Mediating legacies of empire in the post-imperial museum

ABSTRACT

Throughout the Balkans, the history museum remains a crucial site where memories of an imperial past are molded, rationalized, and integrated into the wider arc of nationalist narratives about a country and its people. The legacy of the Ottoman Empire is particularly fraught in Greece, where this period is almost always classified as ‘post-Byzantine’ within the context of government institutions. In this paper, I set out to trace the legacy of the Ottoman Empire as it has been mediated in multiple museum sites throughout the country. I will primarily focus on two case studies: The National Historical Museum in Athens and the Museum of Ali Pasha and the Period of Revolution in Ioannina. Comparing these two sites and their practices of display bring into sharper focus the dynamics of how historical memory plays out in a central versus regional sphere of belonging and identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum studies
• nationalism
• Greece
• Ottoman Empire
• Tepedelenli Ali Pasha

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am inspired by Michael Galaty’s (2011) discussion of how heritage values shift from heterodoxy to orthodoxy in Albania, a discussion building on Bordieu’s theory of doxa versus opinion.

2. See Amy Mills’ analysis of the intersections between nationalism and local geographies in contemporary Istanbul (2010, 30–34). A number of scholars (Sade Mete 2015; Zobler 2011) are beginning to examine the center-periphery dynamics in museums throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.

3. The phenomenon of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ in Turkey, often tied to the AK Parti’s rise to power, is actually a rather recent development. For a perspective on Turkish foreign policy and Neo-Ottomanism in relation to another potent site in the Balkans, see Behar Sadriu’s contribution in this volume.

4. This material presented as belonging to Christians under Ottoman rule can mostly be found in the ‘post-Byzantine’ section in the national Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens and its regional branches.

5. The museum belongs to the Historic and Ethnological Society of Greece, and was first established in 1882 (Catapoti 2012, 140).

6. ‘About Us’ section on the website of The National Historical Museum, accessed April 17, 2017: http://www.nhmuseum.gr/en/about-us/the-national-historical-museum/.

7. The following account is based on visits to the museum by the author in 2013 and 2015.

8. It is surely not a coincidence that in 1920, the year the copy of Delacroix’s painting was commissioned, Greece and its European allies were locked in a devastating war in Anatolia against Turkish troops.

9. This initial exhibition came only three years after the region of Thessaly was ceded by the Ottomans to the Greeks in the Convention of Constantinople.

10. For an introduction to Ali Pasha and his times, see Fleming (1999, especially 18–35), and Skiotis (1971). Also see the comprehensive bibliography included with the Hellenic Research Foundation’s publication of Ali Pasha’s archival papers: Panagiotopoulos, Dimitropoulos, and Michailaris (2009, 169–185). The present study emerges from a broader project on tracing Ali Pasha’s influence through an extensive programme of architectural patronage (Neumeier 2016).

11. The following is based on visits to the museum by the author in 2012, 2015, and 2017. During that time, the curator-founder of the museum has been active in expanding and modifying the gallery spaces. The analysis presented here reflects the most recent iteration of the museum as seen in 2017.

12. My thanks to Sotirios Dimitriadis for facilitating my interview with Fotis Rapakousis.

13. During my visit in 2017, Mr. Rapakousis was in the midst of creating in the basement of the annex a multimedia installation dedicated to the myth of Kyra Frosini, a young Christian woman who was said to have been executed by Ali Pasha.