JSIS A 239/CLAS 239

GREECE: ANCIENT TO MODERN

Modern Greek History Timeline
1453-1821: Ottoman Greece

1821-1829: Greek War of Independence

1833-1924: Kingdom of Greece

1833-1862: Reign of King Otto

1863-1913: Reign of King George, I

1912-13: Balkan Wars

1914-1918: World War I

Modern Greek History Timeline
1918-1923: Greco-Turkish War

1936-1940: Metaxas Dictatorship

1940-1944: Greece in World War II

1946-1949 : Greek Civil War

1950-1967: Postwar Greece

1967-1974: The Colonel’s Coup

2009-present: Greek Debt Crisis

The Pre-revolutionary Context:
15th-18th centuries
Greek-speaking populations dispersed in:

a. Ottoman Empire

b. Russian Empire (Odessa, etc.)

c. Habsburg Empire (Vienna, Trieste, etc.)

d. Venetian Empire (Venice, Livorno, Padua, etc.)

e. Various European cities (Paris, London, etc.)

Ottoman Empire and Europe, 1815
 Greek Identity
under Ottoman Rule
No sense of national identity among Greek-speaking
Orthodox Christians

Common ethnic consciousness

Common political identity: subjects of Sultan

Common religious identity: Orthodox Christians

 The Roman Millet:
Ottoman Orthodox Christians
Multi-ethnic (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians,
Vlachs, Turks, etc.) and multi-lingual

‘Rums’/ ‘Romans’/ ‘Ρωμιοί’ or ‘Graicoi’/ ‘Greeks’/

‘Γραικοί’

Patriarch: spiritual leader of about 13 million

Orthodox Christians

Sultan: political leader

Social Hierarchy among Greek-
speaking Orthodox Christians
ELITE GROUPS

a. Phanariots b. Merchants

c. Higher clergy d. Diaspora intellectuals

POPULAR GROUPS

a. Kocabasis

b. Klephts and armatoloi

c. Peasantry
 Phanariot Constantine
Mavrogordato, late 18th cent.
Patriarch Gregory V
(1746-1821)
Greek Merchant, ca. 16th cent.
Adamantios Korais
(1748-1833)
Klephts
Theodoros Kolokotronis
(1770-1843)
Laskarina Bouboulina
(1771-1825)
Modern Greek Nation-Building
Top-down process: from elite to popular groups

Started around late 18th century with formation of

Greek ethnic consciousness

Greek Enlightenment: ca. 1770s-1820s

Transformation of ‘race of the Romans’ (multi-

ethnic, multi-lingual, multicultural community of
Ottoman Orthodox Christians) into ‘nation of the
Hellenes’

Formation of independent modern Greek nation-state

 Romantic Hellenism
Idealization of Hellas by Western European
intellectuals (e.g., Winckelmann, Wolf) and artists
(e.g. Shelley)

Ancient Greece as remedy to alienation from nature

and past that Western Europeans experienced as a
result of modernity
 P. B. Shelley (1792-1822)
“The apathy of the rulers of the civilized world to the
astonishing circumstances of the descendants of that
nation to which they owe their civilization – rising as
it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something
perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shews
of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our
literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in
Greece” (excerpt from Shelley’s Hellas, 1821)

Notion of debt of Western Europe to ancient Greece

 Philhellenism
Political movement inspired by Romantic Hellenism and
Enlightenment ideals; it actively supported Greek cause

Differences between Hellenists vs. Philhellenes

Western Philhellenes saw in modern Greeks the direct

descendants of ancient Greeks

Felt moral obligation towards descendants of ancient Greeks

Elements of continuity: language, culture, blood

Modern Greece: Hellas reborn

Lord Byron
(1788-1824)
 Byron’s Philhellenism
First time in Athens in 1809 as part of Grand Tour

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) rallied public

support for Greek cause

Member of London Greek Committee

1823: head of military expedition to Greece

1824: Byron died in Missolonghi

Rigas Velestinlis
(ca. 1757-1798)
 Rigas Velestinlis
Hellenized Vlach

Revolutionary nurtured with Enlightenment ideas (‘Thourios’)

Progressive political thinker (‘New Political Constitution of

the Inabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Archipelago,
Moldavia and Wallachia’)

Author of literary texts

Translator from French into Greek

Proto-martyr of Greek War of Independence

 First Panel
of Rigas’s ‘Charta’ (1797)
Entire ‘Charta’
 Rigas’s Ecumenical Vision

“The sovereign people consists of all the

inhabitants of the Empire without
distinction of religion and speech,
Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Vlachs,
Armenians, Turks and every other kind
of race” (Article 7)
 Adamantios Korais:
From Education to Liberation
Transformation of Greek-speaking Orthodox
Christians (‘race of the Romans’) into Hellenes
through classical heritage

Editor of classical texts (Hellenic Library)

Purification of spoken Greek language from foreign

elements: invention of Katharevousa/Purist

Distaste for Byzantium

 Greek War of Independence
(1821-1829)
Civil War amongst insurgent Greeks (1823-1826) due to
political divisions, competing interests of different parties:
diaspora Greeks, indigenous Greeks, Phanariots

Battle of Navarino (1827): destruction of Turko-Egyptian

fleet by British and French fleet

Presidency of I. Kapodistrias (1828-1831)

London Protocol (1832): independent modern Greek state

1833-1862: Reign of King Otto of Greece

Modern Greek state-building
MAP showing expansion of MG state
Modern Greek Identity Formation
Stage I: Ancient Greece
Revival model (ca. 1770s-1830s): modern Greeks as
descendants of ancient Greeks

Ancient Greece: first pillar of modern Greek identity

Western travelers to Greece (Grand Tour) first

connected the modern Greeks with their ancient
ancestors
 J. Ph. Fallmerayer’s
Challenge
Since Middle Ages Greece was a de-hellenized
country inhabited by Albanians and Slavs

“all ancient traces…had become extinct by virtue

of the Slavic invasions of mainland Greece, and
especially the Attic peninsula during the 5th
century AD” – extract from Fallmerayer’s lecture
before the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1835

Modern Greeks are not descendants of ancient Greeks

 Greek reactions
to Fallmerayer’s theory
‘Apoplexy’ (i.e. stroke) suffered by Professors at the
University of Athens

Invention of ‘continuity model’ from ca. 1840s

onwards: gradual incorporation of excluded
periods (Macedonian, Hellenistic, Roman, Middle
Ages, Venetian, Ottoman) into narrative of Greek
national history in order to fill in the gaps of the
‘revival model’
Modern Greek Identity Formation
Stage II: Byzantium
Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, History of the Hellenic
Nation (1860-1874)

Unbroken continuity of Greek history from antiquity

to present

Three main phases: Classical-Byzantine-Modern

Reconciliation of dual identities of Greek nation,

Hellenic and Romeic

Restoration of Byzantine and Ottoman periods

Modern Greek Folklore Studies
Nikolaos Politis (1852-1921): founder of Modern
Greek Folklore Studies

Urban intellectuals scoured Greek countryside in

search of ‘survivals’ of ancient Greek customs,
practices, stories, beliefs that resembled those
described in ancient texts

Real vs. invented/fabricated continuities

 Components
of Modern Greek Identity
Ancient Greek heritage

Christian Orthodox religion

Greek language

EXCLUSIVE VS. INCLUSIVE GREEK IDENTITY