This is a collection of primary sources with introductions.Paper back edition is an abridge version of the more scholarly hardcover edition for the general reader and for students.

The Ottoman Empire stretched from the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. It included the islands of Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, and many smaller islands in the Aegean, Adriatic, and Black Seas. These islands were its frontiers, and many of the battles against Christian enemies were fought here; they were also bridges to the outside world beyond the empire. They were often fortified by magnificent castles, and sometimes served as bases for corsairs. The book highlights significant events in naval history, depicts collective punishments by invaders, and provides myriad insights into economic and cultural life on the islands.

The Mediterranean, or 'Middle Sea', has long been regarded as the symbolic centre of European civilization. The binding water between Turkey, the Middle East, the trading communities of North Africa, and the European powerhouses Italy, France and Greece, a history of this sea is a new and vital way of understanding the history of the societies which have flourished in the region. The Islands of the Eastern Mediterranean charts the story of the water as both connector and border, and analyses the islands role in world history. Covering Mehmed II's efforts to conquer the old Roman Empire, through to the claims of Rhodes and the role of the Aegean Islands in Ottoman international relations, to the British in Cyprus and the present-day tensions, this book's interconnected essays from leading scholars form a tapestry of knowledge. Together, they represent a new frontier in the way in which we look at sea histories. This will become essential reading for scholars of History, International Relations, Trade and Migration.

In the 1890s, conflict erupted on the Ottoman island of Crete. At the heart of the Crete Question, as it came to be known around the world, were clashing claims of sovereignty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The island was of tremendous geostrategic value, boasting one of the deepest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, and the conflict quickly gained international dimensions with an unprecedented collective military intervention by six European powers. Island and Empire shows how events in Crete ultimately transformed the Middle East Uğur Zekeriya Peçe narrates a connected history of international intervention, mass displacement, and popular mobilization. The conflict drove a wedge between the island's Muslims and Christians, quickly acquiring a character of civil war. Civil war in turn unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe with the displacement of more than seventy thousand Muslims from Crete. In years following, many of those refugees took to the streets across the Ottoman world, driving the largest organized modern protest the empire had ever seen. Exploring both the emergence and legacies of violence, Island and Empire demonstrates how Cretan refugees became the engine of protest across the empire from Salonica to Libya, sending ripples farther afield beyond imperial borders. This history that begins within an island becomes a story about the end of an empire.

The year is 1908, the place, a small Greek island in the declining days of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. For twenty years Basil Pascali has spied on the people of his small community and secretly reported on their activities to the authorities in Constantinople. Although his reports are never acknowledged, never acted upon, he has received regular payment for his work. Now he fears that the villagers have found him out and he becomes engulfed in paranoia. In the midst of his panic, a charming Englishman arrives on the island claiming to be an archaeologist, and charms his way into the heart of the woman for whom Pascali pines. A complex game is played out between the two where cunning and betrayal may come to haunt them both. Pascali's Island was made into a feature film starring Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren.

List of Contributions -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Ottoman Caesar: Mehmed II's Strategies of Possession, 1453-1481 -- 3. Security or Glory? Some Sixteenth-Century Views on the Necessity of Conquering Rhodes -- 4. The Clash of Rum and Frenk: Orthodox-Catholic Interactions on the Aegean Islands in the Mid-Seventeenth to Mid-Eighteenth Centuries and their Impact in the Ottoman Capital -- 5. Challenging Authority and Transforming Politics: A New Perspective on the Muslim and Non-Muslim Experiences in Ottoman Crete, 1896-97 -- 6. The Minoans, the Ottomans and the British: The Eastern Mediterranean as an Imperial Space -- 7. The Wonderful Adventures of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Einar Gjerstad, Erik Sjoqvist, the Swedish Institute in Rome and the Cyprus Expedition -- 8. Looting and Losing the Archaeological Heritage of Cyprus -- 9. The Sea that Binds Us: the EU's Problematic Normative Capacity and the Union for the Mediterranean.

Presents a comprehensive A-to-Z reference to the empire that once encompassed large parts of the modern-day Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe.