Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
5 - The Greek Revolution of 1821
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The present chapter describes the outbreak and outcomes of the Greek Revolution of 1821. Attention is given to questions surrounding how this event – especially from the standpoint of its imputed causes and the social composition of those who played a leading part – may be compared with other notable upheavals of the Restoration era. The chapter closes with a discussion of the European political and cultural response to the event.
Keywords: Greek Revolution, Ottoman Empire, national identity, Irredentism
Perhaps many Christians by converting to Islam aided the growth of the Ottoman army and population. However, in those who preserved their religion and language the Ottoman elements exerted no influence at all. […] The nation of 1821 was the very same one of 1453; morally, intellectually and numerically it had undergone many changes, but ethnologically none at all.
The historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos (1815-1891) is best known for his multivolume History of the Hellenic Nation from Ancient Times to the Present (1860-1874). As the title of this work and the excerpt above suggest, the author sought to portray the Greek nation as a community of descent whose genetic continuity had remained largely unbroken over time. Although Paparrigopoulos did not deny that some mixing of ‘races’ had taken place throughout the eastern Mediterranean since antiquity, it was clear to him that in those areas where the Greek language prevailed, the Hellenes had absorbed rather than been absorbed by the others. The arguments of the Austrian philologist Jakob Fallmerayer (1790-1861) notwithstanding, the modern Greeks were exactly who they claimed themselves to be: the descendants of that storied race whose wisdom and works remained among the most sacred possessions of European civilization. If such a connection appeared doubtful, even ridiculous, given the state of material and moral destitution that long reigned over the lands once home to such a people, Paparrigopoulos would bid his readers to think again. Indeed, the regeneration of Greece proved, as Korais declared in his Mémoire sur l’état actuel de la civilisation dans la Grèce (1803), ‘that if unhappy circumstances can devastate the most fertile soil […] they cannot deprive it of its natural fecundity; a light rain and a little cultivation will suffice for all the riches which once covered it to germinate anew.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1763–1848 , pp. 107 - 136Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020