The Islands of the Eastern Mediterranean A History of Cross-Cultural Encounters

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. From Mehmed II's efforts to conquer the old Roman Empire, through 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 surrounding the region.

Luca Zavagno is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Eastern Mediterranean University of Northern Cyprus.

Özlem Çaykent is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Eastern Mediterranean University of Northern Cyprus.

1. Introduction; Ozlem Caykent and Luca Zavagno
2. The Ottoman Caesar: Mehmed II's Strategies of Possession, 1453 – 81; Celine Dauverd
3. Security or Glory? Some Sixteenth-Century Views on the Necessity of Conquering Rhodes; N. Zeynep Yelce
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;  Elif Bayraktar Tellan
5. Challenging Authority and Transforming Politics: A New Perspective on the Muslim and Non-Muslim Experiences in Ottoman Crete, 1896 – 97; Pinar Sensik
6. The Minoans, the Ottomans and the British: The Eastern Mediterranean as an Imperial Space; Elektra Kostopoulou
7. 'The Wonderful Adventures of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition': Einar Gjerstad, Erik Sjo¨qvist, the Swedish Institute in Rome and the Cyprus Expedition; Fredrick Whitling
8. Looting And Losing the Archaeological Heritage of Cyprus; Marc Fehlmann
9. The Sea that Binds Us: the EU's Problematic Normative Capacity and the Union for the Mediterranean; C. Akca Atac
Index