THE GREEK REVOLUTION

On the bicentennial of the Greek revolution, a prominent scholar tracks the historical detail and enormous international significance of the improbable, largely grassroots uprising against the Ottoman Empire.

Mazower, a Columbia professor and winner of the Wolfson Prize for History who has written extensively about Greece and the Balkans, ably ties together the many disparate threads of this complex history of Greek independence, galvanized by the spirit of nationalism unleashed at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Though the Ottomans were not present at the talks, the Christian Orthodox entities (Serbs, Greeks, Russians) built solidarity in response to Ottoman “scenes of carnage,” and the Greek question garnered sympathy. However, Mazower emphasizes that as long as the Greeks waited, the czar was not going to come to their defense. Consequently, in Odessa, “some Greeks of very obscure class” formed a Filiki Etaireia (“Society of Friends”) that would prove “the catalyst for Europe’s first successful national revolution,” which began in earnest in 1821. Despite the wildly asymmetrical dimensions of the fight—the sprawling Ottoman Empire of 24 million versus the 3 million or so Greeks scattered throughout, as well as the sultan’s vast wealth, bureaucracy, and military versus the 15,000 to 20,000 fighters the Greeks could motivate—the Greek underdogs managed to wrest “some kind of independence” from the Sultan by 1828, to be determined over the subsequent decades. The Egyptians also joined the fight against the Greeks, but the Greeks were able to win the international war of propaganda—aided by notables such as Byron, Shelley, and Delacroix, who were infatuated by Greek mythology, archaeological discoveries, and Enlightenment thinking. In a narrative that may overwhelm general readers but will prove indispensable to scholars, Mazower underscores that it was largely a provincial struggle, financed by European sympathies and bonded by Christianity. The book features extensive maps and illustrations.

An elucidating history that is relevant to understanding the geopolitics of Greece today.