The Greek Revolution: A Critical Dictionary 9780674259324

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the greek revolution

Theodoros Vryzakis, Hellas in Gratitude, 1858. National Gallery-Al. Soutzos Museum, Athens.

The Greek Revolution a critical dictionary

Edited by

Paschalis M. Kitromilides & Constantinos Tsoukalas

the belknap press of harvard university press Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts London, ­England 2021

 Copyright © 2021 by Paschalis M. Kitromilides and Constantinos Tsoukalas All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Jacket design: Annamarie McMahon Why Jacket art: Peter von Hess, A Greek Commander and His Pallikars in the Fight, 1829. Oil on canvas, after the lithograph by Karl Krazeisen. Thanassis and Marina Martinos Collection, Athens. 9780674259317 (EPUB) 9780674259324 (PDF) Translations from Greek by Alexandra Douma. Frontispiece: Hellas in Gratitude, Theodoros Vryzakis, 1858. National Gallery, Athens.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Kitromilides, Paschalis, editor. | Tsoukalas, Kōnstantinos, 1937–­editor. Title: The Greek revolution : a critical dictionary / edited by Paschalis M. Kitromilides and Constantinos Tsoukalas. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020040853 | ISBN 9780674987432 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Philhellenism. | Greece—­History—­War of In­de­pen­dence, 1821–1829. Classification: LCC DF805 .G738 2021 | DDC 949.5 / 0603–­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/2­ 020040853

 In honor of the generations of scholars who, across two hundred years, have devoted their intellectual labor to the study of the Greek Revolution

Contents

Note to the Reader Note on Transliteration Abbreviations Foreword  Prokopios Pavlopoulos Introduction: In An Age of Revolution  Paschalis M. Kitromilides

xi xv xvii xix 1

I contexts Balkan Hinterlands: The Danubian Principalities  Andrei Pippidi Balkan Hinterlands: The South Slavic Lands  Slobodan G. Marković Diasporas and Homelands  Mathieu Grenet Ottoman Context  H. Şükrü Ilıcak

19 30 38 58

II on the way to revolution Communities  Vaso Seirinidou Forms of Re­sis­tance  Vasilis Molos Secret Socie­ties: The Society of Friends and Its Forerunners  Constantinos C. Chatzopoulos

81 100 120

III events and places Aegean Islands and the Revolution at Sea  Katerina Galani and Gelina Harlaftis Asia Minor  Stavros Th. Anestidis Athens  Maria D. Efthymiou

147 161 166

Contents Chios  Christos Landros Constantinople and Thrace  Stavros Th. Anestidis Crete  Paschalis M. Kitromilides Cyprus  Paschalis M. Kitromilides Epirus  Dionysis Tzakis Ionian Islands  Eleni Angelomatis-­Tsougarakis Macedonia  Basil C. Gounaris Mesolonghi  Markos Karasarinis Morea  Dionysis Tzakis Navarino  Robert Holland Rumeli  Markos Karasarinis Samos  Christos Landros

viii 178 185 193 203 208 219 232 248 258 281 297 315

IV persons Clergymen  Phokion Kotzageorgis Civilian Leaders and the Beginnings of the Modern State  Dimitris Livanios Diplomats and Diplomacy  Ioannis D. Stefanidis Intellectuals  Roxane D. Argyropoulos Military Leaders  Dimitrios Papastamatiou ­Women  Eleni Angelomatis-­Tsougarakis

331 348 364 385 399 420

V institutions Assemblies and Constitutions  Nicos C. Alivizatos The Economics of the Revolution  Kostas Kostis Education  Dimitris C. Mavroskoufis The Orthodox Church  Lucien Frary The Press  Roxane D. Argyropoulos

439 453 467 484 496

VI ideas and creative expression Enlightenment  Paschalis M. Kitromilides Lit­er­a­ture, Learning, and Print Culture  Alexis Politis Popu­lar Culture  Manolis G. Varvounis The Revolution as Creative Experience  Peter Mackridge

515 532 555 571

V II resonances Philhellenism  Roderick Beaton American Philhellenism  Ioannis D. Evrigenis

593 614

Contents

ix

The Visual Narration of the Greek War of In­de­pen­dence  Fani-­Maria Tsigakou The Revolution and the Romantic Imagination: Echoes in Eu­ro­pean Lit­er­a­ture  Rosa Mucignat and David Ricks Sounding the Greek Revolution: ­Music and the Greek War of In­de­pen­dence  Katerina Levidou Historiographical Traditions and Debates  Pericles S. Vallianos Anniversaries  Gonda Van Steen Symbolic Commemorations and Cultural Affiliations  Constantinos Tsoukalas Summary Chronology: The Greek Revolution, 1814–1834 Contributors Acknowl­edgments Index Color plates follow page 390.

622 639 659 668 694 708 727 739 741 745

Note to the Reader

This book is intended as a guide to readers wishing to acquaint themselves with the events, ­people, and ideas that make up the drama of the 1820s in Eu­ro­pean and global history. Our point of departure and main purpose is to rec­ord the ­ eople in 1821 a­ fter many facets of the Greek Revolution, the rising of the Greek p many centuries of Ottoman rule. Coming as it did at the heyday of repression in Restoration Eu­rope following the defeat of the French Revolution, the Greek Revolution represented the earliest instance of questioning the oppressive order imposed by the Congress of Vienna on the ­peoples of the old Continent. Whereas ­ ere quickly put down, the the revolts in Naples and Piedmont in 1820–1821 w revolution of the Greeks developed into a full-­scale war of in­de­pen­dence that lasted for more than a de­cade. The Greek strug­gle for liberation breathed new life into the Age of Revolution and rekindled the hopes of liberal spirits throughout the continent and the rest of the world. The Philhellenic movement involved not only enthusiasm and support for the fighting Greeks, but also a broader assertion of the aspiration of freedom and the hopes of the oppressed around the world. It is not accidental that the first international recognition of the new Greek polity came from the Republic of Haiti in 1822. It was a gesture of solidarity among emerging new states, highly symbolic of the expectations of the age. The pre­sent volume explains what actually happened in the broader Greek world, the world delimited by Greek culture and language in the eastern Mediterranean and in southeastern Eu­rope, during the turbulent de­cade of revolution and war. We have attempted to demonstrate the global repercussions and impact of t­ hose events on the politics, the culture, and especially the arts of the rest of Eu­rope and the world, particularly the Amer­i­cas. The fighting Greeks

Note to the Reader

xii

provided models of action to other ­peoples, primarily in their immediate ­vicinity in southeastern and eastern Eu­rope but also beyond. Our hope in compiling the collection has been to show that the Greek Revolution was not just about Greece and the Greeks but about the cause of freedom and social liberation, a cause with multiple meanings for all ­peoples and individuals. The global significance of the strug­gle of the Greeks was also reflected in its major achievement, the attainment of Greek in­de­pen­dence. ­After a de­cade of strug­gle, victories and defeats, dissension and civil war, and enormous suffering in terms of humanitarian catastrophes, the Greeks managed to accede to sovereign statehood, the first such achievement in Eu­ro­pean history ­after the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna. The neighboring Serbs, who had revolted in 1804 and kept an intermittent revolutionary movement g­ oing for almost three de­cades, fi­nally achieved the status of an autonomous principality ­under Ottoman sovereignty in 1831 and had to wait u ­ ntil the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to attain sovereign statehood. The Greeks, thanks to the per­sis­ tence of their strug­gle, but also the weight of their ancient heritage in Eu­ro­ pean culture and the Philhellenic movement, emerged as the first “new nation,” to borrow Seymour Martin Lipset’s expression, in Eu­rope, setting a model for the rest of the Continent and the neighboring ­Middle East. This work is intended as a wide-­ranging guide, but it does not pretend to be exhaustive or to provide a general history of the Revolution. Our aspirations in this proj­ect have been much more modest. Exhaustiveness, in our judgment, would not have been a realistic ambition in a proj­ect like this, not only on account of practical considerations of feasibility but also on account of the many gaps in scholarship on the Greek Revolution that are quite noticeable a­ fter half a ­century of neglect of the subject, a period during which the several strands of research on modern Greek history turned their main attention to other subjects. We have thus attempted to provide, through a se­lection of paradigmatic topics, an overview to help prospective readers satisfy their initial curiosity and to encourage further exploration. Our intended audience includes both spe­ ill turn to this volume for an initial check and control of issues cialists who w in their own research and nonexperts who seek an introduction to a subject that attempts to claim a more vis­i­ble place in con­temporary scholarship. We offer this work as a rec­ord and vade mecum of what has long been known and what has been more recently produced about the Greek Revolution. Incorporating in this single volume a new, all-­inclusive history of the Greek Revolution is likewise beyond our purposes. The epic accounts of Spyridon Trikoupis, Ioannis Philimon, Anastasios Goudas, and Constantinos Paparrigopoulos in the nineteenth ­century, or of Dionysios Kokkinos and Apostolos Vakalopoulos in the twentieth, as well as the imposing historical works by for-

xiii

Note to the Reader

eign observers of the Revolution discussed by P. Vallianos in this volume, cannot be easily repeated. Instead, they have been succeeded by large-­scale collective proj­ects such as the twelfth volume of the History of the Greek Nation (1975) or the third volume of the History of Modern Hellenism (2003), both of which have been impor­tant sources for our proj­ect. We have called our work a dictionary in order to underline its character as a rec­ord of ongoing exploration that can be revisited and enriched in f­uture reincarnations. Of the two models available to us, both generated at the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the Dictionnaire Critique by François Furet and Mona Ozouf and the Dictionnaire historique by Albert Soboul, we chose to follow the former in order to signal our intentions to be selective rather than exhaustive and to stimulate critical reflection on the topics chosen for inclusion. The authors of individual essays w ­ ere asked to identify the conventional understanding of their par­tic­u­lar subjects and ­either confirm or revise that understanding taking into account recent research and debates. Readers are therefore warned that they ­will not find every­thing pertaining to the Greek Revolution, but they should use the topics covered as a foundation and entry into the event. We pre­sent The Greek Revolution: A Critical Dictionary in the hope that it ­will fulfill its promise of both reliable information on a broad range of topics and a critical revisiting, rethinking, and understanding that remains, we trust, the primary purpose served by historical knowledge.

Note on Transliteration

The only standard system for the transliteration of the Greek alphabet into languages written in Latin characters is that used for the transliteration of classical Greek. The transliteration of ancient Greek, however, is quite inappropriate for rendering the spelling and especially the phonetics of modern Greek. Accordingly the following modifications have been introduced to make it conform more to the modern morphology and sound of the language. Diphthongs have generally been retained, except in t­ hose cases where the modern pronunciation of Greek requires a consonant to be adequately rendered (for example, “aftou” not “autou”). The Greek vowels η and ι have been uniformly rendered with i, and similarly ο and ω have been rendered with o. The Greek υ has been rendered with y, except when it forms part of a diphthong; then it is rendered by u (for example, “tou”). The rough breathing has been dropped. Consonants have generally been rendered phonetically. Thus the Greek β has been rendered by the Latin v rather than b. The Greek consonant φ is rendered by ph in all words with an ancient Greek root. Conversely, Greek names with Latin roots (such as Constantinos) have been transliterated as closely as pos­ si­ble to their original form. We have generally followed the monotonic accentuation system in force in Greece today for the spelling of Modern Greek, but we have respected individual authors’ use of the polytonic system in cases where such a preference occurs in the text of their essays. The names of modern Greek authors appear in the form used by the authors themselves if they have published work in a foreign language. Inevitably some inconsistencies ­will remain, but we hope the reader ­will find this understandable in a book of this nature. Place names have been used in their standard forms

Note on Transliteration

xvi

in the En­glish language, other­wise they have been transliterated following the general rules ­adopted in this book. Words and terms originating in the Turkish language as well as Turkish names have been used in the conventional forms established by usage in English-language writing. In some cases diacritics have been added to help pronunciation of these linguistic forms.

Abbreviations

BOA

Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Ottoman State Archives, Istanbul)

DIEEE

Δελτίον της Ιστορικής και Εθνολογικής Εταιρείας της Ελλάδος (Bulletin of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece)

FO

Foreign Office

GSA

General State Archives (Greece)

HAT

Hatt-­ı Hümayun (Imperial [Re]scripts)

IEE

Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Vol. XII: Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση και η ίδρυση του ελληνικού κράτους (History of the Greek Nation, Vol. XII: The Greek Revolution and the foundation of the Greek state), ed. by G. Christopoulos—­I. Bastias (Athens 1975)

INE

Ιστορία του νέου ελληνισμού, Vol. III: Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση 1821–1832 (History of modern Hellenism, Vol. III: The Greek Revolution 1821–1832), ed. by Vasilis Panayiotopoulos (Athens 2003)

Kitromilides—­Sklavenitis

Ιστοριογραφία της νεότερης και σύγχρονης Ελλάδας (Historiography of modern and con­temporary Greece), ed. by Paschalis M. Kitromilides and Triantaphyllos Sklavenitis (Athens 2004), Vols. I–­II.

RESEE

Revue des Études Sud-­Est Européennes

RHSEE

Revue Historique du Sud-­Est Européen

TNA

The National Archives (London)

Vakalopoulos

Vakalopoulos Apostolos Vakalopoulos, Ιστορία του νέου ελληνισμού (History of Modern Hellenism), Vols. V-­VI-­VII (Thessaloniki 1980–1986)

Foreword

The outbreak of the revolutionary movement at vari­ous points in the Greek world during the months of February and March 1821 marked the beginning of a ten-­year liberation strug­gle from Ottoman despotism and culminated with the establishment of an in­de­pen­dent and sovereign Greek state a­ fter four centuries of subjugation. The Protocol of London, signed by G ­ reat Britain, France, and Rus­sia on February 3, 1830, recognizing Greek in­de­pen­dence, signaled a new beginning in the history of the Greek ­people as a modern nation. A one-­ sided appraisal of the Greek Revolution of 1821 would be impermissible. Based on the available historical evidence, it should be examined from a twofold perspective. To begin with, the 1821 Revolution must be examined from the Greek point of view, as the preparation for and conduct of the liberation strug­gle to shake off the Ottoman yoke and establish a state that would be autonomous and sovereign. It is precisely this perspective that gives prominence to the characteristic devotion to freedom that runs through the centuries of Greek history from classical antiquity. As attested by the classical authors of Greek tragedy, freedom for the Greeks has been an existential princi­ple and thoroughly experienced condition of their lives as historical beings. This is corroborated by the fact that no conquest or subjugation at any phase of their history had succeeded ­ eople in destroying or even undermining the historical survival of the Greek p as a self-­aware community. Historical evidence suggests that the strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence did not begin in 1821. Several uprisings stretching over at least half a c­ entury had preceded the Revolution, the earliest and most impor­tant being the 1769–1770 Orlov Revolt, which took place during the Russian-­Turkish war of 1768–1774. All t­ hese

Foreword

xx

early endeavors came to naught, since the stance of the g­ reat powers of that era—­Great Britain, France, and Russia—on the Ottoman Empire was determined by conflicting interests and balance of power considerations. Despite early setbacks, the resoluteness of the Greeks to initiate their revolution was strengthened over time, as they correctly interpreted the “signs of the times” anticipating the eventual position of the ­great powers on the establishment of a Greek state. The foundation of the “Society of Friends” (Philiki Etaireia) in Odessa on September 14, 1814, was crucial to the success of the endeavor as a ­whole. The plans of the Society of Friends bore fruit in early 1821 and resulted in the following watershed events in the preparation of the rising. First, the “Clandestine Council” of Vostitsa took place on January 26–29, 1821. It can hardly be disputed that, despite the initial reservations and partial objections of some participants, this council determined a number of alternative dates in the immediate ­future for the beginning of the national uprising of the Greeks. Second, the Mani uprising of March 17, 1821, led by Petrobey Mavromichalis, clearly heralded the eruption of the Greek Revolution. Third, the session of the “Messenian Senate” in Kalamata on March 23, 1821, rendered the declaration of revolution two days ­later, on March 25, 1821, an official fact in Eu­ro­pean diplomacy with the Senate’s appeal to the Eu­ro­pean courts announcing the Greek strug­gle of liberation. The Greeks had to wait for a further nine years for the vindication of their national revolution. This delay was caused by disastrous civil strife and the ambivalence—to say the least—of the ­great powers. This ambivalence is clearly evinced by their position on the uprising spearheaded by the Sacred Battalion and its leader, Alexandros Ypsilantis, which was suppressed promptly, as well as their toleration, between the years 1825 and 1827, of Ibrahim’s bloody invasion of the Peloponnese at the behest of the Ottoman sultan. It was not ­until July 6, 1827, that the g­ reat powers made a determination on the establishment of an in­de­pen­dent state. By that point, the atrocities perpetrated by Ibrahim Pasha’s forces had taken on unpre­ce­dented proportions, while Philhellenic movements, inspired by Lord Byron, had considerably swayed public opinion, especially in Britain and France. The ­Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827, strengthened the resolve of the ­great powers, though they continued to exhibit some ambivalence in proceeding with their final decision. Another three years would pass before the signing of the Protocol of London of February 3, 1830, establishing the in­de­pen­dent Greek state. Despite the nine-­year delay between the outbreak of the Revolution and its conclusion, it is indisputable that the moment the Revolution broke out the Greeks had made the irrevocable decision to see it to its end, at any cost. This end could only be the shattering of the Ottoman yoke and the establishment of

xxi

Foreword

an in­de­pen­dent Greek state founded on the liberal demo­cratic princi­ples and values of the American Revolution, outlined in the Declaration of In­de­pen­ dence signed on July 4, 1776, and of the French Revolution, embedded in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This was evident in the early and rather rudimentary Declaration of the Messenian Senate, convened in Kalamata on March 23, 1821. It was even more clearly manifested in the successive initiatives of the Greeks to draft a constitution that culminated in the “Po­liti­cal Constitution” Greece a­ dopted in Troezen on May 1, 1827. Despite its l­imited implementation due to the conditions at the time, the “Po­liti­cal Constitution” can still be regarded as one of the most consummate Greek constitutions, on account of its pronounced liberal demo­cratic temper. The innovative institutional ele­ments in the establishment of the princi­ple of national sovereignty ­were one of its distinguishing features. Th ­ ese ele­ments comprise the plenitude and comprehensiveness of the institutionalization of the fundamental ­human rights and the fully elaborated formulation of the princi­ple of the division of powers, which is of key importance for the institutional foundations of representative democracy and the rule of law. However, the national revolution of the Greeks and the establishment of the modern Greek state as per the 1830 Protocol of London should be also considered from the additional perspective of how and why the nascent Greek state became the herald and mold of the type of nation-­state that was to become prevalent in Eu­rope as a general model of state organ­ization. This state model entails a form of sovereignty that ensures the state’s autonomy and self-­government while retaining its core national attributes. This line of inquiry is suggested by a historiographical view that points out that the modern Greek state, by virtue of its birth and of the rapid propagation of the model on which it was based, became a quasi foundation of Eu­rope in its pre­sent form. We take the term Eu­ rope to signify indiscriminately both the member-­states of the Eu­ro­pean Union as well as ­those that currently are not. As we have already noted, the formative period preceding the birth of the first nation-­state in Eu­rope was anything but straightforward. Several e­ arlier Greek attempts at in­de­pen­dence had failed. Numerous obstacles and the attendant la­men­ta­ble vicissitudes are the hallmark of post-1821 developments. To a substantial extent, this was due to the ambivalence and the ensuing irresolution of the ­great powers of the era, which had conflicting interests and ­were incapable of deciding on a clear position regarding the fate of the Ottoman Empire, even though the latter had already shown multiple and substantial signs of decline. The failure of the ­great powers to wean themselves from the despotic empires that had formerly been dominant in Eu­rope was undoubtedly

Foreword

xxii

conducive to this unfavorable development for the Greeks. Although this may seem, prima facie, contradictory, the ideology of the Enlightenment was not a ­factor that could help the g­ reat powers overcome their irresolution on the Greek question. We may draw this inference from the following. No one may ignore the fact that the formation and elaboration of some sort of Eu­ro­pean “idea” and “ideology” ­were due to the Enlightenment; the same applies to our own con­ temporary endeavor to build a complete Eu­ro­pean edifice through the integration of the Eu­ro­pean Union. The Enlightenment, however, favored the reform rather than the radical transformation of the modern state model. Enlightenment exponents ­were aiming not at the obliteration of the model of the modern state but at its reform by introducing and consolidating representative democracy and ensuring the unimpeded exercise of fundamental h ­ uman rights, especially individual rights and civil liberties. Romanticism emerged as a response to the Enlightenment and exerted a manifold influence over diverse forms of cultural expression, asserting itself in some instances as a genuine revolutionary movement by configuring and underpinning the implementation of po­liti­cal change inspired by the aspirations of national movements. One of the most prominent of ­these changes affected, through the adoption of the model of the nation-­state, the way in which the national community was conceptualized, as strongly attested by the example of the formation of the modern Greek state. The substantial Philhellenic movement, with the emblematic figure of Lord Byron at its head, grew drastically in size following the siege and exodus of Mesolonghi on April  10, 1826, and played a crucial part in the decision of the ­great powers to create a Greek nation-­ state in 1827, ­later formalized with the London Protocol of 1830. Within the next few de­cades, this newly born nation-­state was to become the prevailing norm of state building in Eu­rope, as demonstrated by subsequent developments in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and the states that emerged in Greece’s immediate vicinity in southeastern Eu­rope. Thus it can be argued that the birth of the nation-­state, with the emergence of modern Greece as an emblematic early example, is deeply indebted to Romanticism and its liberal ideological claims and expressions. The foregoing allow us to draw two conclusions. First, it was through the national revolution of 1821 and the realization of the vision to create a nation-­state founded on princi­ples of representative democracy and fundamental ­human rights that the Greeks eloquently and thoroughly refute, to this day, the conspicuously inaccurate views of t­ hose who dispute the fact that con­temporary Greece ­ ese observers claim forms, by virtue of its modern origins, part of the West. Th that, even though Greece was certainly the cradle of Classical culture and therefore a fundamental pillar of Western culture, con­temporary Greeks and

xxiii

Foreword

Greece do not belong to the West. No one is justified in disputing the fact that Greece, already at the point of attainment of its in­de­pen­dence, was and remained part of the West and, a fortiori, a true buttress of Western culture. The history and geo­graph­i­cal position of Greece attest to and irrefutably substantiate the first conclusion. The nation-­ state of Greece is the West’s outer boundary to the East. This increases the significance of Greece as part of the West in proportion to the fact that, due to its geo­graph­i­cal position and its cultural origins, it is in a position to keep its gaze turned eastward, thus facilitating the cultural dialogue between East and West. In this manner, it confutes the claims of the alleged “clash of civilizations” and channels this cultural dialogue into the protection of peace, by building bridges and enabling the unimpeded communication between cultures. All this takes on a new and cardinal importance in our turbulent times. Our second conclusion points to the significance of the model of the Greek nation-­state, established in 1830 in the form that was to become a general model of state organ­ization, as the solid foundation on which the Eu­ro­pean edifice should be based, as the Eu­ro­pean Union progresses to its eventual complete integration. Therefore, the Eu­ro­pean Union may and should be or­ga­nized as a federal state defined by the princi­ple of representative democracy, which, in turn, is founded on the rule of law and the protection of fundamental ­human rights. This federal state, thus configured, would mold an au­then­tic Eu­ro­pean consciousness in the minds of the citizens of the member states. Hence, in this framework, the central organs of Eu­ro­pean democracy w ­ ill possess extensive powers customarily accorded to federal states, thus enabling the Eu­ro­pean Union to fulfill its global historical mission of defending the values of peace, democracy, and social justice. ­Every member state, in its capacity as a nation-­ state, ­will irrevocably retain its inalienable distinctive national characteristics that determine its autonomy and self-­government and define the horizon of its historical origins and prospects. In the course of this unfolding of history, e­ very nation-­state ­will make consciously and generously its “Eu­ro­pean contribution” in order to ensure the perpetual enrichment of Eu­ro­pean democracy and Eu­ ro­pean culture. The Greek national revolution led to the emergence of modern Greece as a nation-­state in its exemplary form and thus possessed a far-­reaching significance for the Eu­ro­pean context as a ­whole. If we examine and assess the Greek Revolution in this perspective we might be able to appreciate it as an impor­ tant turning point in the history of modern Eu­rope and recognize further in it the dynamic of the appropriate acceleration of the construction of the Eu­ro­ pean edifice as it builds t­ oward its final completion; a completion desirable for more than one reason.

Foreword

xxiv

The editors and contributors to this imposing volume are to be commended and congratulated for making available this timely, comprehensive, and pluralist reference work that can serve as a reliable compass in navigating the complexities of a historical subject of global significance.

Prokopios Pavlopoulos Former President of the Hellenic Republic

the greek revolution

Introduction: In an Age of Revolution

The “age of revolution” is a historiographical concept that emerged from the work of three ­great historians active in the immediate post–­World War II period: R. R. Palmer, Eric Hobsbawm, and Jacques Godechot. Their writing and ideas about the nature of history and historical thought left an indelible mark on twentieth-­century historiography in the United States, Britain, and continental Eu­rope. Godechot is the least well-­known in English-­reading scholarship, but he was the first of the three to speak of the French Revolution as a broader Eu­ro­pean and world phenomenon, not just a major upheaval in the po­liti­cal and social history of France. In describing France as the “­Great Nation” (la Grande Nation), he demonstrated that what had happened in France in the 1790s, and the ramifications of t­ hose events throughout the rest of Eu­ rope and beyond, had in fact catapulted the ­whole world into a revolutionary upheaval of far-­reaching consequences (Godechot 1956). In 1955, Godechot coauthored one of the major papers presented at the International Congress of Historical Sciences at Madrid with Yale historian R. R. Palmer, putting forward the idea of an international movement of po­liti­cal change and liberation that extended throughout Western civilization in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century. In this sense, the Atlantic became the Mediterranean of the new age. By contextualizing this early formulation of the idea of a transnational revolution in the Western world, we can recognize the po­liti­cal and ideological motivations connected with the Cold War that guided historical thought at the time. The idea enunciated in that early article foreshadowed the g­ reat works in which Godechot and Palmer respectively expanded and documented their historical interpretation. Thus, Godechot’s La Grande Nation: L’ expansion de la France révolutionnaire dans le monde (1956) and the two volumes of Palmer’s

Introduction

2

The Age of the Demo­cratic Revolution (1959–1964) proved to be milestones that defined a period in world history known as the age of revolution. Acknowledging the Cold War dimension of Palmer’s conception of the “Age of the Demo­cratic Revolution” recognizes its historicity but should not neutralize its historiographical significance. On the contrary, by elaborating the concept of the “demo­cratic revolution,” Palmer was reclaiming the revolutionary origins of the American republic, and, as Hannah Arendt also recognized at the time, he refused to concede a mono­poly of revolutionary credentials to the Soviet Union. It was precisely ­those revolutionary origins of the American nation that the civil rights movement claimed in the 1960s, at exactly the time that Palmer was producing the second volume of his work. This broader contextualization should be borne in mind in appraising the significance of the historiographical idea of the age of revolution. In 1962, the two pioneers of the idea ­were joined by another historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who used the term age of revolution in the title of what is arguably his most influential book. Hobsbawm brought the perspective of Marxism to bear on his definition and understanding of the age of revolution. For him, the two revolutions that defined the age ­were not the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, as was the case with Palmer’s approach, but rather the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The Industrial Revolution transformed Eu­ro­pean society in radical ways, beginning with its original hearth in ­England and spreading to the Continent with equally revolutionizing effects. Hobsbawm saw the French Revolution primarily as a po­ liti­cal revolution that provided “the vocabulary and the issues of liberal and radical-­democratic politics for most of the world” (Hobsbawm 1962, 74). Beyond this, however, Hobsbawm recognized the French Revolution, in the years 1789–1814, as a period of deep and violent class strug­gle, and it was the dynamic of the social conflicts that it unleashed that gave it its distinct character and ­shaped its legacy. The idea of the age of revolution elicited strong and varied criticism upon its inception in the 1950s and 1960s (Armitage and Subrahmanyam 2010, xvi–­ xviii; Armitage 2013). It proved, nevertheless, remarkably fertile and capable of revising and renewing itself as a matrix of historical research. Perhaps its most solemn affirmation as an operational concept of historical research came in 1989 at the bicentennial of the French Revolution with the world congress at the Sorbonne and the imposing four-­volume publication L’ image de la Révolution française dans le monde, which projected the French Revolution as a global phenomenon shaping the heritage of modernity. The Sorbonne Congress decisively placed the age of revolution in a global perspective, a development that motivated original thinking and research

3

Introduction

tracing the expressions of pertinent phenomena in multiple contexts on a global scale. Some of the most in­ter­est­ing and suggestive results of this broadened perspective have been produced by researching the age of revolution beyond Eu­ rope, on the eastern and southern littorals of the Mediterranean (Coller 2013), in South Amer­i­ca and the Ca­rib­bean, and in Asia and Africa (Armitage and Subrahmanyam 2010). The Greek world is very much part of the story of the age of revolution, even before the emergence of the globalized perspective. Greek expressions of the age of revolution, like the radical movement of Rhigas Velestinlis in the 1790s, invariably make their appearance in the works of Godechot, Palmer, and Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm brings into the picture other manifestations of revolutionary change and movement in the Greek world and its broader southeastern Eu­ro­pean context, including forms of primitive social protest expressed by banditry and vari­ous other instances of re­sis­tance to Ottoman rule, culminating in the revolutionary outbreaks and the national movements of the 1820s. The bicentennial of the Greek Revolution (1821–2021) provides a new context to revisit events, to reappraise in greater detail the participation of the Greek world in the age of revolution, and to read the ­whole range of events in southeastern Eu­rope from the 1790s to the 1820s as components of the broader picture, which has by now taken on a global dimension. To read the historical rec­ord in light of new approaches and an expanded interpretative framework, it is imperative to delve into the events that took place over the ten-­year period of the Greek Revolution. The pre­sent proj­ect aspires to make accessible to international scholarship the ­actual events in Greece and the broader Greek world, a world delimited by Greek culture and language in southeastern Eu­rope and the eastern Mediterranean. It is a story of heroism and tragedy, of passion and conflict, of pathos and pity, but also of resilience, hope, and an indomitable determination to win the strug­gle of liberty ­after many centuries of subjection to alien despotic rule. In introducing the collective narrative of that ten-­year drama, the first questions to ask would perhaps be the following: was it ­really a revolution, and does it ­really fit into the age of revolution? ­These questions are provocative but necessary, and the answers are neither obvious nor easy. If appraised by the standards and requirements of scholarship, the questions might be handled by referring to the primary authoritative theories of revolution that have been put forward by historians and social scientists in the last few de­cades. The Greek Revolution, considered in its entirety, supports several con­ temporary theories of revolution. In the following pages we observe Crane Brinton’s concept of the “eternal Figaro” in the social and po­liti­cal criticism

Introduction

4

articulated amid intense ideological conflict in the two de­cades leading up to the revolution (Brinton 1952, 72–74). Once the uprising was set in motion in the Morea and Rumeli, the revolutionary dynamic of peasant society helped spread the insurrection in ­those regions. This illustrates the classic analy­sis of the “revolution from below” in the historical sociology of revolutions by Barrington Moore, Jr., and l­ater Theda Skocpol. Moore’s comparison of E ­ ngland and France on the question of peasant society and its significance for the prospects of revolution is relevant in the consideration of the Greek case: the integrity of peasant society in the Morea, Rumeli, Crete, and elsewhere in the Greek lands can explain how the revolution found its necessary social bases in ­those regions, survived once it broke out, and persisted amid the civil wars and other adversities of the revolutionary de­cade. The Greek Revolution can also be interpreted through the lens of two theoretical approaches that elaborate on Alexis de Tocqueville’s idea of the revolution of rising expectations, which points out that revolutions come not when ­things are at their worst, but rather when they are on the road to improvement, encouraging unrealistic expectations. The resulting disappointment leads ­people to resort to vio­lence and revolution. In Tocqueville’s diagnosis, this was what led to the French Revolution. James Davies and Ted Gurr expanded on this theory in their own analyses of revolution, which traced the origins of revolutionary action to discontent resulting from a contraction in well-­being following a period of improvement and to a sense of relative deprivation, respectively. Although ­these theories ­were based on evidence provided by changing socie­ ties in the twentieth c­ entury, they could be tested on the basis of the historical rec­ord provided by the Greek Revolution. It should be remembered that the revolution came to the Greek world ­after a long period of social and cultural change in the eigh­teenth ­century and remarkable economic development during in the Napoleonic wars and the continental blockade. When all this came to an end ­after 1815, the disappointment of rising expectations created a climate of discontent that made pos­si­ble the work of the Philiki Etaireia, the secret society founded in 1814 with the intention to prepare the revolution, as explained by C. Chatzopoulos in this volume. The social-­psychological perspective on the Greek Revolution could be greatly enriched by considering Moore’s l­ater work on the significance of the sense of injustice and the moral outrage resulting from it (Moore 1978). Such feelings may motivate re­sis­tance and revolutionary action. The lit­er­a­ture of the Greek version of the radical demo­cratic Enlightenment both before and during the course of the Greek Revolution, is replete with examples of how the sense of injustice experienced by Greeks with an enhanced awareness of the condi-

5

Introduction

tion of subjection to which their society had been reduced and which they ­were fighting to shake off. The Greeks’ sense of injustice was articulated in both social and national terms, another reminder of the revolutionary potential of national identity that has not escaped Moore’s attention (Moore 1978, 484–489). One final perspective of theories of revolution that could be reasonably applied to the Greek experience comes from the work of Charles Tilly and, more precisely, from his arguments on the geopo­liti­cal dimension of revolutionary changes. ­There can be ­little doubt that international war in the fifty years or so preceding 1821 set a broader geopo­liti­cal environment for the coming of the Greek Revolution. Multiple Russo-­Turkish wars spanning the 1770s though 1812 set a context of imperial conflicts that encouraged revolutionary expectancy in southeastern Eu­rope, as recorded in many con­temporary sources. As Vasilis Molos suggests in this volume, the Russo-­Turkish conflict in the Mediterranean in 1768–1774 could be seen as having planted the seeds of a movement of re­sis­ tance to Ottoman rule among the Greeks. If war in southeastern Eu­rope in the 1770s provided an initial impulse, it was war on a continental scale brought about by Napoleon’s imperial ambitions that allowed the Greeks to begin thinking concretely of their f­ uture in the new terms of national sovereignty and other po­liti­cal ideas emanating from revolutionary France. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the Greek Revolution became pos­si­ble only ­after shifting to aspirations of national statehood, thus reminding us of John Dunn’s idea that revolutions are profoundly po­liti­cal phenomena focused on change in the structure of power and directed by a strong ele­ment of ­human agency. It is precisely this strong ele­ment of ­human agency that can be recognized in the Greek strug­gle for freedom, amid all the conflicts and contradictions marking the be­hav­ior of ­those involved. Geopolitics not only brought about the preconditions of revolutionary change but also ­shaped its outcome. Great-­power antagonism over predominance in the Mediterranean, which had long favored the survival of the Ottoman Empire, paradoxically also generated the first step in its gradual dismemberment with the liberation of Greece. Beyond war and power politics, geopolitics in a literal sense, in the primordial sense of the weight of geography in determining the course of historical events, remained a fundamental aspect of collective des­ hole range of histortinies in the region. In fact, one might suggest that the w ical events, comprising the origins, course, and eventual outcome of the Greek Revolution, could be placed in a “neo-­Braudelian” understanding, pointing to the geo­graph­i­cal location of the Greek peninsula and its surrounding archipelagos at the center of the Mediterranean Sea, its Balkan hinterlands and the shape of its terrain, rugged and mountainous, as critical ­factors that set the scene of the revolution and determined its outcome.

Introduction

6

The richness of theories of revolution, so expertly surveyed by Bailey Stone (2014), could provide many other ­angles for considering the Greek Revolution in a comparative perspective, allowing new insights to be gained and making pos­si­ble alternative readings of events—in short, making pos­si­ble a critical ­understanding. The recognition of the significance of events in Greece during the 1820s in the light of theories of revolution could in turn provide correctives to the theories themselves. The theories referred to above, structuralist, social-­ psychological, and geopo­liti­cal, tend to overlook one significant component in the dynamics of modern revolutions: nationalism. This aspect of the revolutionary phenomenon is amply illustrated by the Greek revolutionary experience. Nationalism remains the major po­liti­cal force of modernity, leading socie­ ties from premodern feudal forms of organ­ization into the modern world. This promise can explain its power and per­sis­tence. In the lit­er­a­ture on the age of revolution, Godechot and Palmer duly recognized the significance of nationalism, but it was primarily Hobsbawm who underlined the emergence of the modern idea of the nation as one of the major developments shaping the age and the world (Hobsbawm 1962, 163–177). In discussing the phenomenon of nationalism, Hobsbawm points out that the Greek strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence was a unique expression of the age of revolution in that it illustrated the way “the perennial fight of the sheepherding clansmen and bandit-­heroes against any real government fused with the ideas of middle-­class nationalism and the French Revolution” (ibid., 172–173). According to Hobsbawm, the uniqueness of the Greek example in the age of revolution can explain its appeal as the “inspiration of nationalists and liberals everywhere.” It was in Greece that “an entire ­people did rise against the oppressor in a manner which could be plausibly identified with the cause of the Eu­ro­pean left.” The story of that rising is related in the essays that make up this critical dictionary. The Greek Revolution was a peasant war and, as such, amounted to a social revolution in a society subjected to multiple forms of in­equality and injustice. The peasant population joined the insurrection to grab land and ­free itself from despotism and the in­equality that sustained it. At the same time, a liberal “republican” revolution aspired to overturn an ancien régime of unaccountable despotic autocracy and replace it with a government based on the rule of law and re­spect for individual rights and civil liberties. The ­whole proj­ect of the Greek Enlightenment essentially amounted to this objective. Fi­nally, the Greek Revolution was largely a national revolution, in which a community claimed its rights to sovereign national statehood in the world of ­free nations. ­Under the influence of the Enlightenment, this community had become conscious of its historical lineage, in whose terms it had come to conceive of itself as a modern

7

Introduction

nation. In this sense the Greek Revolution is a paradigmatic case illustrating how nationalism remains “a per­sis­tent force in revolutions” (Goldstone 2003, 16). In fact, it was a nation-­building proj­ect in a literal sense. By means of their involvement in revolutionary action, regardless of the original motivation of such involvement, or through suffering the consequences of fighting and upheaval brought about by the war of in­de­pen­dence, diverse social groups, with multiple ethnic, linguistic, and class backgrounds, emerged as Greeks, members of the national community fighting for its freedom. One ele­ment of identity held all t­ hese groups together: their shared belonging to the Orthodox Church. This can explain both the religious overtones of the war of in­de­pen­ dence, as recorded in many sources, and the critical role of Orthodoxy in forging the modern national identity that was imprinted on the population of ­free Greece. The aspiration of national liberation and the affirmation of the national identity of the country that emerged from the revolution made it intelligible to con­temporary Eu­ro­pean po­liti­cal thought. In the midst of the climate of repression prevailing in Restoration Eu­rope, the risings of 1820–1821  in Italy and southeastern Eu­rope, and in the Romanian and Greek lands, ­were the earliest expressions of the hope of freedom in the face of the counterrevolution. Whereas all other risings proved abortive, the revolution in Greece lived on for ten years and eventually managed, amid many setbacks and sorrows, to give rise to an in­de­pen­dent and sovereign national state, the first such achievement in post-­ Napoleonic Eu­rope along with the emergence of the kingdom of Belgium in 1830 (Manessis 1959). This can explain the appeal of events in Greece to liberal public opinion in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca that generated the Philhellenic movement, expertly surveyed by Roderick Beaton and Ioannis Evrigenis in this volume. It also explains the hopes it inspired in liberal po­liti­cal thought, whose leading exponents at the time turned their attention to revolutionary Greece. This included Benjamin Constant, who issued an Appeal to Christian Nations in ­favor of the Greeks in 1825, at the height of his po­liti­cal ­career. Most notably the nation-­and state-­building efforts of the Greeks attracted the interest of Jeremy Bentham, who devoted a considerable part of his preparatory work for the Constitutional Code to commentaries and advice to the Greeks on the construction of a demo­cratic state in the liberated country. In the following pages, thirty-­nine authors explore the Greek aspects of the age of revolution. Our proj­ect points to an expanding historiographical horizon and tries to fill in some of the lacunae left in mainstream lit­er­a­ture on the much-­ discussed subject of the age of revolution, which has been revived by new debates in con­temporary scholarship (Bell and Mintzker 2018). We propose not a

Introduction

8

complete new history of the Greek Revolution but a critical revisiting and rethinking of its main features and constituents as a broad historical phenomenon. Before turning to the essays, readers seeking a more substantive knowledge and critical understanding of the Greek Revolution should consider a few historiographical issues surrounding the subject. The first issue concerns the longstanding debate over the beginning of the revolution. Although its significance is primarily symbolic, this issue still carries considerable emotional weight. In planning the revolution, the Philiki Etaireia and its leader, Alexandros Ypsilantis, discussed the possibility of beginning the revolt on the day of the Annunciation, March 25, a major religious feast day for the Orthodox Church, when masses of p ­ eople would be gathered at church and thus readily available to be incited to rise against tyranny. Events overtook ­these plans, however, and the revolution broke out at dif­fer­ent geo­ graph­i­cal points over the course of February and March  1821. In February, ­Ypsilantis himself initiated the rising in Moldavia and in Wallachia. The ­revolt broke out in March at vari­ous places in the Morea, at Kalamata, at Vostitsa, at Kalavryta, and at Patras, as related by Dionysis Tzakis in this volume. On April 24 the Levant Com­pany consul at Patras, Philip Green, reported that “a Revolt on the part of the Greeks against the Turkish government within Morea” was underway (TNA, SP 105, 139, f. 351). Revolutionary events reached a symbolic climax on March  25 at Patras, where the local archbishop, Germanos, raised the standard of revolution and the Greek captains took an oath to e­ ither liberate their homeland or die. Already on March 23, the “Messenian Senate,” the revolutionary body that had been set up at Kalamata by the chiefs of Mani, had issued a proclamation signed by Petrobey Mavromichalis to “the Eu­ro­pean courts,” announcing that the Greeks had risen against tyranny and ­were requesting the support and advice of the Eu­ro­pean nations in their “sacred and just strug­gle to renew the suffering Greek nation” (Panagiotopoulos 1967). This amounted to the first diplomatic act whereby the revolution was seeking international recognition. Its date, therefore, could rightfully be considered the day Greece emerged as a ­free nation, claiming its place in the world of sovereign states. The Messenian proclamation of Greek in­ de­pen­dence eventually found its way into the Eu­ro­pean press (e.g. The Morning Chronicle [London], June 15, 1821). ­rother of the Years ­later, the French historian François Pouqueville, b French consul at Patras, alleged in his history of the Greek Revolution that the revolution had been proclaimed on March 25 by Archbishop of Old Patras Germanos at the Monastery of Agia Lavra, near Kalavryta. This story has remained apocryphal; Archbishop Germanos says nothing about it in his memoirs. However, in the postrevolutionary period, its strong symbolism inspired

9

Introduction

a power­ful legend, which was most characteristically recorded in a highly evocative painting by Theodoros Vryzakis, a Romantic painter of the revolution, in 1865. The fact remains, nevertheless, that on March 23–25, 1821, two highly symbolic events expressed the revolutionary ­will of the Greeks: the raising of the cross as the standard of revolution by Archbishop Germanos at Patras, and the Messenian declaration of Greek in­de­pen­dence to the Eu­ro­pean courts. In view of this impor­tant symbolic legacy, therefore, it was not without foundation that in 1838, King Othon established March  25 as the national day of Greece by royal decree, marking the anniversary of the Greek Revolution. The nation-­building pro­cess on the symbolic level was thus set in order. A second, substantive issue in the history of the revolution concerns the fate and ­handling of the country’s archaeological heritage during a de­cade of war, vio­lence, and upheaval. For centuries, foreign looters preyed on the antiquities of Greece and the indifference of both the country’s rulers and its inhabitants allowed time and the ele­ments to reduce the splendid monuments of antiquity to ruin. Lord Elgin’s looting of the monuments of the Acropolis (1801–1811) is only the best-­known example of such operations of destruction. Ioannis Gennadios, the book lover and Greek ambassador to the Court of St. James, told the story of “archeologising” invaders and looters years ago, but it must be retold many times over in order to underline the significance of the subject. Shortly ­after the looting of the Acropolis, two other impor­tant monuments of classical art in the country, the t­emple of Athena Aphaia at Aigina and the t­emple of Apollo at Phygaleia in the Western Peloponnese, w ­ ere looted. Their sculptures ­were taken away and sold and can now be seen at the Glyptotek in Munich and at the British Museum in London, respectively. Foreign diplomatic agents in Athens before and during the revolution, including Louis François Fauvel, consul of France, and Georg Christian Gropius, vice-­consul of Austria, partook in the looting and illicit trade of Greek antiquities. The story of the fate of ancient monuments and works of classical art during the years of the revolution up to the period of rule by Ioannis Capodistrias constitutes one of the serious desiderata of the historiography of the revolution. The outbreak of the revolution provoked concern in some circles about the safety of the antiquities of Greece, especially Athens. In August 1821, the British ambassador to Constantinople submitted a note to the Ottoman foreign minister, Reis Effendi, asking him to instruct Ottoman troops to re­spect the antiquities of Athens. The ­Grand Vezir complied with the request. War, however, is not a propitious environment for antiquities, and the monuments of Athens ­were heavi­ly damaged during the repeated sieges of the Acropolis.

Introduction

10

The revolutionary Greeks themselves appeared fully aware of the need to protect the antiquities of the country. The provisional legislative body of eastern central Greece, the Areopagus, issued explicit instructions in November 1821 to the minister of civil administration charging him with “the protection of antiquities.” This was the first ever official declaration of the government’s duty to protect the archaeological wealth of the country. A similar instruction was issued on February 27, 1822, by Ioannis Kolettis, minister of military affairs in the first national government set up by the First National Assembly, to General Voutier, directing him to take care not to damage the monuments during the siege of the Acropolis by Greek forces (Petrakos 2015, 1: 26–27). Despite the concern shown by the revolutionary authorities, looting of ­antiquities in the liberated parts of the country continued in the 1820s, especially in the islands. Incidents of looting of antiquities on the island of Anafi and illegal excavations on Milos are characteristic. Adamantios Korais wrote from Paris to the Greek authorities urging them to take mea­sures to protect the antiquities. Throughout the revolutionary de­cade, concern for the archaeological heritage of the country surfaced from time to time amid the pressures of war. In 1825, the prerevolutionary Philomousos Etaireia of Athens was revived, and one of its earliest initiatives was the conservation and restoration of ancient monuments and the collections of antiquities scattered in ­houses in the city in order to prevent them from being sold to foreigners. The executive endorsed all t­hese proposals. In the same year, the central government instructed local police forces in Athens and on Milos to prevent the removal and the export of antiquities. In 1825, as minister of the interior, Grigorios Dikaios, better known as Papaflessas, issued an edict specifying the duties of the commissioner of education, who was charged with issuing instructions to local authorities and school teachers to collect antiquities from their regions so e­ very school in the country would have its museum and thus prevent foreigners from preying on the heritage of the country. The Third National Assembly at Troezen, which voted on the Po­liti­cal Constitution of Greece and elected Ioannis Capodistrias as the first head of state of the liberated country, in its ordinance of May 1, 1827, on administrative organization included among the duties of district commissioners the responsibility “to prevent the sale or export of antiquities” (Petrakos 2015, 1: 58–59). One of Capodistrias’s earliest mea­sures was the establishment of the Archaeological Ser­vice in 1829 for the supervision and protection of Greek antiquities. One of the governor’s first concerns was the establishment of a home on Aigina for the orphans of the strug­gle. He also provided for a national museum, to be ­housed in the orphanage building, and he appointed a fellow Corfiot ­ nder Capodistrias, Greek scholar, Andreas Moustoxydis, as the first ephor. U

11

Introduction

archaeology entered a new phase of regulation and protection and was established as one of the primary objectives of statecraft in the liberated country ­(Petrakos 2015, vols. 2–3). A third aspect of the social history of the Greek Revolution, which seems marked by an unexpected topicality in the twenty-­first ­century, is the phenomenon of refugee movements and forced migration. War, military campaigns, and Ottoman reprisals caused considerable upheaval among large populations in all parts of the Greek world and generated multiple waves of forced migration as civilians attempted to flee to safety. It is impossible to secure accurate estimates of numbers of losses and civilian casualties of the war for such a distant period, but estimates range from about 230,000 to 600,000 (Komis 2003, 235). Refugee movements are also difficult to estimate in quantitative terms, but surviving evidence allows us to follow in considerable detail the ebb and flow of forced migration during the revolution. Refugee movements originated primarily as a consequence of the defeat of revolutionary outbreaks at vari­ous continental areas and islands. The violent suppression of revolutionary action by the Ottomans forced local populations to seek refuge in the liberated regions of mainland Greece or in neighboring islands that appeared safer. Thus large numbers of refugees left the coastal areas of western and northwestern Asia Minor, Magnesia and Pilion in Thessaly, Thrace, the areas of Arta and Souli in Epirus, the areas of Naousa and Chalkidiki in Macedonia, and the islands of Chios and Kasos following their destruction by Ottoman forces in 1822 and 1824, respectively. Successive refugee waves left Crete a­ fter ­every violent suppression of revolutionary action in the island, fleeing to neighboring Cycladic islands like Milos, Ios, and Syros, or to Nafplio. Refugees from Asia Minor initially sought refuge at Psara and then, ­after the destruction of the island, moved on and settled on other islands, notably in Amorgos but also further west at Salamina, where they encountered other refugee groups fleeing the repeated violent conflicts across the straits in Attica. Refugee groups from further north, such as in Thessaly and Macedonia, went to the Northern Sporades islands, while Epirots went to Mesolonghi and from ­there to other localities in Rumeli. A considerable refugee wave of noncombatants moved from the Peloponnese to the Ionian islands, especially Zakynthos. Forced migration was not ­limited to Greeks. The Muslim population, both Turkish-­speaking and Greek-­speaking, of the main theaters of revolutionary action felt equally exposed, also resulting in refugee waves. In the Peloponnese they took refuge mostly in the major urban centers and fortified towns to be ­under the protection of Ottoman authorities. This also happened in Crete, where the Turko-­Cretans congregated in the main cities Iraklio, Rethymno,

Introduction

12

and Chania. Peloponnesian Muslims, like their Christian compatriots, also fled to British-­occupied Zakynthos seeking to escape the consequences of military confrontations. The emergence of refugee waves and forced migration also invited relief policies. The earliest such mea­sure was taken by the provisional administration of ­free Greece on April 20, 1822, in order to relieve the plight of the Chian refugees following the massacre of Chios, which shocked international public opinion at the time. In May 1824 a census was taken of persons in need on account of the war, primarily w ­ idows, orphans, and p ­ eople with infirmities, including refugees. That was a step t­ oward better-­coordinated relief policies. One of Capodistrias’s earliest mea­sures as head of the government was the instruction in January 1828 to register refugees in the Nafplio area in order to better meet their needs. Relief was also distributed to refugees in Aigina and other islands. Large-­scale relief also arrived from the United States on repeated occasions, on the initiative of the American Philhellenes Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and Peckan Milles (Andriotis 2020, 13–14). Regardless of their origin, refugees arriving in areas ­under the control of Greek authorities primarily sought relocation in towns. This was a decisive ­factor in the growth of the major urban centers in the fledgling new state. In 1825, the two largest groups in the population of Nafplio, the capital city of the new state, ­after ­those originating in vari­ous localities in the Peloponnese, ­were refugee groups from Asia Minor and Crete. ­Under Capodistrias, a special suburb for the settlement of refugees was founded next to the capital with the promising name Pronoia, meaning providence. In 1827, a refugee group from Smyrna calling itself “­Free Smyrniots” requested permission from the Third National Assembly to establish a “New Smyrna” in the area of the Isthmus of Corinth. They had the support of Dr. Howe, and although their request was accepted, their plans did not ultimately materialize. The most significant and lasting result of the relocation of refugee groups was the emergence of Ermoupolis, a major new urban center on the island of Syros. Settled primarily by Chian survivors of the 1822 massacre but also by large groups from Smyrna, Kydonies, and Constantinople, the new coastal town, named in 1825 ­after the ancient Greek patron god of commerce, grew into the ­ ntil it was eclipsed by Pireus in main port and commercial city of new Greece u the late nineteen ­century. Thus, the story of forced migration and refugee movements in the Greek Revolution also inaugurates the history of social change in the new nation state. A fourth historiographical issue that needs to be addressed in building a fuller picture of the revolution is the phenomenon of civil wars. The two civil

13

Introduction

wars of the revolutionary period, the first in late 1823 and the early months of 1824, and the second in late 1824 with repercussions throughout 1825, constituted impor­tant phases in the politics of the Greek Revolution but also put the survival of the revolution in serious jeopardy. ­Earlier writing on the revolution treated the civil wars as serious affronts to the ideal of national unity. Although an implicit moralizing perspective may be po­liti­cally edifying, it does not do much for a substantive understanding of the phenomenon of civil strife and conflict. If we turn back to the theories of revolution through which the Greek Revolution might be understood and interpreted, we w ­ ill recognize the incidence of civil war as an integral part of the revolutionary pro­cess qua revolution, that is, a radical overturn and subversion of an established social order. Crane Brinton was the first to recognize conflict and dissension in the ranks of the revolutionaries as an integral component of the unfolding logic of revolutionary change, while Barrington Moore, Jr., in his own classic theoretical analy­sis of the American Civil War, pointed out that civil war can in fact be understood as revolution. Civil or internal war also occupies a central role in the logic of revolution in the social-­psychological interpretation proposed by Ted Gurr. The insights drawn from theories of revolution can be helpful in reinterpreting and reappraising the phenomenon of civil wars in the Greek Revolution. The conflicts between regional elites over the control of the new state ­under construction can be understood as components of the revolutionary pro­cess itself, out of which emerged the modern community of the Greek nation. Civil wars, which represented the birth pangs of the national community, ­were essentially the re­sis­tance of traditional, premodern forms of organ­ization of power and social in­equality to the requirements of change, equality, and new social order immanent in the proj­ect of constructing a modern national community and state. The pertinent suggestions of John Petropulos and Nikiforos Diamandouros on the civil wars of the Greek Revolution point to this enhanced understanding of the subject. A final historiographical issue that looms on the broader horizon of the subjects treated in this collective proj­ect has to do with the statecraft whereby the founder of the Greek politeia, Ioannis Capodistrias, attempted to lay the institutional foundations of a modern po­liti­cal order worthy of the fighting nation’s sacrifices and hopes. Capodistrias was possibly the most distinguished Greek of his time, with a clear sense of the world and the requirements of modern politics. Such was the basis of his judgment as to what the still-­fighting nation needed in order to truly secure its freedom following its deliverance from alien despotism: a well-­ordered modern polity ­under the rule of law. That was the objective to which his statecraft was directed.

Introduction

14

Many aspects of Capodistrias’s statecraft are treated in the essays of this volume: his diplomacy, which secured the in­de­pen­dence of Greece, along with his military, educational, and ecclesiastical policies. His statecraft as a ­whole, and his concept of the modern state that would best serve the interest of the liberated Greek p ­ eople, is one of the larger proj­ects that this collection invites scholars of modern history to undertake. Capodistrias belongs to the few select statesmen in the history of politics who had the opportunity to become found­ers of states, the admirable po­liti­cal leaders who are extolled in the history of po­liti­cal thought by observers ranging from Plutarch to Machiavelli to David Hume. The modern state-­building to which he devoted his life and paid for with his death, and the way in which he faced up to the antinomies of politics and the responsibilities of leadership, should emerge as a primary object of reflection on the occasion of the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution.

Paschalis M. Kitromilides References Andriotis, Nicos. 2020. Πρόσφυγες στην Ελλάδα 1821–1940 [Refugees in Greece 1821–1940]. Athens. Armitage, David. 2013. Foreword to The Age of the Demo­cratic Revolution, by R. R. Palmer, xv–�