o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

ALIYE F. MATARACI
networks within which commercial networks are mostly defined over a single ethnoreligious
identity, be it Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Muslim or any other 37 .
37 I thank Professor Gadi Gilbar for inviting me to the conference ‘Competing Networks:
Greek and Other Commercial Houses in the Mediterranean during the Long Nineteenth Century’,
Haifa University, 5-7 June 2006. The conference was held under the auspices of the University
of Haifa Program of Modern Hellenic Studies and the Project on the Big Merchant-
Entrepreneurs of the Middle East and was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Foundation
(Athens). The various types of relations that developed within and between various networks
ranging from economic cooperation to intense competition, the reasons for different modes of
operation of the networks, and the causes of the success and the dominance of some and the
loss of economic power and influence of others were the issues of main interest discussed during
the conference. These issues were discussed with a particular focus on Greece, the Ottoman
Empire and Egypt. My work has benefited greatly from the papers presented at this conference.
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