The Sick Vines of Europe
Raisins, Phylloxera, and the Politics of Place in the Late Ottoman Aegean
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7987337 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Samuel Dolbee (0000-0002-8415-4992, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 67 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 349-376 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417524000355 |
| OpenAlex | W4406772470 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 54 |
This article explores the path of the microscopic phylloxera insect as it made its way from the United States to the Eastern Mediterranean in the late nineteenth century. As the pest devastated vineyards in Western Europe it also catalyzed grape production in the western Ottoman Empire around Izmir, before this region, too, succumbed. One response to the outbreak was the first legal code controlling plant traffic across nations, and another was an effort to plant American rootstocks, which were relatively resistant. The Ottoman response to phylloxera offers another example of the ways in which the alleged “sick man of Europe” was actually much more dynamic than its detractors insisted. The invocation of phylloxera moreover became a way for post-Ottoman states like Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia to protect their national grape economies. The article’s broader analysis explains how the shared environment of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean incubated both the spread of phylloxera and—in the protectionist legal regimes formed in response—the architecture of the region’s peculiarly integrated disconnection. The article closes by considering the agriculture of displacement amidst the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange, and how it further entrenched these dynamics as migrants took vines with them and planted them in the remarkably similar environments of their new national homes
Ancient history · Biology · Geography · Phylloxera · Political science · Politics · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · History · Horticulture · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Turkey's Politics and Society
The Ottoman Empire and the world-economy
Contagion
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
The Mountains of the Mediterranean World
Ecological Imperialism
The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World
La fin de Smyrne
New Critical Approaches to the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange
The Asymmetries of Displacement
The Mediterranean as a Borderland
Autonomous Provinces and the Problem of ‘Semi-Sovereignty’ in European International Law
Slaves of One Master
Reinstating the Ottomans
The Transformation of the World
Treacherous Terrain
Fruits of Empire
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt
Turkifying Poverty, or
Fighting the Spectres of the Past
Winemaking between the claims of the local and the international in late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine (1860s–1948)
Once within borders
Island and Empire
The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870
The Great Depression and the Making of Turkish-Syrian Border, 1921–1939
Malhamé–malfamé”
Creating an Agricultural World Order
Port Wine Landscape
The Well-Defended Domains
An American Insect in Imperial Germany
Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History
American Roots, French Varietals, Russian Science
Tools of Revolution
The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-1820)
Terroir and Territory on the Colonial Frontier
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |