Fruit trees planted in the late Ottoman Empire may have lived for over a century after the polity they grew up in disappeared from maps. Starting from these trees and their relationship to time, this presentation elucidates the relationship between fruit production and violence at the end of empire. Many who planted the trees left—or were forced to leave—and newly settled people—many of them refugees themselves—came to care for these living relics of past social worlds. Through apricots, figs, grapes, hazelnuts, olives, and pistachios, the project places displaced people and their rootedness in the face of uprooting at the center, and suggests their role in Turkey’s world-leading production of these commodities today.

Samuel Dolbee is an environmental historian of the modern Middle East, and an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. His first book Locusts of Power was the co-winner of the 2024 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Book Prize. His work has appeared in American Historical Review, Comparative Studies of Society and History, Environmental History, Journal of Global History, and Past & Present among other places. He was formerly editor-in-chief of and is currently a contributor to Ottoman History Podcast.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.