Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks by Annabel Jane WhartonReview by: Oleg GrabarThe American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Jun., 2007), pp. 966-967Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40006849 .

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966 Reviews of Books

This is a study of The Convention Concerning the Ex- change of Turkish Nationals of Greek Orthodox Religion Established in Turkish Territory and of Greek Nationals of the Moslem Religion Established in Greek Territory that went into effect on May 1, 1923. The title of the convention tells us a lot. Turkey, more than Greece, insisted on the word "religion" rather than "minorities" so as not to politically enfranchise its other Muslim non-Turkish minorities, such as the Kurds and Chech- ens. The convention legitimized the exchange of nearly two million people: 1,104,216 Greek Orthodox from former Ottoman-held territories and 388,146 Muslims from Greek-held territories. Both countries also ac- cepted refugees from other territories (p. 105). The ex- change resulted in the largest voluntary exchange of peoples in the twentieth century.

Onur Yildirim sets out to revise what he considers, rightfully in this reviewer's opinion, the two major his- toriographical emphases addressing the origins, imple- mentation, and consequences of this population ex- change, especially for the exchanged peoples themselves. One is "a policy-oriented scholarship . . . that attempted to sanction the exchange of populations as an instrument for solving inter-state disputes and set- tling minority problems under the aegis of international organizations" (p. 109). This scholarship is represented by Stephen P. Ladas, C. A. McCarthy, John H. Simpson, and Joseph B. Schechtman. The second type is "the na- tionalistic-minded Greek scholarship [that] hastened to read this tragic occurrence into the existing narrative of the Greek nations" (p. 189).

The text makes clear, however, that the reason for the second emphasis is that the historical archives of Greece are open for the period in question and have been researched extensively by scholars, especially Greeks. Notably, they are open to scholars from Turkey and to Turkish scholars from elsewhere. But the ar- chives of Turkey concerning this period are virtually closed, open to only "select" scholars, and the "classi- fication process is still under way." With the Turkish archives virtually closed, there is little to sustain Yildir- lm's hope that a "balanced" narrative will be able to be constructed regarding the exchange. The author does establish (chapter seven) that Muslim refugees received little aid from Turkey's institutions and that they were left with only self-help solutions. The refugees, both Orthodox and Muslim, also had little access to lands and properties left behind by their counterparts as the latter were quickly taken over by locals - many times not by the indigenous poor or landless, but by well-off people. But here again Yildirim makes clear that Greece's institutions dealing with the exchange were much more effective than Turkey's.

The government of Greece was also much more will- ing to cooperate with the League of Nations and private banks to obtain loans (Greece accepted £12,300,000 in loans) to help settle the refugees and to do so within a national economic development plan. Ankara was averse to such schemes in order to protect its newly de- fended national sovereignty and to create a state to en-

compass ethnic Turks. The sad part of the lack of access to Turkish archives is that there is little information on the influence that refugees had on Turkey's domestic economic and political development during the period 1924 to 1950. It seems likely that we will never know to what extent the lack of land, loans, government aid and/or support affected the course of the refugees' - and hence, of Turkey's - politics during this crucial pe- riod of state formation. Research from the Greek side shows how the refugees influenced the role of Veni- zelos (Eleftherios) republicans and the strengthening of the Communist Party, among other developments.

Unfortunately, the author's caveat - that present-day politicians should not accept the conclusions of those scholars mentioned above who supported the exchange of populations and the supposed homogeneity this would engender to make more viable nation-states - has fallen on deaf ears. International institutions were involved in the "voluntary" resettling of peoples in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and it is again being mentioned as a solution to the sectarian and ethnic challenges in Iraq: plus des exchanges des populations, plus des mimes choses.

Since much of this research from the Greek sources is already known, one wonders if the arguments and conclusions of this study could not have been confined to an article that also would obviate the need for a $95.00 book.

Robert Olson University of Kentucky

Annabel Jane Wharton. Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Rep- licas, Theme Parks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 272. $32.50.

There are a few cities in the world - Rome, Istanbul, Agra, Jerusalem - in which cosmopolitan tourism meets with an old and often universally known history bathed in myth, an array of striking remains, and a con- temporary vibrancy that can be socially depressing as in Agra or tragically politicized as in Jerusalem but that adds a spice absent from mere monuments. Jerusalem possesses two additional qualities. One is a paradox: a standard late medieval Islamic city is mostly revered for events that took place many centuries earlier - So- lomon's Temple and palace, the Second Temple of Herod, the Passion of Christ, the mystical journey of the Prophet Muhammad - and that, except for Herod's Temple enclosure, left traces only in the memories of men and women. The other quality is that Jerusalem will be the first place on earth to witness the end of time, the return of the Messiah, and the Last Judgment re- warding or punishing all men and women with imagi- native variations in each of the three monotheistic re- ligious systems claiming allegiance to the same God.

This city has often been presented as an archaeologi- cally retrieved artefact, as a sacred place where differ- ent groups practice, proclaim, praise, and worship the divine, and as a history in which ethnic, religious, local, foreign, and national, pursuits are affected by a variety

American Historical Review June 2007

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Sub-Saharan Africa 967

of unique political and social conditions. The book un- der review presents it as an economic commodity, as an object that can be reproduced and sold in a variety of ways going from early medieval relics to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the theme park of "The Holy Land Experience" in Orlando, Florida.

The first chapter on the "fragmentation" of the city into relics is the weakest one. It surveys a well-known pattern of preserving parts from the city and redistrib- uting these parts everywhere. It brings out unexpected documents, like J. P. Morgan's travel accounts or Mobil Oil ads, to argue its point of relics as gifts in the eco- nomic sense of the word, but the examples hardly reflect the richness of Jerusalem as a source of relics.

The second chapter on "replication" is much stron- ger. It concentrates on the Knights Templar, their buildings based on Jerusalem models, and their finan- cial power explained through the "invention" of capi- talism and the development of monetization. This may well be true, but the architecture of the Templars is not that different from a long tradition of using the Holy Sepulcher as a model for churches, and eventually for "new Jerusalems" in Russian Orthodox monasteries.

The third chapter on the "fabrication" of Jerusalem deals with the Franciscan reconstructions of the Jerusa- lem of Christ's Passion, especially the striking one in Varello in Italy. To see it all as an "expression of a Fran- ciscan commitment to redistributing the increased ma- terial and spiritual resources" (p. 126) of the West to a wider segment of the population is to miss the depth of the piety that led Franciscans and others to Jerusa- lem. The chapter is rich in fascinating documents and discussions, even when, as with Samuel Butler's restric- tive Protestantism, they do not really deal with the sub- ject. A similar wealth of unusual documents like Ben- jamin Disraeli's Tancred (1847) or Emile Zola's L Argent (1891) associated with the survey of photo- graphs and related new techniques of reproducing vi- sual perceptions makes the fourth chapter into inter- esting reading.

The last chapter handles the contemporary "specta- cles" of Jerusalem developed in Orlando, Florida, or in the archeological parks and hotels of the holy city itself. However historically accurate these reconstructions are, they fail to make their point without live partici- pants - hence the power and success of Gibson's film. Annabel Jane Wharton's arguments about the world- wide impact of Disney operations is well taken, but the real Jerusalem seems removed from it. In fact, Cath- olics and Muslims are absent from a discussion domi- nated by Jews and evangelical Christians. And the par- allel with the transformation of bullion into bills and eventually checks and digital credit seems unnecessary and not very helpful.

This is a paradoxical book. By transforming the de- velopment of the city of Jerusalem through the ages into a commodity like money and by stressing parallels between the operation of money and the meanings of the city, Wharton gives too much credence to a hypoth- esis that fails to explain why that particular city re-

mained so physically meaningful for so many centuries (she could have added its appearance in the imagery of contemporary Shi'ite Iran). Piety and pilgrimages were not only economic procedures, but expressions of deeper feelings and needs that seem cheapened by their reduction to economic practices. The latter, however, are Wharton's subject. Despite their secondary impor- tance, they have led to a learned and fascinating book illustrating many unexpected sides of an extraordinary city.

Oleg Grabar Institute for Advanced Study

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Richard Roberts. Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895-1912. (Social History of Africa.) Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann. 2005. Pp. xii, 309. $29.95.

Richard Roberts has used early colonial court records to examine social change in French Soudan (modern Mali) during the period when colonial rule was con- solidated over the interior of West Africa. The French courts were new, introduced to replace existing Islamic courts and local tribunals in non-Muslim areas, and be- came a focal point for contesting power and seeking to acquire or confirm rights to property, inheritance, mar- ital assets, and the custody of children. In each of these areas of jurisprudence, there was a long tradition of lit- igation that in some ways was reformed and in other ways was grafted onto the new court system. Moreover, because French rule was thin on the ground, the new system had to rely on local legal opinion and personnel, so that the extent to which French rule actually altered relationships of influence and power was subtle and of- ten haphazard. The achievement of this study is that Roberts realizes the limitations of his data, and indeed uses the limitations to reveal patterns of change and conflict. When particular issues were brought before the new Native Courts, and how frequently, reveal that domestic disputes and disagreements over ownership of property, whether land, livestock or trade goods, can be used to examine the social and political transformations that accompanied the French conquest.

Roberts examines the long tradition of French con- frontation with indigenous legal systems, tracing early interaction in West Africa, beginning in 1673, and also examining the impact of the occupation of Algeria and legal traditions of the four French "communes" in Senegal. Hence the introduction of a new legal system in 1903 occurred in the context of a long history of legal interaction. However, earlier intervention had usually been tied to military considerations, while the legal re- forms of the late nineteenth century, and especially those of 1903, were related to the consolidation of a civilian government. Roberts draws on 2,062 civil dis- putes in four districts between 1905 and 1912 to trace the ways in which local customs and legal authority were incorporated into the new legal system. The cases that

American Historical Review June 2007

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