30 · Julia Phillips Cohen
leaders of each city found themselves confronting similar challenges,
many of which they had not anticipated.
The Case of Salonica
In late April 1897, local Jewish journals marveled that the recently an-
nounced war between the Ottoman Empire and Greece had not led to
any disturbances in the nearby Ottoman port city of Salonica, despite the
city’s proximity to the theater of war and its intimate involvement in the
conflict.^5 Although it housed the depot for soldiers departing for and re-
turning from the front on a daily basis, Salonica had somehow managed
to remain free of the violence besetting the nearby countryside. Reports
spoke with admiration of the “perfect calm” that reigned in the city while
battles raged not far away. One article published by the Jewish-run Jour-
nal de Salonique just a few days after the outbreak of hostilities explained
the situation thus: “The incidents occurring on the [Greek-Ottoman] bor-
der have not damaged in any respect the excellent relations maintained
... between all of the different [religious] communities.”^6
The fact that general order had been maintained in a city that housed
Jewish, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and other Christian groups was im-
pressive, especially because spontaneous urban conflicts between Otto-
man Muslims and Christians were recorded elsewhere in the empire in
1897.^7 In these other areas, local Muslims and Christians appeared to be
reenacting on their own streets the war between the Ottoman and Greek
states with whom they identified or were identified by others. What was
different, then, about Salonica that had kept its inhabitants quiet and co-
operative, as the city’s journalists noted with great pride?
As it turns out, the situation was not entirely as peaceful as the local
press made it out to be. Moving beyond the newspapers’ claims of peace
and quiet, a variety of sources also point to other, unwritten stories of
intercommunal relations during the war, stories that can help us to piece
together a more complete picture of underlying patterns of socialization
and conflict in Salonica around the turn of the twentieth century. Tensions
or conflicts of any sort, however, were touchy subjects for the journalists
and communal leaders trying to mold the image of their community ac-
cording to their own ideal vision.^8 For this reason, they preferred to focus
on those acts that fit this vision or could be used to further it.
Without a doubt, most of the patriotic displays offered by Salonican