Articles and chapters
Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d'histoire du droit / The Legal History Review, 2024
The Greek notarial documents produced in the centuries after the fall of Byzantine rule are impor... more The Greek notarial documents produced in the centuries after the fall of Byzantine rule are important sources for retracing the development of private legal practices under the influence of the different administrative and legal orders which came to rule the Greek-speaking territories. In the vast areas which came under Venetian control, the system of private transactions was conditioned by a tension between the widespread practice of notaries operating as private professionals during the Byzantine period, and the intervention of Venetian administrators who sought to regulate notaries as public officers. This article considers this tension in an understudied peripheral context, the small island of Ithaca in the period of early Venetian rule, through an analysis of thirteen new Greek notarial sources from 1575–1599 which are presented here in a critical edition. Owing to the small size of the Ithacan economy and the informality of the island’s administration during the sixteenth century, private transactions were executed mainly by independent scribes, priests, and in some cases by public notaries from neighbouring Cephalonia. This was gradually changed by successive regulatory interventions by the Venetians which formalised administrative structures on Ithaca, traced here through several unpublished sources from the local archives, in addition to documents from Cephalonia and Venice. These reforms led to the establishment of a system of publicly appointed and supervised notaries on Ithaca in the early seventeenth century, putting the freer practice of the earlier period under the closer control of the public administration and bringing Ithaca into line with practices in the larger Venetian possessions.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Mediterranean Historical Review, 2024
The Greek state archives recently reopened the local archive at Ithaca. Its prolonged inaccessibi... more The Greek state archives recently reopened the local archive at Ithaca. Its prolonged inaccessibility to researchers, and the unclassified and uncatalogued state of most of its records, has meant that sources from its large Venetian collection remain unstudied. This article describes the formation and development of the Ithacan archive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This archive was established to serve the island’s governors and was functionally integrated with the Venetian administration of the island. A selection of primary documents presented here outlines the professionalization of public record-keeping at Ithaca and uncovers this local institution as the site of certain colonial technologies of power. This is further supplemented by a discussion of the provenance of the current “archive of the Venetian administration” through destructive events in the twentieth century, and an account of the present state of the records as a descriptive aid to researchers with a view to renewing interest in the collection.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bulletin of the Ithacan Historical Society, 2023
This article presents a collection of sources relevant to the history of Ithaca after antiquity, ... more This article presents a collection of sources relevant to the history of Ithaca after antiquity, spanning from the Byzantine period until the island’s capture by Venice (ca. 530‒1500). The sources are presented as an aid to further research, citing the manuscripts, original documents, together with the editions, and providing a basic commentary where necessary for the interpretation of the source. This comprises the first part of the series REGESTA ITHACAE HISTORIAE which aims to collect documentary sources for the history of Ithaca.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Η Κεφαλονίτικη Πρόοδος, 2023
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Annual of the British School at Athens, 2023
The historiography of Venetian Greece has paid little attention to the colonial experience of Ith... more The historiography of Venetian Greece has paid little attention to the colonial experience of Ithaca. While historians are served by extensive published documentary evidence for the administrations of the larger possessions in the region, the uncatalogued Venetian records at the state archive of Ithaca remain unstudied. The recent reopening of this archive has finally made it possible to survey its large Venetian collection and to provide an account of the role of the governors of Ithaca under Venetian rule. The seat of governor was filled by Cephalonian nobles rather than by Venetian appointees in the manner of the larger Ionian islands. Here for the first time is presented a comprehensive list of Ithacan governors compiled from the Ithacan documents, together with further aid from research in the archives of Cephalonia and Venice. The account of the Ithacan governorship offered here aims to promote interest in the Ithacan archive of the Venetian administration and serve as a guide for future research into this neglected corner of the empire.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2022
Whereas the presence of class divisions in the larger Ionian islands has been well studied, the c... more Whereas the presence of class divisions in the larger Ionian islands has been well studied, the character of society in smaller Ithaca under Latin rule has been largely ignored. This article examines the evidence for social structures in Ithaca before and after its Venetian capture. Under the rule of the Tocco, the only nobles on Ithaca were the Galati, a family granted privileges for service to the court. The continuation of these privileges into the Venetian period was an exception in a society conditioned by a new agricultural economy following the resettlement of the island in 1504. This article shows how the development of the new economy did eventually allow for inequalities in the mass population to develop, though these were limited by the small size of the island's agricultural economy. The evolution of these structures reflected the tension between the feudal legacy of the Tocco period and the new economy conditioned by the Venetian resettlement. Yet the economic divisions of Venetian Ithaca were not recognized by the state as formal classes.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Pólemos , 2019
The informality of the Homeric assembly is often emphasised to distinguish it from the democratic... more The informality of the Homeric assembly is often emphasised to distinguish it from the democratic bodies of the classical polis, and to show that the people in the Homeric society had no means to qualify the power of their aristocratic leaders. This article argues, to the contrary, that the lack of a formal system of command and control in the Homeric society conditioned the dependence of the leaders on a political model of persuasion. Since this was necessarily directed at the mass population of the society, the people were integrated in the system of government. This was maintained through three general mechanisms: first, the voice of the people was institutionalised, in the form of a popular assembly, the agorē; second, the people had a standardised, effective means by which to express consent and a limited amount of dissent to their leaders in the assembly; third, the people participated in a juridical function which was communal in purpose and form. This model seeks to show that, in these ways, the voice of the people held an important position in the structure of power, one which depended on the informality of that structure rather than being reduced by it.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews
Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2024
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History , 2023
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Mediterranean Historical Review, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Review of Evan Jones (tr.), C.P. Cavafy, The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems and Prose. Manchester... more Review of Evan Jones (tr.), C.P. Cavafy, The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems and Prose. Manchester: Carcanet Classics, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Sydney Review of Books , 2019
Critical essay and review of 'What’s Left of the Night'
by Ersi Sotiropoulos
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Classical Review, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Alternative Law Journal, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Classical Review, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conferences and presentations
'The archive as a site of colonial power: the case of the archive of the Venetian administration ... more 'The archive as a site of colonial power: the case of the archive of the Venetian administration of Ithaca'
Presentation at conference, 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies, Vienna, 11-14 September 2023 https://7th-european-congress-of-modern-greek-studies.univie.ac.at/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Presentation at conference: La 76ème sesion de la Société Internationale Fernand De Vischer pour ... more Presentation at conference: La 76ème sesion de la Société Internationale Fernand De Vischer pour l’Histoire des Droits de l’Antiquité, "Materiality and Immateriality of Ancient Law", Helsinki, 2–26 August 2023.
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/sihda-2023/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Articles and chapters
Book Reviews
Conferences and presentations
Presentation at conference, 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies, Vienna, 11-14 September 2023 https://7th-european-congress-of-modern-greek-studies.univie.ac.at/
https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-events/events/ancient-law-outside-norms
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/sihda-2023/
Presentation at conference, 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies, Vienna, 11-14 September 2023 https://7th-european-congress-of-modern-greek-studies.univie.ac.at/
https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-events/events/ancient-law-outside-norms
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/sihda-2023/
2022, this article explores and renews a significant aspect in the
jurisprudence of this truly radical judge: the social relations or
progressive view of property. Justice Murphy both identified and
judicially expounded this view well before the American social
relations or progressive schools. And rather than merely identifying
it as some intellectual museum piece, the article also builds on it. The
article contains five parts. Part I contextualises the jurisprudential
debates surrounding property. Part II recounts Justice Murphy’s
judicial radicalism. Part III explores the elements of Murphy’s
progressive-relational view of property. Part IV applies the elements
of Murphy’s progressive-relational property to the High Court’s
recent native title decision in Northern Territory v Griffiths
(Ngaliwurru and Nungali Peoples). Part V offers some concluding
reflections on the bright future for property found in Murphy’s
conception.