The Alessianos were a Greek family who left Monemvasia’s Ottoman city in the first half of the 18th century. In 1749 they settled in the British Minorca. Between 1749 and 1781, this family’s members served the British Empire as merchants, privateers and royal officials; Russia tsars as imperial consuls, naval admirals, colonists; the Algerian Dey as consuls and commercial mediators.
They operated simultaneously in the port of Mahon in Minorca, in London, in the free port of Leghorn and the Russian-Ottoman Levant. They took part in the British conquest of Havana (1762), in the Russian fleet’s surprising entry into the Mediterranean (1769), in the colonisations of Menorca, the Russian Crimea and British Florida.
This Levantine Heritage seminar will be an opportunity to explore some of the most important aspects of the Alexianos’ story.
Giampaolo Salice is a research fellow at the University of Cagliari. He earned his PhD degree in Modern History from the University of Rome La Sapienza (2009). He conducted extensive research on the interdependence between Mediterranean diasporas and European State’s internal colonisation policies from the 16th to 18th century.
Travel and Archaeology in Ottoman Greece in the Age of Revolution c.1800–1832
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
