Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950

I have been to Salonika a number of times in the last 30 years but never realized how RICH the history of this important city was. It sat on the crossroads of the Ottoman Empire between the East and the West and had a significant impact on European and world history. Mazower has a tremendous amount of historical information to impart to anyone who wants to understand the nuances and complexities of Salonika on the political make up of Europe in the last 2 centuries. An easy read.

As noted by a previous reviewer Salonica is a micro history. Mazower shows great discipline in omitting everything that is not relevant to his sad-superb-complex subject. It is not a history of the Ottoman Empire, European Powers, Albanians, Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks or Jews, not a history of WWI or WWII, Greek Independence, or Ottoman Conquest, not a history of nationalism (Bulgarian, Greek, or Turkish), not a history of evolving trade and technology. Rather it is the story of a ancient city, its people, culture, neighborhoods, spaces, and politics and how these are shaped by an endless series of internal and external events and actors. As physical evidence of the past fades from the landscape of the city and the landscapes of memory, new inhabitants create their own history and their own city; the myth of a Hellenized, modern, European Salonica replaces the various myths of an older sometimes romanticized Oriental Salonica. Mazower is keen to note that all views of the city are constructed by both inhabitants and outsiders to serve their own agendas. The true city of Salonica was and is always more than individual actors or generations comprehend. Life buries the past. It always will.

Mark Mazower breathes life into a place completely swept away by the conflicts of the 20th century. Masterfully written and eminently readable despite its size, Professor Mazower's work provides depth of detail and real context to all the cross-currents of culture and politics at play, of which he clearly has a profound understanding. While he does show a sympathy toward the much-maligned Ottoman Empire, the effort convincingly argues that the commonly held perception of the Empire in the 18th & 19th century as a decrepit, dysfunctional state was not deserved. He brings to life the lost Turkish presence, as complex as it was often ruthless, the once thriving predominantly-Jewish city the Greeks have willfully buried and forgotten and the substantial Slavic component in the surrounding provinces that dated back to their arrival in the 6th century. He handles the volatile period between the tragic dispossession of the local Turks and the arrival of the horribly tormented Greeks of Asia Minor with great sensitivity by focusing instead on the tragedy of individuals instead of faceless masses. The final chapter is devoted to the Nazi annihilation of the Jews and the city's subsequent metamorphosis into a completely Greek metropolis consciously revising its identity in the older Hellenic context. The singular glaring lapse of this work lies in the author's gratuitous swipes at Greek and Jewish national aspirations, as alluded to by another reviewer below. Somehow, Ottoman hegemony and its destruction of the Classical world it usurped trumps the desires of others who followed it (or more accurately, preceded it). The author seems unable to reasonably reconcile this inconsistency.

In Salonica the Ottoman centuries were a more benign period than in Europe proper, with coexistence rather than savage religious wars. Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians combined to achieve prosperity through trade - more or less.The chapters on the modern world are first depressing, then appalling, as the Germans and collaborators exterminated over90% of the Jewish community. Doesn’t get much better after that.....

Making great use of travelogues and the journals of residents over the centuries,, Mazower paints a rich portrait of a city set on the border of East and West. The most interesting part was the story of the Jewish community and how it shaped the city even as it was itself displaced time and time again

Great read for a great price. Highly recommend to anyone interested in learning about various cultures

I really appreciated how personal the shifting fortunes of various groups felt as I read this book. The author gave me a palpable sense of life there as Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together over centuries…each rising and falling in power, wealth, influence at various times. Having then felt identified with and connected to each, experiencing with them the events of the world wars and of the Holocaust and its aftermath was different for me than anything I’ve read before.This book uses the long arc of time playing out in one city as a fascinating window into world history— the coming and going of empires and ideologies, the migrations, forced or out of need, of populations, several wars, the defining and redefining of national identities and of relationships to the larger world.

An exceptional piece of scholarship, especially for those who might have a connection to Salonica, as I do. I am relying on it to help prepare lessons about the Holocaust in Greece, a subject given relatively little attention in the context of WW II history but of major consequence to the Jews of the Greece.My volume arrived quickly and in good shape.

It takes a bit of concentration to get into this book, but it provides a full and clear picture of a long period of the city’s history. It corrects the common view of Salonica as a lesser part of the Greek state.

A very importand Book for all children of Thessaloniki, where ever they may live. A good overview of the cities history. What you do not find is a passage about the influences this history have or does not have today. But that is consequently for a historical book.thanks for this book!

If you love Greece as much as I do then this book is a must read. If you have never read a book by Mark Mazower then I would highly recommend his other paramount book on Greece titled "Inside Hitler's Greece". He is a Helenophile not seen since Lord Byron. Nevertheless, this book is about the history of Thesaloniki; the second largest city in Greece. It's more than a book about the history of a city, but the history of the people who live in this beautiful city. The history begins with the founding of the city by one if Alexander the Greats generals who had married a half-sister of this great Greek historical figure named Thesalonike. You read about its role as a Byzantine city second only to Constantinople you learn about its conquest by the great Ottoman general, Mehmet II, and the reconquest of the city by the Greek Army in the 20th century. Learning the history of the city is only the beginning of the beauty of this book. The intimate stories of the people that lived in the city and the surrounding country side. The stories of the cities defenders during the Ottoman conquest will truly bring a shiver to the diehard Greek reader, but it will also move the reader who understands what it is to defend a city you live even when your own destruction is assured. You will read about the Seogardic Jews that were settled in Thesaloniki (aka Salonika) after the Spanish Inquisition. You will learn how this community learned to live in their adopted homeland under the Turks, and then the Greeks. Learning how this community was destroyed by Hitler's "Final Solution" becomes just one more tragedy in the history of this great city. An absolute must have book for any true lover of Greek history. Mark Mazower's writings on Greek history continue where Herodotus and Thucydides ended. Truly an important work on Modern Greek history.

excellent ouvrage recommandé à tous ceux que les Balkans, l'empire Ottoman et le problèmes des nationalités passionnent. Comme d'autres auteurs en langue anglaise Mazower marie habilement événements internationaux, régionaux et locaux pour bien mettre en relief les liens qui unissent des populations et les acteurs principaux les uns avec les autres et que notre vision française souvent nationaliste de l'histoire empêche de voir. La vérité est partout et nulle part et tous les points de vue sont bons à entendre si on veut combattre le chauvinisme quel qu'il soit comme le chauvinisme grec par exemple qui a réussi à faire disparaitre une grande partie de la richesse de la culture grecque au sens large. Heureusement les fantômes sont toujours là pour nous rappeler que le vivre ensemble est la seule manière de progresser.Enfin, ce livre est très bien écrit c'est-à-dire qu'il est très accessible à ceux qui ont de bonnes bases en anglais sans pour autant maitriser la langue.

Having used Mazower's "Dark Continent" with university students;having read his magisterial tome on Hitler's empire; then moved to his excellent early book on Greece under Nazi occupation..arriving at "Salonica" seemed like a destined journey where this reader could expect enlightenment,stimulating ideas,detailed information and unexpected links with many other historical topics. I was not disappointed. A supremely readable book,with its erudition carried lightly,dealing through its focus on a city that was part of the great Ottoman empire with the demise of that empire; the hellenisation of the multi-racial city after 1912; the forced population movements of Muslims out of the city;and of "greeks" from asian Turkey in in the 1920s;the weak new democracy succumbing to military rule before Nazi(and Italian) war time occupation and the destruction of its distinctive Jewish population as part of the "Final Solution".A wise and thought provoking book about a unique city recreated by a superb historian.