Ports and Printers Across the Armenian Diaspora | Sebouh Aslanian

E325 | A perennial question in Ottoman history is why printing was not fully adopted in the Middle East for the production of books until the late nineteenth century. Armenians, however, did start to print their books as early as the sixteenth century. In this episode, Sebouh Aslanian explains this rather sudden shift by telling the story of how the twin traumas of the Celali Rebellions and Shah Abbas’s scorched-earth campaigns against the Ottoman Empire spurred the mass migration of Armenians away from their traditional centers in the Eastern fringes of Anatolia, the Armenian Plateau and the Caucasus and toward major cities of Western Anatolia and Iran. As the traditional centers of Armenian manuscript production were disrupted by war and banditry, Armenians turned to printing presses in the European diaspora to satisfy their needs for books. More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/julfans.html Sebouh Aslanian is Associate professor of history and Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair of Modern Armenian History at UCLA. He is he author of From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkley: University of California Press, 2011) and Dispersion History and the Polycentric Nation: The Role of Simeon Yerevants‘i's Girk‘ or Kochi Partavchar in the Armenian National Revival (Venice: 2004) and is currently completing a book manuscript titled Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers Across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800. Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world. He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is an assistant professor of history at UCSD. CREDITS Episode No. 325 Release Date: 18 July 2017 Recording Location: Long Beach, CA Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul" and to Sato Moughalian for "Tamzara" Images and bibliography courtesy of Sebouh Aslanian available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/julfans.html