Princeton University

Molly Greene studies the history of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire, and the Greek world. Her interests include the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire, the experience of Greeks under Ottoman rule, Mediterranean piracy, and the institution of the market. After earning a B.A. in political science at Tufts University (1981), Professor Greene spent several years living in Greece and then completed a Ph.D. in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton (1993), where she studied Ottoman history. Upon graduating she joined the Princeton faculty with a joint appointment in the History Department and the Program in Hellenic Studies. Her first book, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (2000), examines the transition from Venetian to Ottoman rule on the island of Crete, which the Ottomans conquered in 1669. Challenging the assumption of a radical rupture with the arrival of the Ottomans, Greene shows that the population of Crete had been drawn into the Ottoman world long before the conquest and that important continuities linked the Venetian and the Ottoman periods. Greene also challenges a simple model of Christian-Muslim antagonism in the eastern Mediterranean and argues that the tension between Latin and Orthodox Christianity was just as important in shaping the history of the region.

Professor Greene is currently working on a study of the relationship between Greek commerce and Catholic corsairing (piracy) in the 17th-century Mediterranean. At the heart of the book is a series of court cases from the island of Malta, where Greek plaintiffs attempted to retrieve merchandise that had been taken from them in raids by the Knights of St. John. The project fits into her larger interest in the conduct of business in the early modern Mediterranean. Future projects will study commercial fairs in the Ottoman Empire and the history of the Middle Eastern bazaar.

Professor Greene has taught courses on Mediterranean history (16th century to 20th century); early modern commerce in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean; national identity in the Balkans; Greeks and Jews in the late Ottoman Empire; and the history of Jerusalem. She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department.

• Ph.D., Princeton, 1993

Research Languages      

      Greek, Italian, French, Ottoman Turkish and Turkish