o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

Despina Vlami
THE FEMALE ENVIRONMENT OF A GREEK MERCHANT ENTREPRENEUR
(EIGHTEENTH TO NINETEENTH CENTURIES): NEW EVIDENCE
FROM THE PERSONAL ARCHIVE OF MIHAIL VASSILIOU
Introduction
G
reek international business in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has
been mostly identified with the phenomenon of Greek merchant migration
that led to the establishment of a network of Greek enterprises specializing in
Levantine wholesale commerce, imports-exports, commission and financial services.
Business communities were founded all around the Mediterranean, in the Habsburg
Empire, in north-western Europe and in the ports of the Black Sea.
The Greek merchant entrepreneurs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
have been studied thoroughly by migration and business historians. From the 1980s
in particular, a number of studies have utilized as a convenient methodological tool
the organization of the Greeks around ethno-religious institutions in their new
countries of residence, and within this geographical, social and political context have
addressed business, ethnic identity, sociability and strategies of social ascendancy,
political and cultural concerns with reference to the home country 1 . These studies
1 Ch. Hatziiossif, La colonie grecque en Egypte (1833-1856), Doctorat de Troisième Cycle, Paris
1980; Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Η ελληνική παροικία της Τεργέστης (1751-1830), Athens 1986;
Anna Mandilara, The Greek business community in Marseille, 1816-1900: individual and network
strategies, PhD Thesis, Florence 1998; Despina Vlami, Το Φιορίνι, το Σιτάρι και η Οδός του
Κήπου. Έλληνες έμποροι στο Λιβόρνο 1750-1868, Athens 2000; V. Kardasis, Έλληνες Ομογενείς
στη Νότια Ρωσία, Athens 1998; Ath. E. Karathanassis, L’Hellénisme en Transylvanie.
L’activité culturelle, nationale et religieuse des companies commerciales helleniques de Sibiu et de Brasov
aux XVIII-XIX siècles, Thessaloniki 1989; Despina-Irini Tsourka-Papastathi, Η ελληνική εμπορική
κομπανία του Σιμπίου Τρανσυλβανίας, 1636-1848, Thessaloniki 1994; Vassiliki Sirinidou,
Έλληνες στη Βιέννη, 1750-1850, PhD Thesis, Athens 2002. On some occasions material
has been provided by private business archives, as in Caterina Papakonstantinou, Ελληνικές
εμπορικές επιχειρήσεις στην Κεντρική Ευρώπη το β΄ μισό του 18 ου αιώνα. Η οικογένεια
Πόνδικα, PhD Thesis, Athens 2002 and Aggeliki Igglesi, Βορειοελλαδίτες έμποροι στο τέλος
της Τουρκοκρατίας. Ο Σταύρος Ιωάννου, Athens 2004. For a study of twentieth-century
Greek diaspora in Egypt see A. Kitroeff, The Greeks in Egypt 1919-1937; ethnicity and class,
London 1989. For an interesting review of methodological questions related to the issue: Ch.
Hatziiossif, ‘Εμπορικές παροικίες και ανεξάρτητη Ελλάδα: ερμηνείες και προβλήματα’, Ο Πολίτης,
62 (1983), 28-34; G. B. Dertilis, ‘La conjuncture economique au Levant et les capitaux de
la diaspora hellenique, 1862-1873’, Cahiers de la Mediterranée, Νίκαια 1981; G. B. Dertilis, Ban-
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