Seminar: Between The Mountain and The Plain: The Making of The Cypriot "Moyenne Durée"

The Ottoman conquest of 1571 marked a turning point in Cypriot history. While it coincided with a change in the sovereignty of the island, it also constituted a landmark shift in the relationship between environment, economy, and people that had been brewing for while – and continued to do so long after the arrival of the Ottomans. The paper discusses the geological formation of the island, focusing on the Troodos and Kyrenia mountains, enquiring into the interactions between geology, organic matter, and human society by examining the Ottoman conquest as a moment of rupture both for Cyprus and the Mediterranean world at large.

The relationship between environment, climate, landscape, and economy changed in time and place; it had a profound social and demographic effect on the historical experience of Cypriots. Combining Venetian, Ottoman, and British cartographic and quantitative sources pertinent to the economy and demography of the island, the paper employs Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) to geospatially analyse and visualise patterns and trends in settlement and economic activity. The objective is to enquire into the long-term logic of the ways humans demonstrated adaptability and resilience in the face of a changing environment and climate across different historical eras.

 

Antonis Hadjikyriacou is Assistant Professor of Ottoman and Turkish History at the Department of Political Science and History of Panteion University, and Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University. He has held research and teaching positions at Boğaziçi University, Princeton University, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH, the University of Crete, and the University of Cyprus.

His research focuses on early modern Ottoman Cyprus, employing Digital Humanities methods for the purposes of social, economic, and environmental history from a Mediterranean vantage point. He has published widely in English, Greek, and Turkish. His monograph Peninsular Island: Cyprus and the Mediterranean during the Ottoman age of revolutions (in Greek) earned the Stanley Kyriakides award in Political Science and History by the journal Cyprus Review.