IN THE SERVICE OF THE SULTAN AND THE GREEK STATE: The Transformation of the Eastern Mediterranean from Multiethnic Empire to Nation States reflected through the life of Bodosakis-Athanasiadis

Bodosakis was born in Bor in Cappadocia around 1890 and died in Athens in 1979. He lived the first three decades of his life in the Ottoman Empire and his career there included, among other things, serving the Ottoman troops and the personal on the Berlin-Baghdad Railway as one of their main suppliers during the First World War. He forged professional contacts with leading Ottoman military men, including Mustafa Kemal, German officers and representatives of leading German firms. In the wake the Greek-Turkish exchange of population Bodosakis decided to leave Anatolia and he lived the remainder of his life in Greece. He continued, however, to a wide extent to base his business on his Ottoman past, i.e. on the acumen he had developed during that time, not least by making use of the personal acquaintances, the local knowledge and the regional networks that he had forged when he was still a citizen of the Ottoman Empire. Mogens Pelt received his Dr.Phil. in 2003 from the University of Copenhagen and his Ph.D. in 1993 from the same place, both in Contemporary History. Currently he is a Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University.

Speaker: 102 Luce