Book reviews and recommendations

[Onur]

I have read it included some Macedonian influence as well as Greek.

Yes, most definitely. They are the true representatives cultural harmony, the living proof of Ottoman Empire days. If you could meet and speak one of them here in Izmir, you would understand what i mean






This is "Jasmin Levy", Sephardi Jew from Izmir. She sings in Ladino language. Mix of Spanish Flamenco with Turkish oriental style music.;

YouTube - Yasmin Levy - Mano Suave


YouTube - Yasmin levy " la alegria" et "Naci an Alamo"




I got few Jewish friends here in Izmir and i know few more of them personally. I like these people. Also all the musicians in these videos are from Turkey as well. I`ve met with few of them here.

[Risto the Great]

What a shame it would be for these people to lose their unique identity!

[Onur]

What a shame it would be for these people to lose their unique identity!

They preserved their culture in Turkey and for gratefulness to that most of them doing Turkey`s lobby operations at USA and Israel atm, especially vs Armenian claims. All Israel`s ambassadors of Turkey are these people who have roots here or born in Turkey.

I know that Greeks literally destroyed everything related to the Turks in Salonika but i wonder if they did the same to the Jewish monuments and houses there.

Is there any sign of Jews in Salonika who lived there for ~450 years????

[Onur]

"Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185-1365" by Istvan Vasary


http://www.amazon.com/Cumans-Tatars-Oriental-Pre-Ottoman-1185-1365/dp/0521837561




Description;
The Cumans and the Tatars were nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. With this work, István Vásáry presents an extensive examination of their history from 1185 to 1365. The basic instrument of Cuman and Tatar political success was their military force, over which none of the Balkan warring factions could claim victory. As a consequence, groups of the Cumans and the Tatars settled and mingled with the local population in various regions of the Balkans. The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids and Shishmanids) and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). They also played an active role in Byzantium, Hungary and Serbia, with Cuman immigrants being integrated into each country's elite. This book also demonstrates how the prevailing political anarchy in the Balkans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made it ripe for the Ottoman conquest.



Reviews;
"In terms of Balkan history, they could be called the Turks before the Turks - those hard-living nomad warriors from beyond the Ukrainian steppes who descended on horseback in their multitudes, pillaging as they went and changing the course of history in the process. In Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1183-1365, we are treated to a fascinating and unmatched account of two Turkic peoples who played a large part in the political and military developments of their day - in the process contributing considerably to the creation of today's Balkan Peninsula.

Drawing both on primary sources from the period in question and the latest scholarly investigations, author István Vásáry makes a persuasive case for how these enigmatic tribes who would later all but disappear from history actually played a major role not only in medieval military affairs, but also in establishing viable political entities in what are now Bulgaria and Romania. The Cumans and Tatars not only made their presence felt as troops under their own command, or as mercenaries in foreign armies, but were also assimilated by the societies with which they came into contact, in some cases inhabiting the uppermost reaches of government and society. They married into the nobility of all adjacent societies, including even that of the Latins who held Constantinople from 1204-1261.

An important point that Cumans and Tatars establishes is that while the Ottomans tend to get all the credit (or, all the blame) for wresting control of the Balkans, there were other Turkic peoples who had established a strong presence there far before they had ever dreamed of an empire in Europe.

At the same time, Vásáry makes a convincing case that the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans was neither accidental nor particularly tragic, in comparison with the prevailing anarchy of the time - a situation partially caused by the unpredictable military depravations of the transient Cuman and Tatar tribes that swept down from the steppes with unsettling (for the local inhabitants) regularity. In his retelling, the Pax Ottomanica finally brought a long period of peace and stability to a region that had been sorely lacking in these qualities for centuries.

And so in the end, the fate of the Balkans was somewhat a matter of pick your poison- the invasion of Turkic peoples from the northeast (Ukraine) or from the southeast (Anatolia). Had the former tribes been as ideologically motivated and driven to urbanization by geographical concerns as were the latter, then perhaps they and not the Ottomans would have established an empire in Europe. That they didn't does not mean that the Tatars and Cumans and their legacy should be ignored.
- Balkanalysis.com official review -



"Istvan Vasary's admirable book attempts to shed new light on the relatively neglected topic of the impact of the Eurasian nomadic tribes, the Cummans and the Tartars, on the Balkan region from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. The book's strength lies in its ambitious attempt to connect the histories of several Balkan lands to each other and link them to the activities of the invading steppe nomads in the area...an important contribution to the history of the medieval Balkans and should be welcomed by both specialists and non-specialists alike."
- Michael Pesenson, Slavic and East European Journal -



About the Author;
Istvan Vasary is Professor of Turkish and Central Asian Studies at Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest. His previous publications (in Hungarian) include The Golden Horde (Kossuth, 1986), and History of Pre-Mongol Inner Asia (1993, 2ed.: Balassi, 2003). He served as Hungarian Ambassador to Turkey (1991-1995), and to Iran (1999-2003).





Download Link (PDF file);
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z24QVP1E


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[Risto the Great]

Sounds like an interesting book Onur!

Is there any sign of Jews in Salonika who lived there for ~450 years????

Not that I am aware of.

[Onur]

Sounds like an interesting book Onur!

Yes it is RTG. I enjoyed reading it, mostly because excellent command in English of the Hungarian author. If you read it, you will understand the circumstances which leaded to Ottoman Empire`s conquest of Balkans and eventually the end of Byzantine Empire. Also you will find interesting information about 2nd Bulgar kingdom, kingdom of Hungary and the foundation of Romania.


About Jewish settlements;
After i posted this message, I learned that Greeks destroyed all the remaining Jewish buildings by starting fire on purpose in whole Jewish quarters at Metaxas dictatorship days. Jewish records says that Metaxas also prevented them to re-build and eventually most of them migrates into Turkey but actually they were the lucky ones cuz Nazis came to Greece after that events at WW-2.

[sf.]

Thanks for the recommendation. Definitely worth a read.

[TrueMacedonian]

Nice to see other contributors on this topic. Onur I will definitely check out you recommendations.

I recently finished read 'Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus' by the 12th century Byzantine (East Roman) bureaucrat John Kinnamos (Cinnamus)translated by Charles M Brand. The book is recommended to be read with Anna Comnena's 'Alexiad' and Nicetas Choniates 'Annals'. Kinnamos focuses on the Comnenus' situation with the Hungarian and Serbian ruling families. Here are the interesting point of Kinnamos' book;

- A certain John Axochous was a Roman General who was a Turk (Onur ever heard of this guy).

- When talking about Pelagonia (Bitola) he writes "Heraklea city of the Mysians". (?)

- He states that Sardica (modern Sophia, Bulgaria) "is the capital of the Illyrians". (?)

- States that "Philipopolis is a Macedonian city".

- And he mentions the Vlachs once only (unlike Choniates who uses the term in a deragatory manner) and wrote "the Vlachs are said to have been formerly colonists from the people of Italy".


I recommend it for people into detail about specific things in this part of East Roman history. I would get into more specifics but I am tired and need to hit the hay.

[Makedonetz]

Book im starting to read:

Bring down the sun
Author Tarr, Judith.

Alexander the Great ruled the greatest Empire of the ancient world, but he was ruled by his mother, called Olympias.nbsp;There are as many legends about this powerful Queen as there are of her famous son, and the stories began long before she even met Philip of Macedon. nbsp; Priestess of the Great Goddess, daughter of ruling house of Epiros, witch, and familiar of Serpents...she was a figure of mystery, fascination and fear even during her own lifetime.nbsp;nbsp;Author Judith Tarrnbsp;uses the legends to weavenbsp;an intensely romantic fantasy novel set in ancient Greece and Macedon.

[TrueMacedonian]

There is a book out there that is probably one of the best I've ever read about the "Greek ethnonationalism myths" and that is 'Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milošević's Serbia' By Takis Michas. Read this awhile ago but recently thumbed through it again and had to laugh at how good Michas captures the spirit of racism, xenophobia, paranoia, and extreme nationalistic fervor of modern "greece".
This book details the grk activities during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars as well as the secret plans Serbia and Grcija had for Macedonia that thankfully never came to fruition.
Michas goes into such depth and detail with solid evidence from the Grk's themselves on how the Church and State are not seperated and how the Church are fervant supporters of minority suppression.
Another thing Michas points out is the role of the vicitim todays imposter hellene plays. Victimization is one role the church uses to steer their cattle to obscene and ludicrous conspiracy theories of the evil "West" and the "Killer NATO" plans to destroy the Serbs and then the Vatican's plan to 'Latinize' the grks. No this is really documented in the Grk press.
The way Takis Michas starts his book is revealing as to how biased Grk media is and how they were the only media outlet, besides the Serbs themselves, to condemn the West and defend the Serbs while ignoring the crimes the Serbs committed.
Grk Paramilitaries even fought in the Bosnian war and raised 4 flags in victory after ethnically cleansing a Muslim village. One was the Serb flag, the second the Grk flag, the third the Byzantine double eagle, and the fourth,,,,the "Vergina flag".
Mitsotakis, former prime minister, is quoted in this book as to admitting that the problem with Macedonia was not the name but the minority. He asked "Skopje to deny the existence of any SlavoMacedonians".

Out of 5 stars I'd give this book 10. It's essential and the evidence is from their own sources. Takis Michas not only explores the darkest satanic regions of "Greek Ethnonationalism" but even documents the Serbian monstrosity of human rights violations, which modern "greece", member of both the EU and NATO, helped Serbia cover up.


Read it. You will not be disappointed and you will definitely learn more about why there was a second embargo imposed on Macedonia.

[Onur]

"The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman



http://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century/dp/0767923057


Review;
"Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most.
--Jon Foro



YouTube - Next 100 Years - STRATFOR - George Friedman - Part 1

YouTube - Next 100 Years - STRATFOR - George Friedman - Part 2




About the Author;
George Friedman is an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor. He has authored several books, including The Next 100 Years, America's Secret War, The Intelligence Edge, and The Future of War.

He received a B.A. at the City College of New York, where he majored in political science, and a Ph.D. in government at Cornell University.



Download Link (PDF file);
http://rapidshare.com/files/288167389/Friedman_George_-_The_Next_100_Years_-_A_Forecast_For_The_21.Century.pdf

[Onur]

"Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World" by Margaret Mcmillan

A Review of: Paris 1919

Prof. Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919 is not a book – it’s a movie. Her description of all major and minor characters, their egos, their desperation, their tactics, their mistresses make the book a moving experience. Her eye for detail is amazing. Her description of the ladies of the story from a socialite who plotted to marry General MacArthur to the charming Queen of Romania is amusing. Her portrait of the Hall of Mirrors where the German empire was born and where two German ministers had to sign the certificate of humiliation, also known as Treaty of Versailles, touches the heart. When the main actors leave Paris after signing the treaty, one feels a sense of melancholy.

Like a sad man who unsuccessfully hides his broken heart with humour, the characters in Paris 1919 are involved in high voltage drama about principles only to cover their national and individual greed.

President Wilson went to Paris with 14 points for the conduct of international relations. His very first point proclaimed the importance of transparent and open diplomacy in the place of secret deals between powerful men. If the Paris Peace Conference was anything, it was about secret deal making between four powerful men, though they went through the process of open hearings by experts, nationalists, and others.

President Wilson introduced the principle of self-determination, something he had tough time achieving for himself vis-à-vis his own Congress. He did not even try to sell this to the French when they claimed Alsaice Lorraine. He did try to sell it to the Japanese who wanted a pie of the Chinese cake but relented, precisely in the course of secret negotiations that the 14-point charter was averse of.

President Wilson was certainly a visionary. He conceptualised the League of Nations and its offshoot, the International Labour Organisation. He wanted a peaceful world but he was also an opportunistic man. He wanted peace in Europe where the spectre of Bolshevik revolution was knocking on the door. He was least bothered about the Arab world. The British and French leaders distributed Arab land as if spoiled school kids were exchanging marbles. Less than one hundred years later, the Americans, the British and the French are all paying heavily for the games played in Paris of 1919. If they don’t realise the mistakes that were made, they will be in an unpredictable situation in 2019.

The negotiations between the big four were an exercise in land grabbing. Prof MacMillan must be credited for her very impartial critique of all the four without any bias to her grandfather, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Britain. Venizelos of Greece had an eye on the Turkish properties. Queen Marie of Romania wanted half of Hungary. Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau, wanted to seize the German coal reserves and Italy’s Orlando wanted the Adriatic ports. Further away, Clemenceau also wanted Syria while the British wanted Suez Canal to control access to India.

The book reveals how supreme selfishness is in the ladder of human properties. Europe had just gone through massive destruction. War was followed by the plague. One would expect that such a series of catastrophes would have sobering effect on anyone. The negotiators of Paris seemed immune to any such sentiments.

The world has paid heavy price for the greed of old men who played ruthless games in Paris that year. Hitler’s rise can be attributed to the humiliation the Germans suffered, not to mention the surrender of their colonies, the navy, and industrial output. Mussolini was inspired by Fiume. The British plot to create Israel, without proper negotiations with the Arabs, along with encouragement to Arab nationalism to revolt against the Ottoman empire without redeeming the promises made, has led to wars, Intifadas and Al Qaeda. The cheating of China contributed to the rise of communism, with all its consequences.

As the world entered twenty first century, with terrorist attacks on the American symbols of economic and political power, and myriad conflicts in the developing world, one is reminded of how the mistakes of Paris were repeated at Yalta. The United States, UK, France and the former Soviet Union, so thoughtful in distributing zones of influence in Europe, have again and again forgotten that real people also live in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

Prof Margaret MacMillan reaches a very dangerous conclusion as to why the Paris peace conference was more like negotiations between real estate brokers than a plan to create a sustainable world order, capable of carrying most parts of the planet for at least a century or two. In the last paragraph of the book, she says, that the negotiators might have been willing to contemplate a completely new way of conducting international relations if only the world had been thoroughly devastated by the war. Obviously the destruction caused by the First World War was not enough by the standards of their morality.

The behaviour of our leaders indicates that the first world war, the second world war, the Vietnam war, the two Gulf wars, the Arab-Israeli wars, and several regional conflicts have not yet caused thorough enough devastation of the world for them to seek a new way of managing international relations. How can the irrational passions of greedy old men be contained before their excuses of nationalism, religion and even democracy do more damage? How can we ever have national and international governance based on the principles for the benefit of the world’s people, rather than pursuit of power by those driven by insatiable thirst? How can we create the architecture of the sustainable global security and development? Prof MacMillan deserves thanks for provoking us to ask these questions.

- By Sundeep Waslekar

http://www.strategicforesight.com/bo..._paris1919.htm

I`ve read this book last week and it`s really good and easy to read as well. I recommend for anyone who wanna learn about how most of the world today has been shaped by few angry men with insatiable lust for power and behind the closed doors in 1919; The borders of states(most are still intact today), destruction of two empire(Hapsburg and Ottoman), Jewish migration to Palestine for the first time, creation of Yugoslavia, complete reshape of the middle-east because of the discovery of oil fields and creation of most of today`s Europe and more...

And all these was the reason of countless world problems like in Palestine and other consequences like the rise of Mussolini and Hitler which eventually leads to WW-2. Also this book will help you to understand the driving force of why great powers still plays the "Great game" in middle-east today.


This paragraph from the book summarizes the consequence when few men(mainly French, British, American) tries to reshape whole world just for their own profit by totally ignoring the people who live on it;

In Europe alone, 30 million people were left in states where they were an ethnic minority, an object of suspicion at home and of desire from their co-nationals abroad. In that grim winter of 1919, a young American diplomat in Vienna received a delegation of gray-bearded men from Slovenia in the northwest of the Balkans. They spoke German. Their whole town of 60,000 people had spoken German for over 700 years. Now Slovenia was to become part of the new state of Yugoslavia. They were reluctant to be ruled by people they felt to be inferior. Would the United States please annex them? Nicholas Roosevelt, a young cousin of the great Teddy, passed the request on to his superiors but received no reply. Although neither Roosevelt nor the elderly Germans knew it, their community was fated to disappear, along with many others, when the Germans were forcibly expelled from much of Central Europe after the Second World War.

Most of these 30 million people who has been left in states as an ethnic minority because of the new borders drew just by political needs, has been killed or forcibly expelled during WW-2 because they were considered as a foreign threat in their new countries.



And another quote from the book about the situation in Balkans during early 20th century;

With the spread of nationalism in the nineteenth century, Serb historians rummaged the past to bolster their claims and bring all Serbs into the fold. “We got the children,” a schoolmaster told a traveler in Macedonia when it was still under Ottoman rule. “We made them realize they were Serbs. We taught them their history.” All over the Balkans, teachers, artists and historians were at work, reviving memories, polishing national myths, spreading a new sort of consciousness. The trouble was that it was not only Serbs who were awakened. As Churchill observed, the Balkans produce more history than they can consume. Where the blind Serb musicians sang of the great fourteenth-century kingdom of Stephen Dušan, stretching from the Danube to the Aegean, the Bulgarians looked to the tenth century, when King Simeon’s empire controlled much of the same land. And the Greeks had the grandest memories of all, going all the way back to classical times, when Greek influence spread east to Asia Minor and the Black Sea, and west to Italy and the Mediterranean. Even the brief possession of a piece of land centuries ago could be hauled out to justify a present claim. “We might as justly claim Calais,” the traveler pointed out to the nationalist schoolmaster. “Why don’t you?” he replied. “You have a navy.”

How today`s middle-east has been created in the Paris conference;

One day during the Peace Conference, Arnold Toynbee, an adviser to the British delegation, had to deliver some papers to the prime minister. “Lloyd George, to my delight, had forgotten my presence and had begun to think aloud. ‘Mesopotamia… yes… oil… irrigation… we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine… yes… the Holy Land… Zionism… we must have Palestine; Syria… h’m… what is there in Syria? Let the French have that. Thus the lineaments of the peace settlement in the Middle East were exposed: Britain seizing its chance; the need to throw something to the French; a homeland for the Jews; oil; and the calm assumption that the peacemakers could dispose of the former Ottoman territories to suit themselves.

Lloyd George, a Liberal turned land-grabber, made it worse. Like Napoleon, he was intoxicated by the possibilities of the Middle East: a restored Hellenic world in Asia Minor; a new Jewish civilization in Palestine; Suez and all the links to India safe from threat; loyal and obedient Arab states along the Fertile Crescent and the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; protection for British oil supplies from Persia and the possibility of new sources under direct British control; the Americans obligingly taking mandates here and there; the French doing what they were told.

Download Link (PDF file);
http://www.4shared.com/document/Xsqv-s5P/Paris_1919_-_Six_Months_That_C.html

[Ljubanec]

They preserved their culture in Turkey and for gratefulness to that most of them doing Turkey`s lobby operations at USA and Israel atm, especially vs Armenian claims. All Israel`s ambassadors of Turkey are these people who have roots here or born in Turkey.

I know that Greeks literally destroyed everything related to the Turks in Salonika but i wonder if they did the same to the Jewish monuments and houses there.

Is there any sign of Jews in Salonika who lived there for ~450 years????

I would like to recommend the book "Salonica-city of ghosts" by Mark Mazower. One of his other titles has been recommended on this thread and I would recommend this one as well. Though my only criticism is that Macedonians are not mentioned as much. It does concentrate more on the Jews, Muslims and Christians in Solun.

[Onur]

Download Link (PDF file);
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R2FE5MHW

[Risto the Great]

Hey, some great books here. Thank you gentlemen.