Ali Pasha of Ioannina (?1750-1822), the Ottoman-appointed governor of
the northern mainland of Greece, was a towering figure in Ottoman,
Greek, and European history. Based on an array of literatures,
paintings, and musical scores, this is the first English-language
critical biography about him in recent decades. K. E. Fleming shows that
the British and French diplomatic experience of Ali was at odds with the
"orientalist" literatures that he inspired. Dubbed by Byron the "Muslim
Bonaparte," Ali enjoyed a position of diplomatic strength in the eastern
Adriatic; in his attempt to secede from the Ottoman state, he cleverly
took advantage of the diplomatic relations of Britain, Russia, France,
and Venice. As he reached the peak of his powers, however, European
accounts of him portrayed him in ever more "orientalist" terms--as
irrational, despotic, cruel, and undependable.
Fleming focuses on the tension between these two experiences of Ali--the
diplomatic and the cultural. She also places the history of modern
Greece in the context of European history, as well as that of Ottoman
decline, and demonstrates the ways in which contemporary European
visions of Greece, particularly those generated by Romanticist
philhellenism, contributed to a unique form of "orientalism" in the
south Balkans. Greece, a territory never formally colonized by Western
Europe, was subject instead to a surrogate form of colonial control--one
in which the country's history and culture, rather than its actual land,
was annexed, invaded, and colonized.
Originally published in 1999.
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