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At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne Province—among the most religiously diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, the city had become a Turkish border town, and the province had lost much of its non-Muslim population. With this book, Jacob Daniels explores how one of the world's largest Sephardi communities dealt with the encroachment of modern borders.
Using Ladino, French, English, and Turkish sources, Daniels offers a new take on the ways in which ethno-religious minorities experienced the transition "from empire to nation-state." Rather than tracing a linear path, Edirne Jews zigzagged between the Ottoman Empire and three nation-states—without moving a mile. And by maintaining interstate Sephardi networks, they resisted pressure to treat the shifting border as a limit to their zone of belonging. Ultimately, proximity to the border would undo Edirne's Jewish community, but the way this ending came about—local Jews were rarely killed or deported—challenges common assumptions about state borders and Jewish history. By studying Jewish encounters with the nation-state alongside the emergence of modern borders, Daniels sheds light on both phenomena.
"In this skillfully researched monograph, Jacob Daniels tells the story of one of southeast Europe's oldest Sephardi Jewish communities, careful to establish the community's agency, diversity, and conflict in opinion as they weathered the tumultuous changes that shook, remade, and ultimately collapsed their world on the eve of World War II. The Jews of Edirne is a significant accomplishment." —Ipek Kocaömer Yosmaoglu, Northwestern University
"The Jews of Edirne deftly explores the complex and unexpected ways a minority community on the frontlines of some of the twentieth century's greatest catastrophes made sense of their uncertain futures. An eminently readable and powerful work, this book prompts us to rethink the meanings of borderlands amid the localized logics of nationhood." —Devi Mays, University of Michigan
"In his ambitious new history, The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders, Jacob Daniels challenges two popular yet contradictory conceptions of Jews living in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. In keeping with atragic view of Jewish history, the first notion posits that the empire's borderlands became adeadly place for its Jewish inhabitants. In contrast, the second misconception highlights the positive experience of the Jewish community in the borderland in comparison to its Christian and Muslim neighbors." —Linda Kantor-Swerdlow, Jewish Book Council
"This study by Daniels explores the phenomena of borders and borderlands and the various challenges affectingthe different ethnic populations of western Thrace during the empire's final decades. It provides a detailed analysis of the constantly changing social, economic, intellectual, and political aspects of the empire on the eve of its dissolution, emphasizing the declining Sephardic supranational diaspora in Edirne and its broad hinterland.... Recommended." —S. Bowman, Choice
"Daniels' book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly examination of Ottoman Jewish history by analyzing the transition from empire to nation-state, thereby providing new perspectives on border communities." —Gürer Karagedikli, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
Maps: The Edirne Region
Introduction
1. Foundations of a Borderland Community: Mobility, Networks, and Economic Life
2. Liberty and Limits: Public Spheres on the Imperial Border, 1908–1912
3. The Eye of the Storm: Borderland Violence and the Jews, 1912–1918
4. Days of Blue and White: Hellenism and Zionism in Northeastern Greece, 1919–1922
5. Peacetime Violence: Completing Borderland Intolerance, 1923–1934
Conclusion
Epilogue: Bordering the Holocaust
Notes
Bibliography
Index