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Fortress-Towns and Frontier Dynamics: Ottoman Military Strategy in the Peloponnese (18th Century)

Seminar Date: Thursday 25 June 2026 @ 7pm Melbourne
Location: Online (Facebook & YouTube)
Presenter: Dr Dilek Özkan Pantzis

Language of Presentation: English
Entry: FREE

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Abstract

This paper examines Ottoman military strategy in the eighteenth-century Peloponnese through the lens of fortress-towns and their role in frontier governance. Rather than treating fortresses solely as static defensive structures, it approaches them as active sites of military organization, administrative control, logistical coordination, and imperial reconstruction after the Ottoman reconquest of the Morea in 1715. Focusing on key fortress-towns such as Navarino, Nafplio, Methoni, Korinth, Koroni, and Patras, it explores how the Ottoman state maintained authority through repair works, garrisoning, provisioning, labor mobilization, and the management of surrounding rural populations. It argues that Ottoman strategy in the Peloponnese depended not only on monumental fortifications, but also on the continuous adaptation of fortress landscapes to shifting military, political, and local conditions.

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Dr Dilek Özkan Pantzis

Dilek Özkan Pantazis is a historian of the Ottoman Empire specializing in Ottoman borderlands, fortresses, and the political and environmental history of the Eastern Mediterranean. She received her PhD from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with a dissertation on the first Ottoman-Greek borderlands in Thessaly. She recently completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship at The Cyprus Institute, where she developed a project on Ottoman sea borders and fortresses in the Eastern Mediterranean. She is currently a contract lecturer in the Department of Primary Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she teaches Modern Greek History.

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We thank the following corporate sponsors:

Ithacan Philanthropic Society The Ulysses

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See the Full 2026 Seminar Schedule

The Greek History and Culture Seminars are organised and hosted by The Greek Community of Melbourne and provide the opportunity for everyone to experience the long and fascinating history of Greece and Greek culture in its various forms and stages, aspects of which have formed the foundation of Western civilisation.

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