Borders of kapedani: Ottoman encounters with Greek border crosser captains around the mid-nineteenth century

This thesis deals with a group of prominent frontier captains of the Hellenic Kingdom who crossed the border and escaped to take refuge in the Ottoman Empire around the mid-nineteenth century. These captains represented a significant regional force for both states as leaders of bandits and irregulars in the border regions between newly founded Greece and the Ottoman Empire. As traditional military elements who had transformed into Greek nationals, they regulated the initial phases through which the Ottoman Empire engaged with independent Greece, the first state to break away from within the empire. How they resituated themselves in response to shifting political, military, and economic conditions, from the period before the independence of Greece through the mid-century, sheds light on the mutual circumstances involved in living in the Greco-Ottoman border. Thus, this research aims to explore the shifting functions of these captains following the Greek Revolution, the continuities of Ottoman dynamics in the borderlands, and the imperial responses to the "refuge" taken by Greek captains. The discussion will follow the captains' historical background, their existence as opposition within the kingdom, and their transregional and transnational networks, all of which influenced the attitudes, negotiations, and reactions of the empire towards the captains and their broader affiliations.