar Vodenicharov 337 The Birth of the Archive in Bulgarian Society in the Framework of the Ottoman Empire (late 18th century – end of the 1860s) Mariyana Piskova 353 CONTENTS 7 The Habsburgs and the Black Sea Region: A Continental Approach Harald Heppner 373 The Adaptation and Localization of Modern Intellectual Experience by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople (second half of 18th and first half of 19th centuries) Gayane Ayvazyan 391 Contributors 409 INTRODUCTION: EUROPE AND THE BLACK SEA REGION. A HISTORY OF EARLY KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE (1750–1850) Karl Kaser and Dominik Gutmeyr Abstract: Our contribution pursues two aims: the first is to present the objectives and background of our EU-funded project ‘Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in the Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th–21st Centuries’. The second is to sketch and discuss some theoretical orientations oscillating between diffusion, dis- semination, transfer, exchange and the circulation of knowledge elaborated in the past five decades. Consequently, we will argue for a theoretical stance that focuses on knowledge exchange instead of the frequently prioritised position of knowledge transfer. The simple reason for this preference lies in the greater openness of the first. Instead of looking at mono-lineal transfer processes that usually unfold from an advanced ‘West’ to a barely civilized ‘East’, the exchange concept encourages us to take an additional look at the frequently neglected circulation of knowledge of ambiguous origin, as well as at East-West transfer. Circulation and exchange of knowledge have probably taken place since human communities settled down approximately 10,000 years ago. A more specific sci- entific exchange came into being after modern sciences manifested themselves in Western and Central Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Simplistic transfer con- cepts centring on the export of this new kind of knowledge to other parts of the world and its reception in various ways and times have become increasingly ques- tioned. When the scientific study of the Black Sea Region (BSR) began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, initially commissioned by adjacent powers such as the Habsburg and the Russian empires, this terra incognita was not yet consid- ered part of Europe. Larry Wolff’s statement with regard to the West’s assess- ments of Eastern Europe may also hold true for the BSR: “The geographical bor- der between Europe and Asia was not unanimously fixed in the 18th century, lo- cated sometimes on the Don, sometimes farther east at the Volga, and sometimes, as today, at the Urals. Such uncertainty encouraged the construction of Eastern Europe as a paradox of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, Europe but not Europe” (Wolff 1994, 7). Knowledge and scientific exchange between Europe and the BSR intensified in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries and was interrupted when the eastern BSR (the Caucasus area), as well as the Ukraine after WWI and a signif- icant portion of the Balkan BSR after WWII, were incorporated into the orbit of the Soviet Union. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in 10 KARL KASER AND DOMINIK GUTMEYR Eastern Europe opened up new perspectives at the end of the 20th century. Access to the Black Sea Region increased, a region that – with the exceptions of Greece and Turkey – had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain and with which only re- stricted exchange had been possible for the non-socialist world. The past quarter of a century, however, has witnessed pan-European integration, while globalized knowledge and scientific exchange have assumed a new quality. Not only were ties strengthened between the countries of the BSR itself, in- creasingly considered as the wider Southeast Europe (Troebst 2000, 2007), but also connections forged between the EU15 of the mid-1990s and the countries surrounding the Black Sea – a process that has contributed to the globalization of knowledge and scientific exchange. Today, former Comecon countries such as Bulgaria and Romania have been fully fledged members of the European Union for more than a decade, while former Soviet republics such as Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine signed association agreements in 2016–17. These developments have also led to the integration of the BSR into the European Research Area (ERA; see European Commission 2017) – a process that has intensified exchange between the continent’s western and eastern regions, most notably within the Eu- ropean Union’s research and innovation programmes such as Horizon 2020. Our research and exchange project1 provides an intriguing opportunity to crit- ically reflect on the historical processes sketched above and to take a look into the future. Moreover, it is based on firm theoretical grounds that we will scruti- nize in the following. Thus, we will introduce the reader to the project’s aims and background and discuss some of the theoretical orientations that have unfolded between positions elaborated in the past five decades, such as ‘diffusion’, ‘dis- semination’, ‘transfer’, ‘exchange’ and the ‘circulation’ of knowledge.