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  • Στiς όχθες τov γδραγόρα: Oixoγέvεiα oixovoμία xαi αστixή xoivwviα στo Movαστήρi 1897–1911
  • Gerasimos Augustinos
Vasilis K. Gounaris , Bασίλς K. Γouvάης. Στiς όχθες τov γδραγόρα: Oixoγέvεiα oixovoμία xαi αστixή xoivwviα στo Movαστήρi 1897–1911. Athens and Thessaloniki: Stahi. 2002. Pp. 312.

By the beginning of the twentieth century the region of Macedonia, with its mix of peoples, was deeply involved in the nationalist politics of southeastern Europe and the international diplomatic scene. It exemplified the dramatic changes occurring throughout the Balkan Peninsula: the struggle between the ways of empire and demands of the national idea, the interaction between established economic patterns and new commercial developments, and the confrontation of values as people and ideas migrated within and without the region.

Macedonia was at the cusp of a new century and the coming radical political-territorial transformation that marked much of the eastern half of the Old Continent. From the Baltic to the Aegean, borders were redrawn, the rural lands were re-forming, and urban centers became the focus of revolutionary change. This study focuses on the last sector, while acknowledging the links with the other two.

Name changes that towns and cities in Eastern Europe underwent in the course of the upheavals from empire to nation-state and the competition of ideologies in the twentieth century did not follow a sequential historical chronology. Inhabitants used both the name Monastir and Bitola concurrently to indicate their own cultural community and place of residence. And this is the key the author employs in examining this social site at a critical historical moment.

A primary lever used to open a window into life in Monastir is the source material—notebooks and records—from a merchant family archive. This is supplemented by contemporary travel accounts of Westerners, the diplomatic correspondence of Greek and British officials and the writings of other Greeks resident in Monastir. The work is divided into roughly four equal parts: the first three concentrate on the family in its social and economic dimensions; the last relates social, economic and cultural issues to the nationalist politics, peaceful and violent, that soon overwhelmed the region. The Macedonian question-who would gain the upper hand in securing the political allegiance of the peoples of the region-is the ominous backdrop to daily life.

From that time through most of the twentieth century writings about the region took this nationalist weighted question as their starting point. Their intent was to fix identities and legitimize claims to territory and people. Gounaris does not ignore this factor and its role at the time. But with a longer [End Page 207] historical perspective, he approaches the era and the place through the window of alltagsgeschichte: the exposition of the daily life of the sizeable Katsougiannis merchant family that constitutes the bulk of this work. As the author makes clear, the family records are economical and thrifty, as the family was. They are notations of expenses for home and business. But the author makes good use of them to tease out the life and labors of an Orthodox Greek Vlach family of means.

The Katsougiannis family represents, as the author notes, only a small slice of Monastir society at the time: a culturally distinct people who were part of one confessional community; a family which was not among the wealthiest but managed to grow its real property; a family that reflected both traditional values and the impact of new, foreign-derived goods, values and practices. Through the family’s records and other testimony a picture emerges of social relationships— familial, customers, employees, servants, businessmen of other national cultural communities—that highlight the way in which the variegated community of moderate sized towns like Monastir functioned even as they were becoming the sites of nationalist-defined conflict.

The last part of the book points up the difficulty in using an everyday family resource to deal with the singular historical events that inevitably changed everybody’s life. It is not easy to integrate an examination of societal structure with dramatic political happenings. But the two are integral to a better understanding of how people responded to the challenges of new ideas. Here the author uses...

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