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Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries. Edited by Michael J. K. Walsh. Brill.2019. xx + 300pp. $140.00.

2020; Wiley; Volume: 105; Issue: 366 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/1468-229x.12992

1468-229X

Andrew Lambert,

Maritime Security and History

The Cypriot port of Famagusta has been the subject of a series of major conferences and publications over the past decade, most of them edited by Michael Walsh, with a striking and rich collection of scholarship from many countries. The city has a rich history of trade, conquest, access and closure, as a cultural meeting point for divergent worlds, interspersed with long epochs of closure and decay. This book, based on a 2017 conference that examined the maritime perspective, provides a fine overview of that history, from the dynamic growth of a Christian trading, corsair and slaving hub after the fall of crusader Acre to the current situation, where the former Greek part of the city, home to a dynamic holiday industry, is silent and empty, part of the closed Turkish military zone. In simple terms Famagusta, facing east towards the Syrian coast, has been a port of great consequence in the hands of maritime/commercial states such as Genoa, Venice and Britain, using the combination of insularity and control of critical regional shipping lanes, especially those which linked Constantinople/Istanbul with Alexandria, or those opened by the Suez Canal, to strategic effect. As a port city largely peopled by immigrants and sailors Famagusta bears the imprint of many cultures: the churches reflect French, Byzantine and Armenian influences, along with legacies from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. By contrast, under Ottoman Turkish rule after 1571 the Christian population was expelled from the walled city, while the harbour was closed to Christian shipping, and almost all Muslim trade as well. It became a defensive position, securing Ottoman shipping and lands from Christian raiders. For 300 years the port slowly silted up, Cypriot trade declined and the city became a quiet relic of past ages. The arrival of the British occupying forces in the late 1870s re-energised the port and the city, opened up trade, extended the harbour, developed a dynamic tourist industry and began serious work on the historic architecture. In the interval, the riches of Venetian Famagusta became a standard Elizabethan reference as English maritime enterprise pushed into the eastern Mediterranean and began to aspire to a similar empire of the seas. It is no coincidence that it features in Shakespeare's Othello, which deals with Venice and the Islamic other, just as the Tudors opened relations with the Ottomans, or that the audience included mariners who had sailed to the Levant. The Dutch were also engaged in creating knowledge about this famous place. The new maritime powers looked back on a golden age of commerce, when Famagusta had been the final stop on the Venetian route to Alexandria, where they traded oriental luxuries for western goods with the Mamluk regime. When the Ottomans conquered Egypt, undermining the Venetian economic model, Famagusta became a standing threat to Ottoman authority and Ottoman grain supplies from Alexandria. The fortifications were updated with artillery, using standard designs that are found across the Venetian empire, and remain largely unaltered. The importance of the place became clear in 1571, when a massive Turkish army conquered Cyprus: Famagusta held out longest, a siege that cost the Ottomans 50,000 troops. When the city fell Marcantonio Bragadin, the Venetian commander, was flayed alive: his stuffed skin was sent round the Ottoman empire as a warning. Yet the Ottomans had no use for the port, which they closed. The naval base and trade hub of a dynamic sea-power state became a dead end under a static continental military hegemon. In the 1860s imperial France took a serious interest in Famagusta. As the Suez Canal project gathered pace, it was the only closed harbour in the Syrian sea where French influence in what are today Syria and the Lebanon was already marked. Charts were drawn, and approaches made in Istanbul, but after 1870 France was in no position to act. Lucie Bonato's essay raises a major question: how much did the British know about these French initiatives, and did they have a bearing on the British takeover of Cyprus in 1878? The British were quick to examine local resources, including surveying the harbour, applying their technical knowledge of the era to enhance the geopolitical consequence of the location. Some soldiers dreamed of turning Famagusta into another Malta, covering the entrance to the Suez Canal, but wiser heads, not least retired Admiral Sir William Martin, who published a highly effective essay on the subject, pointed out that there was no need while Britain ruled the Mediterranean. His Venetian precursors would have agreed. Sea powers do not need to fortify islands, only to keep control of the sea. Instead the city became a trade hub and a tourist destination. Asu Tozan's essay on the British period makes good use of Cypriot archives on what was planned and built, but the discussion of policy can be found in British archives. To emphasise the global/imperial dimension of British activity, Famagusta's harbour improvements were made by the same contractors who were building a new harbour at Colombo. Following useful service in two world wars, Famagusta witnessed a post-independence tourist boom, which was crushed by the Turkish invasion of 1974, which saw the Greek population expelled, because the city was once again on the front line of an unresolved conflict. So long as control of territory is the main issue this fabulous port city cannot achieve its full potential in trade, tourism or culture. This richly illustrated collection opens new perspectives on an old city, and the relationships between ports, islands, economic and geopolitical power. In many ways Famagusta stands as a model of the collision of land and sea states, as Michael Walsh's elegant introductory chapter emphasises. The city was of the sea, and whenever it has been cut off from that dynamic context it has become petrified, a ghost city deprived of purpose and meaning by shifts in global affairs. Overlayering of dynamic maritime occupation with static continental attitudes shaped the city that survives and asks larger questions about sea-power identities that can be examined in many places.