Picknick mit den Paschas: Aleppo und die levantinische Handelsfirma Fratelli Poche (1853-1880).

• Author: Atmaca, Metin
• Position: Book review

Picknick mit den Paschas: Aleppo und die levantinische Handelsfirma Fratelli Poche (1853-1880)

By Mafalda Ade

Beirut and Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2013, 261 pages, ISBN 9783899139631.

Studies on the Europeans who lived in the Ottoman Empire have been mostly conducted through the Ottoman and European state archives. Few works on the social history are based on private papers, such as Beshara Doumani's work, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 17001900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). As scholars of the Ottoman social history focus on the ethnic and religious minorities, foreigners, merchants, peasants, and women, such archives have become more precious than ever in order to reconstruct the story of understudied subjects. Ade's book takes its power from this background, as she skillfully uses the private archives of Poche and Marcopoli families, which were discovered in the 1990s. Comprised of two separate folios, the trade firms of both families kept chronologically archived accounting books, daily payments, warehouse books, and deadline records of payments from 1853 until 1921. Apart from family papers, there are memoirs, the archives of European vice-consulates, accounting and trade books, and documents from state archives in Aleppo, Istanbul, Paris and Nantes.

After the Ottomans took over Aleppo, the city became a trade terminus for the mercantile coming from the Asia and a maritime link for European merchants. In a few decades time, most European consular representations and trade companies moved their centers from Damascus and Tripoli to Aleppo, which became the third largest urban center in the Ottoman realm after Istanbul and Cairo. Aleppo was not only in the middle of the empire but also a major city in the Arab territories on the cultural boundary of the Turkish and Arab population, which was made up of Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Christians, Jews and Bedouins. The city kept its status as one of the most active trade centers in the Eastern territories of the Ottoman Empire until late 19th century.

Established with this background, this work focuses on the business career of the Marcopoli and Poche families in Aleppo during the second half of 19th century, when the effects of the Tanzimat reforms were felt more in the provinces. These reforms brought new regulations for foreign tradesmen as well as their Muslim and non-Muslim partners. Through the story of the Poche and Marcopoli...