Terre promesse. Strategie familiari e appartenenze imperiali nel Mediterraneo del Settecento

Giampaolo Salice

2024-01-01

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Abstract

How did the global empires of the 18th century take root in their newly conquered territories? This volume seeks to answer that question by recounting the story of the Greek Orthodox family of the Alexianos. Originally from Monemvasia, they migrated to Minorca in the mid-18th century. On that island, characterized by Spanish culture but under British sovereignty, they established themselves as key figures in economic and political relations with Livorno, London, Algiers, Tunis, St. Petersburg, and Constantinople. While putting down roots in the lands that had been promised to them, they became interlocutors with a myriad of actors across different spatial, social, and institutional scales, buying and selling ships, establishing saltworks, founding Orthodox churches, acting as agents for the Regency of Algiers, fighting in the service of the British and Russian empires, and participating in the conquest of Havana, and the colonization of Florida and Crimea. By reconstructing the experiences of the Alexiano family, the book tackles key issues in recent historiographical debates: the relationship between migration and the territorialization of sovereignty, the connection between diasporas and settlement in frontier spaces, forms of citizenship in the ancien régime, conflicts between natives and immigrants, the rights of peoples versus those of states, and the global dimension of the Mediterranean in the 18th century.