The Busi­ness of Tran­si­tion: Jew­ish and Greek Mer­chants from Ottoman to Greek Rule is a schol­ar­ly study of the tran­si­tion from empire to nation-state. Through his analy­sis of the Hel­l­eniza­tion of com­merce among a small group of Greek Ortho­dox and Jew­ish mer­chants in Saloni­ca (present-day Thes­sa­loni­ki) from the Late Ottoman peri­od to World War II, author Paris Papap­mi­chos Chron­akis chal­lenges estab­lished inter­pre­ta­tions of eth­no-reli­gious inter­ac­tion dur­ing tran­si­tion­al periods.

Saloni­ca, a major com­mer­cial port, became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1430. It was lib­er­at­ed or cap­tured (depend­ing upon one’s his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive) by the Greek army in 1912 dur­ing the First Balkan War. At that time, its pop­u­la­tion was 150,000. Sephardic Jews, who had set­tled there after their expul­sion from Spain in the 1500s, were the largest eth­no-reli­gious group, with a pop­u­la­tion of 70,000. Mus­lim Turks and Dön­me (cryp­to-Jews who had out­ward­ly con­vert­ed to Islam) ranked sec­ond at 30,000, while the Greek Ortho­dox Mace­don­ian pop­u­la­tion of 10,000 was con­sid­er­ably small­er. Chron­akis empha­sizes that com­merce was the ​‘thread hold­ing it all togeth­er.” Jew­ish mer­chants (10 per­cent of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty) dom­i­nat­ed com­merce dur­ing the late Ottoman period.

Saloni­ca’s inte­gra­tion into the Greek nation-state and sub­se­quent wars led to sig­nif­i­cant pop­u­la­tion shifts. Dur­ing this peri­od, promi­nent Jew­ish mer­chant fam­i­lies began emi­grat­ing because they feared the Greek gov­ern­ment would pro­mote poli­cies favor­ing Greek nation­als. The defeat of the Greeks in the Gre­co-Turk­ish War result­ed in the pop­u­la­tion exchanges in 1923. The Mus­lims and Dön­me became refugees in Turkey, and 100,000 Ana­to­lian Greek Ortho­dox refugees reset­tled in Saloni­ca, mak­ing the Greek Ortho­dox the new eth­no-reli­gious majority.

In a field that has his­tor­i­cal­ly focused only on minor­i­ty groups’ tran­si­tion, Chron­akis exam­ines the lived expe­ri­ences and inter­ac­tions between both groups. In addi­tion, he rejects tra­di­tion­al stud­ies’ sole focus on eth­no-reli­gious iden­ti­ty and argues that iden­ti­ty is mul­ti­fac­eted and, in this case, includes social class and local Saloni­can iden­ti­ty. Thus, a Greek Mace­don­ian mer­chant could wel­come Greek rule while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as a Saloni­can, be con­cerned that the cen­tral gov­ern­ment will reroute trade to Athens and align with local Jew­ish mer­chants who shared these region­al class con­cerns. By focus­ing on group inter­ac­tion in pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions, Chron­akis demon­strates that Jew­ish mer­chants’ tran­si­tion from a major­i­ty to a minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion was a com­plex process, active­ly nego­ti­at­ed by both groups, and that the Hel­l­eniza­tion of com­merce led to these Jew­ish mer­chants iden­ti­fy­ing as Greek rather than Ottoman Jews.