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 MODERN GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT
AND 19TH CENTURY GREEK NATIONALISM

The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences

of
Bilkent University

by

Murat Önsoy

In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

THE DEPARTMENT OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BILKENT UNIVERISTY
ANKARA

June 2005
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in
quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in International Relations.

---------------------------------
Assistant Professor Hasan Ünal
Supervisor

I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in
quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in International Relations.

---------------------------------
Assistant Professor Nur Bilge Criss
Examining Committee Member

I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in
quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in International Relations.

---------------------------------
Assistant Professor Emel Oktay
Examining Committee Member

Approval of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences

---------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Erdal Erel
Director
 ABSTRACT

MODERN GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT AND 19TH CENTURY GREEK

NATIONALISM

Murat Önsoy

M.A., Department of International Relations

Supervisor: Doc. Dr. Hasan Ünal

June 2005

This thesis analyzes modern Greek enlightenment and 19th century Greek

Nationalism, in the light of nationalism theories. It confronts with the process of

Modern Greek enlightenment which took place within the lands of the Ottoman

Empire and the Greek nationalism which was the second phase of the modern Greek

enlightenment. The thesis argues that the lands where today Greeks live had been

invaded and settled by various ethnic groups. As a result it lost its ethnic ties with the

ancient Greeks. Modern Greeks are not the descendants of ancient Greeks as they

accept. Modern Greek national identity is a constructed one and Greek nation which

is a mixture of different Balkan Orthodox people such as Slavs, Albanians,

Macedonians and Bulgars. Greek Nation was built within the Ottoman Millet system

by the help of the European Philhellenes and Greek intellectuals. This assumption is

based on Fallmayer theory which suggests that ancient Greeks had disappeared

completely and the modern Greeks were merely descendants of Slavs and Albanians.

Keywords: Modern Greek enlightenment, Greek Nationalism, Ottoman millet

system, theories of nationalism.

iii
 ÖZET

ÇAĞDAŞ YUNAN AYDINLANMASI VE 19. YUZYIL YUNAN

MİLLİYETÇİLİĞİ

Murat Önsoy

Yüksek Lisans, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü

Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Hasan Ünal

Haziran 2005

İşbu Tez, çağdaş Yunan aydınlanması ve 19. yüzyıl yunan milliyetçiliğini

milliyetçilik teorileri ışığında tetkik etmektedir. İş bu tezde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu

topraklarında cereyan eden modern Yunan ayaklanması ve ikinci safhası olan Yunan

milliyetçiliği incelemektedir. Modern Yunanlılar’ın bugün yaşadığı topraklar tarih

boyunca birçok etnik grup tarafından istila edilmiş ve yönetilmiştir. Bütün bu

istilaların sonunda Yunanlılar antik Yunan ile olan etnik bağlarını yitirme noktasına

gelmişlerdir. Çağdaş Yunanlılar’ın antik Yunanlılar’ın torunları olduğunu tezi doğru

değildir. Çağdaş Yunan kimliği sonradan oluşturulmuş bir kimliktir ve Yunan ulusu

Slav, Arnavut, Makedon ve Bulgar gibi çeşitli insan gruplarından oluşur. Bu

varsayım Fallmayer’in: antik Yunanlılar’ın tamamen yok olduğu ve Çağdaş

yunanlıların Slav ve Arnavut kökenli insanlardan oluştuğu tezine dayandırılmaktadır.

iv
Anahtar kelimeler: Çağdaş Yunan aydınlanması, Yunan milliyetçiliği, Osmanlı

Millet sistemi, milliyetçililk teorileri.

v
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In my master studies at Bilkent, I have had the privilege of been supported from

many persons, to whom I am deeply grateful. First I would like to express my sincere

gratitude to my supervisor Hasan Ünal, for his kind support from the very first days I

expressed my interest to study at Bilkent, and until the conclusion of my master

studies. His thorough academic knowledge and guidance enabled me to successfully

deal with my MA thesis, while his friendly attitude made me feeling confident about

my work. I am also very grateful to Ass. Prof. Nur Bilge Criss and Ass. Prof. Emel

Oktay, for giving me the honor and pleasure by their participation in the examining

committee, and for very useful comments and suggestion on my thesis.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my family. My father Prof. Dr. Rifat Önsoy and

my mother Gülsen Önsoy who put my education in front of everything, my aunts

Prof.Dr. Birsen Önalp, Türkan Önalp and Nurşen Çatal, my uncle Ertuğrul Önalp,

my grand mother Emine Önalp and my girlfriend Tuğba Özden. I am particularly

grateful to my professors and colleagues at Hacettepe University.

vi
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................iii

ÖZET.....................................................................................................................iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.....................................................................................vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................vii

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I:

THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEFINITIONS OF NATIONALISM

1.1Ethnic Group, Nation, Nationality and Nationalism…………………………..4

1.1.1 Theories and Definitions about Nationalism……………………..…….4

1.1.1.1 Nation…………………………………………………….………6

1.1.1.2 Nationalism………………………………………………..…….. 7

1.1.1.2.1 Emergence of Nationalism……………………………….8

1.1.1.2.2 Theories of Nationalism………………………………….12

CHAPTER II:

GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT:CREATING A NATION WITHIN AN EMPIRE

2.1 Origins of the Greeks…………………………………………………………18

2.1.1 Origins of Greeks: Assimilation of Different Groups into

Greekness................…………………………………………………………19

2.1.1.1 Slav Settlements and their assimilation………………...…....19

2.1.1.2 The Vlach, the Francs and their Assimilation ……………....20

2.1.1.3 Turks and their Assimilation…….…………………………..20

2.2 The Survival of Greek Civilization

vii
 2.2.1 Survival of Greek Civilization of the Roman Conquest and

Byzantine………………………………………………………………...22

2.2.2 Theory: Byzantine and Emergence of Greek National

Consciousness……………………………………………………………27

2.2.3 Survival of Greek Civilization in the Ottoman Empire….....……………...28

2.2.3.1 Greeks Under Ottoman Rule…………………………………………28

2.2.3.2 Ottoman Millet System, Orthodox Millet and the Role of the Greeks.33

2.2.3.3 The Orthodox Millet………………………………..………………..37

2.2.3.4 The Role of the Greeks in Ottoman Administration…………………43

2.2.3.5 The Economic and Intellectual Progress of Greeks………………….46

2.2.3.6 Greek Civil Society in the Ottoman Empire……..…………………..47

CHAPTER 3:

GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT and EMERGENCE of NATIONALISM

3.1 Greek Printing and Press…………………………………………………......51

3.2 Greek Education…………………………………………………....................55

3.3 National awakening and reinvention of history in the Greeks..………………56

3.3.1 Criticisms to Greek Enlightenment…………………………………59

3.4 Rediscovery of the Ancient Past……………………………………………...60

3.5 Greek Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire…………………………………...68

3.6 Debates Over the Name of the new Nation…………………………………...69

3.7 Ideologs of the Greek Nationalism…………………………………………...70

3.7.1Rigas…………………………………………………………………….71

3.7.2 Korais…………………………………………………………………..74

3.7.3 Kapodistrias………………………………………………………........78

viii
 3.7.4 Katartzis…………………………………………………………….....79

3.7.5 Ipsilantis and Friendly Society.……………….……………………....80

CHAPTER 4:

NATION BUILDING in GREECE AFTER the REVOLUTION

4.1 Transfer of Identities from one imagined community to the other:...…81

4.2 The Erosion of Orthodoxy from the Greek Identity………………..…82

4.3 The Process of Nation Building in accordance with the New Greek

Identity…………………………………………………………….….86

4.3.1 Consolidation of State Formation in Greek Territories after Nation

Building...................................................................................................89

4.4 The Reinvention of History……………………………………..…….92

CONCLUSION……………………………………………………...........……93

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………..…….……96

ix
 INTRODUCTION

Only a few nation states existing today have a long and continuous existence

like the Greeks. Unlike the Chinese who have race and culture or the Jews who have

religion to bind them together, the Greeks have had no single, unchanging element of

identity.1

The emergence of Balkan nationalisms can be traced back to the late 18th and

early 19th centuries corresponding almost to the same time as the dissolution of the

Ottoman Empire. There existed different cultures, languages and religions in the

Ottoman Empire. They were organized under different groups called “millet” based

on their religion. In the late 18th century, when national identity became more

important than religious one in peoples’ lives, the millet system, which had been

limping, totally collapsed. Nationalist ideology earned legitimacy from the French

Revolution of 1789 and spread all around Europe. It was carried to the

Mediterranean through Napoleonic Wars, Orthodox Church, and Greek merchants.

It spread all around the Empire and was welcomed especially by the non-Muslim

Millets.

Greeks or Millet-i Rum was one of the most important and influential millets

within the Ottoman Empire. The Greek uprising of 1821 was the result of a long

process called “modern Greek enlightenment.” Among the non-Muslims, Millet-i

Rum was the readiest. Greek scholars living abroad such as Korais and Rigas were

engaged in a process of organizing people and reinventing Greek people's past for

1
D. Kousoulas. (1974). Modern Greece: Profile of a Nation , (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York),
p.xv

1
the liberation of Greece from the Ottoman Turks. Since mid 18th century the Greeks

believed that they were descendants of the ancient Greeks. This idea was exported by

the Europeans who had admiration for classical Greek civilization. This was the

most important support to the Greeks for the creation of a nation with a mythical past

and invented tradition, which consisted of half-truth, and half imagination of a

common past.

“The millets of the Ottoman Empire were based on religion; all Christian

Orthodox peoples were included in the Rum Millet, regardless of the language they

spoke, even though Greek was the lingua franca of the area. Many considered

themselves descendants of the Eastern Roman Empire, thus taking pride in ortho-

doxy and the victory over the Ottomans.”2 The Greeks lived like a separate

community within the Ottoman empire like the other millets. Some held important

positions many of them were affluent as the control of Ottoman trade was in their

hands. They had their own education facilities, such as printing, press civil society

and so forth.

This dissertation tries to explain modern Greek enlightenment and early

nation building process that took place within the Ottoman Empire which finally led

to the Greek uprising and later a Greek nation state. The subject is presented in line

with the theories of nationalism (especially modern ones) and it argues that modern

Greek national awakening and Greek nationalism is a reinvention or creation of a

common Greek history by the Greek scholars as a result of the nation building

process. (like many other examples of nationalism)

Present work is structured into four chapters. In the first, there is a theoretical

framework, in which the main ideas of scholars of nationalism such as Gellner,

2
E.J. Hobsbawm.(1992), Nations and nationalism since 1780. (Cambridge:Cambridge University
Press) p.10.

2
Smith, Hobsbawm and Anderson are outlined. Second chapter begins by discussing

how the Greek culture survived after all the invasions and foreign control to be

followed by a more detailed section about the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. It talks

about the important aspects of Greek presence in the Ottoman Empire. This section

examines the Ottoman Millet System which is very important for the survival of the

Greek identity within the Ottoman Empire. Third chapter focuses on Greek

enlightenment and the rise of nationalism in Greek provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

It sets out the views of very important ideologues of Greek nationalism such as

Rigas, Korais and Kapodostrias. The fourth chapter concentrates on the nation

formation process after the revolution and transformation of Rum Orthodox Identity

into a Greek Nation. And the final chapter, parallel with the modernist theory of

nationalism, tries to prove that the Greek national identity was invented in almost the

same manner as many others have been.

3
 CHAPTER I:

THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND DEFINITIONS OF NATIONALISM

1.1 Theories and Definitions of Nationalism

Nations, nationalism and other relative concepts such as ethnicity and race

became popular fields of study in the early 1990’s, particularly at the time of the

collapse of the Soviet Union. This produced a new wave of nationalism across the

former Soviet lands and a new debate over nationalism emerged and divided the

nationalism theorists into categories according to their perception of nation and

nationalism as ancient or modern phenomena. There is not any common definition

of what nation and nationalism is. In this chapter I will discuss different theories of

nationalism and secessionism. I will, first of all, define ethnic group, nation and

nationalism.

Anthony Smith argues that

“the rediscovery of an ethnic past furnishes vital memories, values,

symbols, and myths, without which nationalism would be powerless.
But those myths, symbols, values and memories have popular
resonance because they are founded on living traditions of the people
. . . [and they invoke] presumed kinship and residence ties to
underpin the authenticity of the unique cultural values of the
community.”3

3
A.D.Smith.(1998) Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of
Nations Nationalism, (Newyork: Routledge) pp. 45-46.
 Nations may be build up from one or more ethnic groups. Max Weber defines

ethnic group as ‘those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their

common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or

because of memories of colonization or migration’4. Therefore, one can say that

ethnic group is not always made up of a single race, and that there may be racially

different people sharing the same culture. An ethnic group is not a biologically

refined group of people and, being from the same race is not always enough to form

an ethnic group, as it is the case in Balkans. But one may argue that it facilitates an

ethnic group formation if necessary ground already exists. Weber points out that a

common historical background, wars, victories, defeats, disasters even the legends

ease the construction of a national consciousness. As it is the case in the Serbian

nation building process, the memories of the Kosovo war of 1389, which resulted in

the defeat of the Serbs at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, had an important effect

over the Serbian people in the way of building Serbian nation state in the nineteenth

century.

1.1.1 Nation

Nation is made up of one or more ethnic group. It is a group of people who

feel as one community bound together with historical ties, culture, and a common

ancestry. Nations have ‘objective characteristics which may include a territory, a

language, a religion, or common descent (though not all of these are always present),

and subjective characteristics, essentially a people’s awareness of its nationality and

affection for it. In today’s world, nations usually have their own states and those,

which consist of more than one nation, are usually ready for secession with the

4
M. Weber, (1968) Economy and Society, (Los Angeles: University of California Press)
exception of a few. In contrast, empires of the previous centuries were multinational

states, which consisted of more than one nation. One of the leading thinkers of

modernist theory, Benedict Anderson, in the 1980s, defined nation as an ‘imagined

community’

“It is imagined because members of even the smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,
yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. The
nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them
encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if
elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. It is imagined as
sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which
Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the
divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. It is imagined as a
community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and
exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as
a deep, horizontal comradeship.” 5

According to Hobsbawm, there are two kinds of definitions of a nation an

objective and subjective one. According to the objective one, the group should have

some common features to qualify as a nation while the subjective describes the

nation with the sense of belonging that group members have.

According to Gellner, a nation is either a cultural entity, which needs a

common culture, or the members of the nation should voluntarily recognize each

other as members of the same nation. 6 Anthony Smith makes a detailed definition

of the nation, “a named human population sharing a historic territory, common

myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and
7
common legal rights and duties for all members” Common history, religion and

culture bind the individuals to each other in a country and those with different

5
B.Anderson.(1991). Imagined Communities, (Newyork: Verso Publishing) pp.6-8

6
E. Gellner, (1983), Nations and Nationalism, (Oxford: Blackwell). p.7

7
A.D.Smith, (1991), National Identity . (Harmondsworth: Penguin). p.14
language, culture and history become others. The competition between the others

normally gives rise to the concept of nationalism.

1.1.2 Nationalism:

Nationalism is a mature ideology. It is a universal political movement and a

social doctrine, which provides the feeling of unity and loyalty to the political unit of

the same ethnicity or at least same historical background. At the same time it is a

controversial issue, because it does not have a single definition, and examples of

nationalism are extremely diverse. Any intrastate or interstate dispute, ethnic tension

or diplomatic problem between two states can easily turn into national ones and

mobilize their nationalists.

What nationalists argue is that, if nations are free to govern themselves

independently, they will be in a better position. Jingoism is the term used for the idea

that one nation is superior to the other. Each nationalism has to define who belongs

to a nation and who does not, so there should be a process of inclusion and exclusion.

Depending on the situation, nationalism can mean protecting the unity of a

nation state, or advocating a secessionist movement. Besides this very general

definition, there are definitions of nationalism theorists, which describe the doctrine

more profoundly. Kellas, for instance describes nationalism as both an ideology and

a form of behavior. The ideology of nationalism builds on people’s awareness of a

nation (national self consciousness) to give a set of attitudes and a program of action.

These may be cultural, economic, or political. Since ‘nation’ can be defined in

‘ethnic’, ‘social’ or ‘official’ senses, nationalism can take these forms as well.8

8
J.G.Kellas,(1991). The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity (London:Macmillan) pp.2-3
According to Gellner, one of the most cited modernity theorist of nationalism, it is

not the awakening of nations to self consciousness, it invents nations where they do

not exist.9 Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political

and national unit should be congruent. It is a theory of political legitimacy, which

requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones and separate the

power holders from the rest.10. For states, ‘official nationalism’ means patriotism and

the defence of ‘national sovereignty’ in international relations. All types of

nationalism seek a political expression for the nation, most strongly in independent

statehood. Nationalists may settle for less, however. They may be content for the

nation to be a unit in a federal state or to have devolution in a unitary state. As a form

of political behavior, nationalism is closely linked to ethnocentrism and patriotism.

Nationalist behavior is based on the feeling of belonging to a community, which is

the nation. Those who do not belong to the nation are seen as different, foreigners or

aliens with loyalties to their own nations.

1.1.2.1 Emergence of Nationalism

If we compare the history of mankind to the history of nationalism, we realize

how recent the history of nationalism is. Nationalism is not older than the second half

of the eighteenth century. There are arguments supporting this assumption: its first

great manifestation was the French Revolution, which offered the new movement an

increased dynamic force. Gooch describes nationalism as “a child of the French

Revolution.”11 Although we accept the French Revolution as the event, which

9
E.Gellner.(1964). Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson) p.169
10
E.Gellner.(1983). Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) p.5
11
G.P. Gooch. 1931. Studies in Modern History (London: Longman), p. 217
intensified and spread the ideas of nationalism throughout Western Europe, the

history of nationalism is much older than that.

Two spiritual events, Renaissance and Reformation, were important steps in

the formation and development of nationalism and national identity. Kohn argues

that “in Renaissance the purely vegetative group feeling developed for the first time

into a national consciousness, which received its inspiration from the ancient classics

and from the Old Testament, both now read in a new light and with a new
12
understanding.” Although individuals began to have a kind of national

consciousness with Renaissance and Reformation, it is not correct to call these

periods “the age of nationalism” because Western Europe was still dominated by

religious thought and emotions. In spite of the frequent expressions of literary

nationalism in the Renaissance, emerging nations were divided by civil wars. Kohn’s

description of the situation is as follows: “rival factions of magnets knew no loyalty

to the nation and the people themselves remained entirely outside the reach of

nationalism.” 13

The treaty of Westphalia (1648), and related developments led to the growth

of middle classes, whose desire for political power was somewhat connected to the

emergence of contemporary nationalism. Theorists of the French Revolution argued

that people should establish governments of equality and liberty for everyone.

According to them, the nation was inseparable from the people, and for the first time

people could create a government in accordance with the nation's general will.

12
H. Kohn. (1958). The Idea of Nationalism: a study in its origins and background (New York:
Macmillan), p.120
13
H.Kohn. (1958). The Idea of Nationalism: a study in its origins and background, p.124
Although their aims were universal, they glorified the nation that would establish

their aims, and nationalism found its first political expression.14

In the course of the wars of Reformation, nations fought each other but

people were still loyal to the sovereign rather than the land or other people. The

peace of Westphalia put an end to the thirty years war in Europe. With the peace of

Westphalia, European states recognized the principle of state sovereignty and the

state borders were preserved and recognized collectively by law. Each signatory

agreed not to intervene in the territory of other states and established a fiscal

regulation for linking currencies of states to each other in order to stabilize the value

of money across different states.

Kohn further argues that “at the beginning of the seventeenth century the

national states of Western Europe continued to regard themselves as parts of the one

Christian polity. They were united around Christianity, which was more influential

than any of the national divisions into which the continent began to split up. National

policies were pursued with a universal goal set firmly before the people as their

guide.”15 Christian identity still dominated the scene, and such a collective identity

was necessary for the protection of the continent from the common enemy: the

Muslim Turks. The spirit of the Crusades was still alive.

Two other important events that had to do with the emergence of nationalism

are the industrial revolution and French revolution. It is true that many discoveries in

natural sciences had been made before the 19th century but application of these

14
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/natlism_History.asp, 21.03.2005

15
H.Kohn. (1958). The Idea of Nationalism: a study in its origins and background p.187
inventions to production began in the 19th century. The middle class grew stronger

after the industrial revolution. But they were still weak in political terms. The

aristocrats and religious class continued to enjoy their special status given by the

king. The bourgeois lacked this, so it struggled against the aristocrats and the

religious class on behalf of equality and new emerging political order. Peasants

joined in the middle class and together they limited the rights of the king to a

constitution. All this certainly contributed to the birth of the concept of nation state.

The doctrines of French Revolution were then exported to other European states

through wars.

Hereafter governments were neither divine nor natural creations but man

made. Another concept came about that is the citizen-army whose soldiers were

citizens of the nation, and thus were serving their nation. This army was different

from the armies of other European states in which there was no understanding of

loyalty to the system. Medieval armies consisted of aristocratic warriors with limited

numbers and the rest were unskilled peasants. The new army of France was full of

educated high-ranking soldiers and low rank privates who had national

consciousness.

French revolutionists supported personal liberties; they rejected any kind of

constraint,16 monopolies on commerce, feudal charges upon the land, vestiges of

servitude such as serfdom, and even black slavery overseas. They held that political

legitimacy required constitutional government, elections, and legislative supremacy.

They demanded civil equality for all, denying the claims of privileged groups,

localities, or religions to special treatment and requiring the equality of all citizens

before the law. A final revolutionary goal was expressed by the concept of fraternity,

16
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/rev891.html , 15.3.2005
which meant that all citizens regardless of social class, region, or religion shared a

common fate in society, and that the well-being of the nation sometimes superseded

the interests of individuals. The resounding slogan of Liberty, Equality, and

Fraternity expressed social ideals to which most contemporary citizens of the

Western world would still subscribe.

1.1.2.2 Theories of Nationalism

Theories of nation formation may be divided into two schools. These are

modernists and perennialists, or in Anthony Smith’s words modernist and anti-

modernist. Modernists subscribe to the view that nation and nationalism are recent

social-political phenomena that serve the modern social structure. Perennialists, on

the other hand, maintain that nations have always existed throughout history in

different social or political forms.

According to modernists, nationalism emerged when societies passed from

agrarian to industrialized ones. In the agrarian society there was a complex division

of labor in which everybody’s role was defined. When the peasants moved to cities

following modernity, they did not have a defined role and these people needed a

standardized identity so they created their roots in folk culture with which they

identified themselves.

Smith was the first scholar to survey theories of nationalism and classify

them. According to him, modernist theories take the view that nations were wholly

modern in the sense of being recent, i.e. since the French Revolution, nations were

the product of modernity and had to emerge through the process of modernization.

Nations were not deeply rooted in history but were an inevitable consequence of the

revolutions that constituted modernity. Nationalism was embedded in modernity.

When the process of modernization has become completed, nationalism, too, would

wane and disappear. Nations and nationalisms were social constructs and cultural

creation of modernity designed for an age of revolutions and mass mobilization, and

central to the attempts to control these processes of rapid social change.17

The most important thinker of modernist approach and teacher of Anthony

Smith is Ernest Gellner. He suggests that nationalism is not the awakening of nations

to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist, but it does not need

some pre-existing differentiating marks to work. Anthony Smith does not agree with

Gellner about the issue of invention. He categorizes himself as an ethno-symbolist

under the category of modernist nationalism theorists. According to Smith, although

nations are modern and product of the industrial society, they have an ethnic past,

and this ethnic past has to be used by the nationalists to create a new nation.

Therefore, nationalists, according to the preoccupations of the present, can use the

past. In other words, the present creates the past. Modern nationalist intellectuals

will not only invent a historical past, but also use it which is already there, select the

necessary parts from it, and mix them for the desires of the nation.

According to Smith, the following is the characteristics of the anti-modernists

(Perrenialists): they believe that the nation is a politicized ethno-cultural community,

the nation is persistent and immemorial, rooted in place and time and belonging to a

nation means possessing certain qualities. The underlying principles of the nation are

those of ancestral ties and authentic culture and nations are seamless wholes with a

single will and character.18

17
A.D.Smith.(1998). Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of
Nations and Nationalism (New York: Routledge) p.22
18
A.Smith.1998. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations
and Nationalism (New York: Routledge) p.22-23
 Primordialism which can be counted under the category of anti-modernist

theories argues that ethnic bonds are ‘natural’, set by the basic experiences that

human beings go through within their families and other primary groups. According

to Llobera, in primordialist understanding, group identity is a given and exists in all

societies, and they are irrational attachments based on blood, race, language, religion,

region.19 According to another primordialist, C. Geertz, primordial identities are

natural or given, ineffable, which means that it cannot be explained or analyzed by

referring to social interaction, but are coercive and deal essentially with sentiments or

affections.20 Geertz further discusses that ethnic groups are ineffable and yet

coercive ties, which are the result of a long process of crystallization. Modern states,

particularly, but not exclusively, in the Third World, are superimposed on the

primordial realities, which are ethnic groups or communities. 21

One other argument primordialists put forward is that ethnic identity, as a

result of historical experience of human beings becomes a given one. The last group

of theory is instrumentalist one, which bases its view on ethnic groups rather than

nations.

According to Llobera’s definition of instrumentalism, ethnic identity is

flexible, and the determining variable is that both the content and boundaries of an

ethnic group change according to circumstances. Under the label of instrumentalism

one can detect a variety of approaches based on the idea that ethnicity is the result of

economic, social or political processes, and hence that it is by definition a flexible

and highly adaptable tool. Ethnic groups have no fixed boundaries; they are rather

collective entities, which change in size according to changing conditions. As to

individuals, not only are they not assigned permanently to an ethnic group, but they
19
J.R.Llobera, (1999). Recent Theories of Nationalism (London:University College) p.3
20
C. Geertz. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. (New York, Free Press), 16.
21
C. Geertz. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. (New York, Free Press), 20
can be members of more than one at the same time. Ethnicity is a dynamic element.

Some instrumentalists insist that ethnic affiliation is simply a ploy to promote

economic interests, and that individuals are ready to change group membership if

that suits their sense of security or their economic interests. 22

Another instrumentalist, Fredrik Barth, argues that ethnic groups are

biologicallly self-perpetuating, the members of the group share fundamental cultural

values; the group makes up a field of interaction and communication; and its

members identify themselves and are identified by others as belonging to the group.

Prominent experts on nationalism theories Shaw and Wang presented a

model for explaining how allegiance was transferred from small ethnic groups to

large nations and multinational states. Here are some of the hypotheses put forward

by the authors: First, over evolutionary time, individuals have identified themselves

with groups larger than their nucleus ethnic group due to balance-of-power

considerations. They have done so voluntarily or through coercion, that is, defeat and

forced amalgamation with the conqueror

Secondly, belonging to, and fighting for, a larger group, priorities of inclusive

fitness maximization and related biases in mental development must be linked with

priorities and choices in cultural environment. Thirdly, the identification mechanism

operates continually to answer two questions: to what group should the individual

belong and fight for, assuming choices are available. If choices are not available, if

membership in a larger group such as a state is mandatory, with what degree of

intensity and commitment should the individual serve that group in warfare?

Fourthly, cognition and emotion work simultaneously to produce powerful group

alliances.

22
J. R. Llobera.(1999). Recent Theories of Nationalism (London:University College), p.8
 Lastly, when group cohesion is threatened, the identification mechanism will

tend to direct membership and allegiance to a subgroup, thus fostering inter group

strife, secessionist movements with the larger one, and perhaps civil war. To avoid

this, cultural incentives must be introduced to foster and protect inclusive fitness

priorities. In this case, patriotism is typically used by leaders to promote group

cohesion and mobilize for warfare"23

The nation building process in Western Europe and in other parts of Europe

is not the same. For instance, before the establishment of the French nation, there

was the Kingdom of France. The transfer of the identity from king’s vassals to the

citizen of nation was not as problematic as it was in central and eastern Europe. This

region of the world was governed by multi-national states such as the Ottoman

Empire, Russian Empire and the Habsburgs. They were part of a multi-national state

and as it was in Ottoman Empire, they were called millets (in religious sense such as

the Rum Orthodox Millet) and their shift from such an identity to a nation was not so

easy as the Greek example will demonstrate.24

In the Balkans, divided between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires during

most of the nineteenth century, nationalist uprisings first emerged among the Serbs.

Nationalism developed as a reaction to the Janissaries who were the local Ottoman

military forces and the next phase of nationalism in the Balkans was Greece, which is

a very good example of modern nation building in the peninsula.

In the light of these theoretical explanations I raise some related research

questions: What are the ethnic origins of Greek nation? Is Greek nation an imagined

community as described by the modernist theorists? How did enlightenment occurred

23
P.Shaw, Y.Wong.(1989), Genetic Seeds of Warfare. (London, Unwin Hyman).
24
http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php/21.html , 27.03.2005
among Ottoman Greeks and what was the role of Enlightenment in the emergence of

Greek nationalism? The fundamental problem of modern Greek history may be fairly

epitomized in the form of two related questions. What are the ethnic origins of the

Greek nation? What are the sources and components of Greek culture?25

25
A. Vacalopoulos. (1970). Origins of the Greek Nation: Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. (New
Jersey:Rutgers University Press) p.1.
 CHAPTER II:

GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT: CREATING A NATION WITHIN AN

EMPIRE

2.1 Origins of the Greeks

As mentioned before, Gellner suggests that nationalism is not the awakening

of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist. Modern

Greek nation is not the descended directly from ancient Greeks. As Kousoulas

mentions, “ever since the days of Alexander, being “Greek” was more a question of

culture than a matter of biology.”26 Greek nation is a mixture of different ethnic

groups, which settled in the Greek peninsula in different times in history. It is

possible that todays Greeks are different from the ancients.

In fact, after the Greek war of Independence, the German historian Jakob

Phillip Fallmerayer put forward the question of ethnic origins of Greeks. This was a

challenge for the philhellenists and civilized world that had great hopes for the

political regeneration of Greece. According to him, ancient Greeks had disappeared

completely and the modern Greeks were merely descendants of Slavs and

Albanians.27 Another scholar who shares similar ideas with Fallmayer was Viennese

Slavist Bartholomaus Kopitar who was known as the father of Fallmayer’s theory.

He says: “Therefore, the Greeks who not only have Greek beliefs but also speak

modern Greek we might with good conscience allow to pass, moreover, as

26
D. Kousoulas. (1974). Modern Greece: Profile of a Nation , (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons), p.xv
27
A. Vacalopoulos. (1970). Origins of the Greek Nation: Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. (New
Jersey,Rutgers University Press) p.1
descendants of the Greeks ( Die Griechen also, die nicht nur griechisch glauben,

sondern auch neugriechisch sprechen, können wir mit gutem Gewissen auch ferner

für Nachkommen der Griechen gelten lassen)”28 Naturally, other Scholars had

answers to these ideas. Everyone tried to analyze such an important ethnological

question.

2.1.1 Origins of the Greeks: Assimilation of Different Groups into Greekness

2.1.1.1 Slav Settlements and Their Assimilation into Greekness:

Incursions of the Avaro –Slav peoples started in the sixth century. During

these years, the Byzantine Empire was preoccupied with internal problems. After the

death of Emperor Maurice, the borders of the Byzantine Empire became unprotected.

The Slavs invaded the south and reached Peloponesse. The Greeks were displaced by

the Slavs and many of them sought refuge in Sicily and Italy.29 The Christianization

and hellenization of the Slavs took place after the defeat against Byzantine Emperor

Patras in 805 by which the Greeks took control over the Slavs.

The Albanians migrated the Greek peninsula in the eighth century. They were

speaking Albanian language and Latin. In 1348 when Byzantine armies were

defeated by Serbian Stefan Dushan and the Serbs conquered a large part of Northern

Greece, the Albanians easily penetrated the undefended south. Stepan Dushan used

the Greeks and Albanians together in forming armies. Later when Serbian

domination ended the Greeks assimilated and used Albanians in their armies.30

28
P. Enepekides. “Kopitar und die Griechen [Kopitar and the Greeks],” Wiener Slavistisches
Jahrbuch, III, p.67
29
P.Charanis. (1953). “On the Slavic Settlement in the Peloponnese” (Athens: Testu) p.42
30
C. Jirecek, (1911). History of the Serbs. (Germany: Gotha) p.394.
2.1.1.2 The Vlachs, the Francs and Their Assimilation Into Greek

Vlachs were the descended of the colonists of the Roman Empire. They were

Latin and also a mixture of Thracians and Romans31 These people arrived in the

Greek lands when the Latin language was still spoken. They interacted with the

native Latin speakers of the land and formed a new element known as Vlachs who

were speaking a Latin dialect. Towards the end of Byzantine Empire, these Vlachs

united with the Greeks in order to confront the Turks more effectively.32 After 1821,

the Vlachs were referred by the Greeks as Greco-Vlachs.33

Latin occupation of the Greek peninsula began in 1204 and Constantinople

was captured by the Latins during the fourth Crusades. For a very long period, the

ethnic Greeks migrated from the region. The remaining ones were assimilated by the

Latins. The Latin rule did not last long in the region while the Byzantine and Turkish

armies swept away the Latins. It is possible nevertheless to find the Hellenized

descendants of a Latin ethnic infusion on the Agean Islands of Tenos, Naxos, Syros
34
and Santorini.

2.1.1.5 Turks and Their Assimilation

The Turkish components in the ethnic structure of the Greek nation was

limited by the fundamental differences in the religion which always separated the

Turks and the Greeks though thousands of Greeks were converted to Islam.

Before 1850’s identity of the people were changing according to the place

they had in the social structure. In other words social mobility meant acculturation of
31
G.C.Rozias. 1808. Investigations, Founded on Ancient Testimonies, concerning the Roman, or
So called Vlach, Who Dwell on the Other Side of the Danube (Hungary:Pest) pp.81-89
32
A. Vacalopoulos. (1970). Origins of the Greek Nation: Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. (New
Jersey,Rutgers University Press) p.14
33
Nikolaos Kasomoulis. (1939). Military Reminiscenes of the Greek Revolution, 1821-1833(
Athens: Dias) p.104
34
A. Vacalopoulos. (1970). Origins of the Greek Nation: Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. (New
Jersey,Rutgers University Press) p.15
the people. According to Victor Roudometof, in Macedonia, Serbia, and Bulgaria,

class and ethnicity overlapped resulting in the use of the term “Serb” and “Bulgar” to

specify the peasants because most of the peasants were Slavs. When Slavs moved

into the urban world and became a middle class, they generally shifted their identity

to Greek. In Belgrade, Serbian townsmen were dressed in the Greek style.

Newspapers included rubric Greece, and the local Christian higher stratum was

speaking Greek until 1840. All Orthodox merchants and peddlers many of whom

were either speaking Greek or hellenized were Vlachs, Serbs or Orthodox

Albanians.35 During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of

Orthodox Albanians and Vlachs became completely hellenized. Prior to the 1820’s,

then most of the middle class Balkan Orthodox Christians were either ethnic Greeks,

or largely acculturated into Greekness, or under heavy influence of Greek language.

The dominance and existence of hellenic culture up to now can be explained

by the fact that the new coming ethnic groups were always small in number than the

Greeks. The assimilation of newcomers who were small in number was inescapable.

There were many strong elements of hellenic culture. The Greek language survived

as the vital living organism through which the essence of civilization was preserved

and transmitted. Orthodox Christianity provided a common framework of religious

belief, which was constantly propagated by the Greek clergy.

35
V. Roudometof,. (1998). "From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization,
and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453-1821," Journal of Makrides, V.
1991‘Orthodoxy as a Condition sine qua non: Religion and State Politics in Modern Greece
from a Socio-Historical Perspective’, (Ostkirchliche Studien), December p.13
2.2 Survival of Greek Civilization

2.2.1 Survival of Greek Civilization of the Roman Conquest and Byzantine

Empire

The heterogeneous races and peoples within the Roman Empire lived for

centuries in a social and political framework composed of elements of different

cultures of the East, the Hellenic Empire of Alexander the Great, Christianity and the

Roman culture. But since the Greek civilization was deeply rooted in the East, it was

the Greek-speaking element, which had the most profound and lasting influence

upon the civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire. The artistic and intellectual life

of the Empire was mostly Greek

Pax Romana is the period of peace, which started in 31 B.C. when Augustus

Caesar declared an end to the great Roman civil wars of the first century, until 180

AD, when emperor Marcus Aurelius died. It was a time in which Roman commerce

boomed, unhampered by pirates and/or enemies. Roman Peace was applied only in

the central areas of the empire, including Greece and the Greek East. This peace and

security environment allowed the Greeks to promote their culture and economy, and

they were involved in the ruling elite of the empire. The Roman Empire authorities

silenced the revolts and put a temporary end to the fights between rival leaders.

Besides the internal peace environment, external threats relatively diminished. The

borders were more secure than ever though the Romans had to still fight Germanic

tribes.

Greece became an Eastern province of the Roman Empire. The Romans sent

their colonies to Greece and the interaction between the Romans and Greeks
contributed to a change in Roman culture and, at the same time, life in Greek cities

incorporated Roman features, and new generations of "Romanized" Greek citizens

appeared. Roman authors began to write in Greek and the Greeks came under the

influence of Roman culture and Christianity. This period of Greek history is known

as the Greco-Roman culture.

Today’s Greek territories became divided into two provinces called Achaia,

covering central and southern Greece, and Macedonia, which included Thessaly,

Epirus, and Macedonia proper. Greek provinces were not obliged to support Roman

military in their expeditions, therefore, their position as tax payers and not warring

people were relatively better. Greek cities became economic, and administrative

centers of the eastern empire. A Greek urban elite developed in production and

commercial centers such as Athens, Alexandria, Corinth, Miletus, Thessaloniki and

Smyrna. The Greeks even entered the Roman Senate. An example of such new Greek

citizens was Herodes Atticus, a fabulously wealthy financier and landowner from

Athens, who rose to be the consul of Rome in A.D. 143. Roman emperors such as

Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius took an active role in Greek culture and traditions,

which contributed to the Hellenization of Roman culture. Together, Latin and Greek

became the dominant languages of the empire. Greek culture influenced literature,

art, oratory, rhetoric, education, and architecture.

Under the Roman Empire the Greeks lived as a periphery under the political

influence of Rome. After the establishment of Constantinople in 330 A.D. for the

purpose of enlarging the influence of Rome to the East, Greek lands continued to live

under the influence of Rome until 395 A.D when division between east and west was

formalized by Theodosius. Constantinople became the center of Eastern Roman

Empire and southern Greece constituted geographically a large province of the

empire. This contributed to the survival and consolidation of Hellenism in the area.

Ferdinand Gregorovius writes about the importance of Eastern Roman

Empire on the continuity of Hellenic Culture.

“The peculiar significance of Constantine’s creation was understood by

neither the Greeks of that time nor their descendants. The building of
Constantinople in itself not only ensured the perpetuation of the Greek nation
but the preservation for prosperity of the incomparable treasures of Greek
civilization. Without Constantinople, indeed, Greece and the Peloponnese
would have been conquered and colonized by barbarous peoples.”36

Eastern Roman Empire, named Byzantine in the 16th century by European

Humanists, was a multi-ethnic Christian empire when it first emerged but later it was

hellenized and in 1453 when it collapsed, it was an Orthodox Greek state. The people

never called themselves “Byzantine,”, they were “Romanioi”, the name of the state

and the country was “Romania”. The Turks called this land “Rum Ülkesi”(Land of

Romans) and the people were called Rumi. After they conquered these lands, they

continued to call them the same way. (İklim-i Rum, Sultan-ı Rum). Any philosopher

of this land was called Rum such as Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi. The people of this

land called the Turkish ruler Vasilikos Romanioi, Vasilikos Turkos. Since then the

Turks continue to call the hellenes of the Empire Romalı or Rum. Even today they

call the Peloponnesian Greeks Yunanlı-İon and İon; people from Asia Minor Rum.

Indeed, the church was called Rum-Orthodox.37 In the early years of the empire, the

state was ruled by Roman law and political institutions, and the official language was

Latin. But as part of the population was Greek and Christian, they spoke Greek. In

36
F. Gregorovius, (1889). History of the City of Athens in the Middle Ages, from the Time of
Justinian to the Turkish Conquest. (Stuttgart) p.89.
37
İ. Ortaylı.(2004). Osmanlı Barışı (İstanbul: Ufuk Kitap). p.14
school, students read ancient Greek classics of literature, philosophy, science,

medicine, art and rhetoric. The Greek classical literature survived in the Byzantine

Empire as the Byzantine schools taught ancient Greek literature.

Byzantine Empire lived its strongest times under the leadership of Emperor

Justinian (483-565). It regained some territories that the Roman Empire had lost. It

controlled most of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, conquered much of

Italy, North Africa, and Spain. But, Justinian’s war efforts brought a heavy burden to

the Byzantine budget. The defense of borders became very hard because of economic

difficulties. External threats such as Persians and Sassanid Empire reappeared and

the Empire began to decline, which continued for 300 years and, during this period,

Muslim forces took control of almost all the Byzantine territories. In addition, the

Slavs were invading Byzantine lands from the west and north in the 6th and 7th

centuries. They invaded much of the Balkans. Native peoples of the Balkans left

their homelands and went to safer places. But it is interesting to note that the Slavs

soon came under the influence of Christianity, and they culturally changed, finally

becoming hellenized, so the Greek culture survived and even flourished though this

time it became imbued with Christianity.

In 867 the Macedonians took the Byzantine throne and they ended the 300

years decline of Byzantine. They reconquered Syria, Georgia, Armenia, Crete and

Muslim forces were driven out of the Aegean. They brought Bulgarian Kingdom

under their control again. Throughout the 9th, the 10th and 11th centuries Macedonian

Emperors governed the empire very effectively. Bulgarians were completely

defeated by Basil II in 1014. In 1054, the Greek speaking East and the Latin speaking

West had become officially separated from each other.

 The Byzantine Empire began to decline after the Macedonian dynasty once

more, In the late eleventh century, a Norman army allied with the Pope and

commanded by Robert Guiscard, ravaged parts of what is now Greece, including

Thebes and Corinth. Civil war among rival military factions impaired the Empire's

ability to respond to such incursions. In a disastrous loss at Malazgirt (in present-day

eastern Turkey) in 1071, Seljuk Turks from Central Asia captured Romanus IV, one

of the first powerful and important rulers after the end of the Macedonian Dynasty.

Through the next century, the Empire became more and more a European domain.

The worst humiliation came in 1204, when marauders of the Fourth Crusade

plundered Constantinople, carrying off many of its greatest treasures.

Greece was carved up into tiny kingdoms and principalities ruled by Western

princes. Venice gained control of substantial parts of Greece, some of which were

not relinquished until 1797. As a result of the growing aristocracy, the military

system was corrupted. In addition to the old enemies such as the Roman Empire and

the Abbasid Caliphate, Turkish conquerors coming from the Middle East appeared as

a real threat. A new force, the Ottoman Turks, arose from the east in the wake of the

Mongol invasion led by Genghis Khan in 1221.

The Ottoman state began as one of many small Turkish states that emerged in

Asia Minor during the breakdown of the empire of the Seljuk Turks. Osman I. was

the leader of this Turkish tribe. Osman I. unified the local Turkish tribes under the

Ottoman state and In the early thirteenth century the Ottoman Turks began their

piecemeal conquest of the Byzantine Empire. In 1326, they occupied Bursa in

Bithynia; by 1354 they had established themselves on the European shore of the

Dardanelles; in 1361 they captured Edirne and later made it their capital; in 1380
they occupied Macedonia; in 1393 they overran Thessaly; and in 1430 they captured

Jannina.38 Asia Minor and the Balkans fell to the Ottoman Turks, but Constantinople

was still under the control of the Byzantine. Finally the forces of Fatih Sultan

Mehmet took the capital city after a lengthy siege. Constantinople became a Muslim

city in the Ottoman Empire. Greek Byzantine Empire had now come to an end.

2.2.2 Theory: Byzantine and Emergence of Greek National Consciousness

Although there is a consensus on the emergence of Greek national

consciousness under the Ottoman Empire, new research seems to suggest39 that the

origins of the Greek feeling of national consciousness could be traced back to the

Byzantine period. Experts point to the continued existence of language and folk

songs as sufficient indication of the early awareness of a Greek cultural identity.

According to the scholars who believe in the emergence of Greek national

consciousness during the Byzantine era, the Byzantine Empire became weak by the

fourth crusades and high taxation, which caused a decrease in the lands owned by the

peasants. The decrease in agricultural products made the life of people harder. They

were forced to make a choice between submission to the enemy and loss of freedom,

or resistance and loss of property. Certain cities and nobles submitted for certain

independence in the expectation that their property and privileges would remain

intact. Others went to the mountains to organize resistance against the enemy. Their

resistance and hostility created certain consciousness of Greekness and the Latin-

Greek conflict made it easier for the Ottomans to conquer the Greek lands.

38
D.Dakin. (1973). The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833(Los Angeles: University of
California Press) p.5
37
A. Vacalopoulos. (1970). Origins of the Greek Nation: Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. (New
Jersey,Rutgers University Press) p.27
2.2.3 Survival of Greek Civilization in the Ottoman Empire

2.2.3.1 Greeks Under Ottoman Rule

The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire was not only the end

of the Eastern Roman Empire, but also the death of Constantine XI who was the last

Roman Emperor. The conquest was important for the establishment of full Ottoman

control over the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans.

During and after the conquest of Istanbul, population of the city decreased

dramatically. Large numbers of Orthodox people left it because of poor conditions

during the Ottoman siege and the fear of getting under the rule of Ottoman Muslim

administration. The city had to be repopulated. Fatih Sultan Mehmet planned to

prevent a Christian league against the Ottomans. He wished to maintain Istanbul as

the center of Orthodox Christianity; in this way, Orthodox Church would be under

control of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan peoples whose majority was Orthodox

could be controlled by a religious authority in Constantinople under the influence of

the Ottoman Empire.

Tolerance towards the Orthodox religion was the characteristic of Turkish

rule, at least, from 1453, when Fatih Sultan Mehmet took Constantinople.40 In the

first days of 1454, Fatih Sultan Mehmet invited the last patriarch of East Rome

Ghennadios Scholarios and appointed him as the Rum-Orthodox patriarch of the

Empire. His appointment was political, as it might have been religious and

humanistic because Ghenneadios was against the unification of Orthodox and

Catholic churches. According to Kemal Karpat, this meant the establishment of

40
D.Dakin.(1973) The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 Los Angeles: University of
California Press). p.6
Orthodox-Christian millet and this millet was under the control of the Patriarch who

for political and traditional reasons had to be a Rum (Greek).41 The attention and

kindness towards the new patriarch was incomparably exaggerated with that of the

Byzantine Emperors. He ate dinner with the Sultan; he was given presents42.

Ghennadios as the patriarch and ethnarch (milletbaşı) of all the Orthodox Christians,

including the Bulgars, Serbs, Vlachs and even the Arab and Albanians as well as the

Greeks became the spiritual, administrative, financial, cultural and judicial authority.

Education and publishing affairs were under control of the church. Roman Law was

the ruling code and the administration based on the Roman law was called

Turkokratia for the Ottoman period. Roman law was used by the non-Muslim people

of the Empire.

Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s initial policy was not to rely upon the patriarchate to

control the Greeks of the capital, but rather to turn to the leading Byzantine civil

official still in the city, the Grand Duke Loukas Notaras. But later he, found the

grand duke unreliable and had him executed. Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s initial choice of

a civil official suggests that the Ottomans had no predisposition to use ecclesiastical

authority to control non-Muslim groups and eventually turned to the church, but the

patriarchical seat was not filled until January 1454, six months after the conquest.43

According to İlber Ortaylı, Fatih Sultan Mehmet used the title “Roman Kaiser

(Kayser-i Rum), the first Roman Empire was polytheist, the second was Christian

and why the third Roma (Ottoman Empire) not to be a Muslim empire? However,

this title was abandoned by the succeeding sultans. Fatih was interested in Roman

culture, and he knew the Greek language. In the 15th century Ottoman Empire, most

41
K.H.Karpat.(2004). Balkanlarda Osmanlı Mirası ve Ulusçuluk (Ankara: İmge Kitabevi) p.15
42
İ. Ortaylı. Osmanlı Barışı p.14
43
B. Braude. (1982). “Foundation Myths of the Millet System” in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians
and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New
York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.77
of the people were Christian but with the conquest of Muslim lands in the 16th

century, the majority became Muslim. And the Rum (Grek)-Orthodox church

remained influential over the Orthodox millet and the Patriarch became a very

important figure.

The Orthodox Church which had disappeared because of Catholic-Orthodox

rivalry in Byzantine times had a revival under the Ottoman Empire’s authority and

began to challenge the West Roman Church. This way, Fatih Sultan Mehmet

prevented the rapprochement of the two churches.

With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire became more

secure as further conquests in the rest of the Balkans became easier. By the year

1453 most of the Greek lands except some islands, and some parts of Anatolia were

in the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Between the years 1456 and 1460, the Ottomans

captured the island of Limnos, Imvros, Samothraki and Thasos, and controlled the

Duchy of Athens. During the next two centuries they captured the islands of Lesvos

in 1462, Euboea in 1470, the Ionian Islands in 1479. During the sixteenth century,

the Ottomans took Rhodes and Chios (Khios) in the Dodecanese Islands

(Dodekanisos), Naxos in the Cyclades, and Cyprus. Naxos and Chios were taken in

1566, Cyprus in 1571 and Crete in 1669.

The movement of the Ottomans in the Balkans was to be interrupted. The

Ottoman Empire stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683, and in 1698 it was to be

defeated by Austrian, Russian and Venetian forces and at the peace of Karlofça they

surrendered Azovon in the Black Sea to the Russians and the Peloponnese to the

Venetians. The Venetian rule in Peloponnese did not last long though. The Ottoman

Empire regained that region and following the treaty of Pasarofça (Passarowitz) in

1718 entered upon a second occupation, which was to last a century or more. The
inhabitants found this renewed Turkish rule preferable to that of the Venetians: taxes

were lighter; the administration was less efficient and, therefore, less harsh; and the

infidel was much more tolerant than the Roman Catholic Church.44

During the years of Ottoman domination, Greek speakers resettled over a

wide area inside and outside the Empire. They moved in large numbers to Romania,

along the coast of the Black Sea, and into all the major cities of the Empire as

merchants and artisans. Over 80,000 Greek families, for example, moved into the

territories of the Habsburg Empire. Thousands more settled in the cities of the

Russian Empire. Commercial dealings between the Ottoman Empire and the outside

world were increasingly monopolized by the Greeks. Important merchant colonies

were founded in Trieste, Venice, Livorno, Naples, and Marseilles. Amsterdam,

Antwerp, London, Liverpool, and Paris also received sizeable Greek populations.

The diaspora communities played a vital role in the development of Greek

culture during the Ottoman period. Greek enclaves in foreign cultures reinforced

national identity while exposing their inhabitants to new intellectual currents,

including the ideology of revolution. Many diaspora Greeks became wealthy and

helped to support communities in Greece by founding schools and other public

institutions.

Within the Ottoman Empire, the population of Greeks was around 13 million,

this was because all the Orthodox millet was considered Greek. Not all the Greeks

spoke Greek though. Some known as Karamanlis spoke Turkish; some spoke Slav

tongues-Serbian or Bulgarian; others spoke Albanian and some spoke the Vlach

tongue, a Latin language with close resemblance to Roumanian spoken in the

Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and in certain adjacent regions.45

44
D.Dakin.(1973) The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.6
45
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.9
Those who spoke Greek as their mother tongue were approximately three millions.

Besides the assimilated population who became Greek culturally, some people

despite their membership to the Orthodox Church, preserved their separate identities

by speaking their mother tongue and rarely marrying outside their ethnic community.

It is impossible to say ethnically who was Greek and who was not, as it is true for

most of the ethnicities today. But according to the German scholar Fallmayer, as a

result of the Slav invasions of the sixth and seventh centuries not a single drop of

pure hellenic blood was left in Greece.46 William Martin Lake in Travels in

Northern Greece gives a description of Ionnia:

“loannina contains about 1000 Musulman houses, 2000

Greek, and 200 Jewish. The Musulman families are not more
numerous than the houses, but of Greeks there are supposed
to be near 3000 families, and of Jews not less than four to
each house upon an average. The Christians have six or seven
churches served by fifty papadhes, or secular priests, who
attend also to the private religious observances of Greek
families. The bishop and the priests attached to the
metropolitan church are, as usual, of the monastic order.
There are sixteen mosques, including the two in the citadel,
where the Jews have two synagogues. Since loannina has
been the residence and capital of Ali Pasha, its permanent
population has been gradually in part exchanged for that of a
more transitory kind. The town is now constantly full of the
natives of other parts of Greece and Albania, attracted here by
the affairs or the expenditure arising from its being the seat of
government of a large portion of Greece and Albania. Many
families from distant parts of the country are forced to reside
here as a security for the fidelity of their relatives who may be
in the Vezir's employment either here or in other parts of his
dominions. The household establishment and troops of the
Vezir and his sons, together with the Albanian soldiery, who
are constantly here in their passage from one part of the
country to another, increase the moveable population, but
probably have not much augmented the whole amount beyond
that which loannina contained fifty years ago, as many of the
old families, both Greek and Turkish, have removed
elsewhere to avoid the perils and extortion of the present
government, and particularly the inconvenience of lodging

46
J.P. Fallmayer, (1830) geschichte der Halbinssel Morea Wahrend des Mittelalters, 2 vols, Stuttgart
and Tübingen, quoted in D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.10
 Albanians, from which the Turkish houses are not exempt.”47

2.2.3.2 The Ottoman Millet System, Orthodox Millet and the Role of the Greeks

Nation building process among different societies within the Ottoman Empire

during the 19th and 20th century came about over against the background of socio-

economic heritage of the 16th-17th century Ottoman millet system. The Greek state,

like any other nation-state born in the Ottoman lands, had its essence in the religious

establishment of Ottoman millet system. Therefore, in order to study the Greek

nation building process within the Ottoman Empire, one should study the Ottoman

millet system. Understanding the nature of millet system helps us understand the

Greek state and any other Balkan one.

The millet system was the tool used by the Ottomans from 15th to the 20th

century for the internal control of the multi ethnic and multi religious state.

Minorities enjoyed a vast degree of religious and cultural freedom, and a degree of

legal and fiscal autonomy under their own ecclesiastical leaders. Millet was a

religious community. In the nineteenth century, while still maintaining its original

meaning, it also came to denote such modern concepts as nation and nationality. The

Ottomans were not the first to use it. The Muslims (Umayyad, Abbassid) and non-

Muslims (Persian, Byzantine), had used the term to govern their peoples.

In fact, the millet system, as it developed in the later centuries of classical

Islam, owed its specifically Islamic legal bases to the very beginnings of Islam, to the

events of Muhammed’s Medina years (622-632). In those years, the prophet and his
47
W.M.Leake, (1835), Travels in Northern Greece (London,) IV, pp. 139-50; 205-10; 266-8; 269-
70; 272-4.
followers achieved majority power in one town, at least in Arabia, where they had to

consider the question of the Muslim community’s relationship to minorities, in the

case of Medina specifically, a Jewish one.48

In the Orthodox-millet, the civil and religious authority of the Orthodox-

millet was the patriarch who lived in the Fener district of Istanbul. It had

representatives in the provinces called high clergy. The Orthodox millet was under the

leadership of the patriarch for civil as well as religious matters. Under the Ottomans,

he acquired more power than he had had as only a spiritual chief in the Byzantine

Empire. He became a political head vested with fiscal, judicial, and administrative

matters of the Orthodox peoples of the Empire. The same powers were exercised by

the high clergy, his representatives in the provinces, who intervened in worldly

affairs. The berat (decrees) issued by the sultan to the patriarch and the high clergy in

the provinces did not differ from each other, except that the patriarchal berat

contained defined geographical extent of jurisdiction. In judicial matters bishops were

counterparts of the Muslim judge or kadı. As the kadı heard cases between Muslims

or between Muslims and non-Muslims, according to the şeriat, the bishop heard

cases between the Orthodox on the basis of the canon law or the civil law of the

Byzantines, as recorded in the manual of Constantine Armenopoulos (1320-1380), a

jurist from Salonica.49

The millet system was a socio-cultural and communal framework based

firstly on religion, and secondly on ethnicity, which in turn often reflected linguistic

differences. The community was the basic organizational unit of the millet without

48
C.E. Bosworth. (1982). “The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam” in Benjamin Braude(ed.)
Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New
York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.37
49
S.Skendi. (1982). “The Millet System and its Contribution to the Blurring of Orthodox National
Identity in Albania” in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The
Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.244
which its existence was inconceivable. The leadership of the community in the

villages and in the towns quarters Mahalle, consisted of the representative of the

religion. The priest acted as the spiritual head of the community and as the

intermediary between it and higher ecclesiastical authorities. The communal leaders

at the town level formed the second layer of leadership and enjoyed greater authority

and influence, not only because of their connection with higher Ottoman authorities

and their own ecclesiastical heads, but also because of their wealth and their

responsibility in collecting taxes and supervising the distribution of state lands to

cultivators.50

The millet system appeared as a solution to the efforts of the Ottoman

government to allow for the organization and culture of various religious-ethnic

groups it controlled. The system provided religious, cultural and ethnic continuity

inside these communities, then again it permitted their incorporation into the

Ottoman administrative, economic and political system.

The millet system was a necessity for Pax Ottomana, which was the last

model of Pax Romana. It* was a compartment, and individuals as a member of their

own millet could obtain the highest position in their own millet. Until the Tanzimat

period, the leader of the millet was called milletbaşı who began to lose his

importance after the Tanzimat as a result of secular movements.

The most important character of the Pax Ottomana (millet system) was its

establishment, which gave the Greek Orthodox priority and an advantage over other

*In Quran(9:16), Millet refers to a pre-Islamic community, millat Ibrahim, ”the people of Abraham”
and although in medieval usage it may mean Jews, Christians, or Muslims, its most common Ottoman
Turkish usage, before the period of Reform, denotes the community of muslims in contradiction to
dhimmis. (A.Levy Christians. 2000. Jews and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire: Lessons for
Contemporary Coexistence (Boston:Near Eastern and Jewish Studies Department Brandeis
University) p.2)
50
K.H.Karpat.(1997). Millets and Nationality: “The Roots of Incongruity of Nation and State in the
Post-Ottoman Era” in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The
Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.143
Orthodox millets.51 The Millet system was an obligation for the Ottoman Empire,

since it was a response to the heterogeneous society in the Balkans. It was, in effect,

an extension of Ottoman administrative practices. In an age that lacked modern

technologies of administration, communication and control, the Ottomans, like other

contemporary states, had little choice but to deal with the masses of their population

corporatively, allowing each group wide latitude in the conduct of its internal affairs.

At the same time, the Ottomans attempted to control their population as much as

possible through the centralization of government. This led them to develop and

support strong hierarchical administrative structures in different communities. It was,

in effect, a system intended to centralize government in an age that lacked modern

technologies of governance. Except in certain areas of great importance to the state,

such as security and taxation, the Ottomans generally adopted a policy of laissez-

faire in the internal affairs of the minority communities and they strongly supported,

but at the same time held accountable, the community’s leadership. 52

The millet system was a working tool, which provided the necessary social

environment for the peaceful living of peoples from different religious backgrounds.

It was working efficiently as long as the Ottoman State was strong enough to control

all its dhimma from the Sublime Port. By the change within the Ottoman Empire, as

a result of decrease in its military and economic power, the millet system began to

lose its efficiency. Local administrators became more powerful and the Sublime Port

lost its control over the locals. In the nineteenth century, the millet system was

transformed into one in which non-Muslim millets became minorities. Dhimmis paid

a special tax called Haraç which was later converted into cizye, and in the nineteenth

century it became known as bedel-i askeri. Haraç was the tax taken from the non-

51
İ. Ortaylı. Osmanlı Barışı p.1
52
İ. Ortaylı. Osmanlı Barışı p.1
Muslim inhabitants of the conquered lands. Cizye was taken also from the non-

Muslims but not for the land, every non-Muslim had to pay cizye to the Ottoman

authorities in return for the protection and security services provided by the

Ottomans. Other events that led to change in the millet system were the birth of a

new entrepreneurial-commercial elites in towns and the rise of a secular

intelligentsia. There was also mass migration, which changed the millet system. After

the annexation of Crimea by the Russians in 1873, the Serb and Greek revolts of

1804 and 1821 respectively and Crimean and Russo- Ottoman wars of 1853 and

1877, Ottoman territories in Europe and Anatolia became subject to exceptionally

important demographic changes. Muslim populations of the lost lands migrated to

Anatolia and the Balkans where the non-Muslims were affected.

2.2.3.3 The Orthodox Millet

The Ottomans ruled a variety of peoples from different faiths within the

Balkan Peninsula, North Africa and the Middle East. They accomplished this by

grouping populations into millets constituted on the basis of religious confession

rather than ethnic origin. Besides the ruling Muslim millet, there was the Jewish

millet, the Gregorian Armenian millet, the Catholic millet (in the nineteenth century,

a Protestant millet) and finally the Orthodox millet, the largest after the Muslims. The

Ottoman Turks called the Orthodox the millet-i Rum, or ‘Greek’ millet.53

The millet-i Rum in the Ottoman Empire, embracing as it did all the Orthodox

Christian subjects of the sultan, reflected in microcosm the ethnic heterogeneity of

the empire itself. It contained Serbs, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Orthodox

53
R.Clogg. (1992). A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p.10
Albanians, and Arabs, while the strictly “Greek” element itself, although firmly in

control of the millet through its stranglehold over the Patriarchate in Istanbul, the

Holy Synod, and the higher reaches of the of the Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy,

was by no means homogenous. A Greek of Epirus, for instance, would have had

much difficulty in comprehending one of the Greek dialects of Cappadocia, while a

Greek of Cappadocia would have experienced equal difficulty in understanding the

Greek of Pontos.54 One of the many reasons of the dialect differences between

different Greeks was the interaction between the Greeks and the Turks. For example,

in the Kayseri region Greeks spoke a mixture of Greek and Turkish which could

only be understood by those with a knowledge of both languages, and there were also

Greeks who spoke Turkish and wrote in Turkish with Greek characters. In many

quarters of Istanbul, Samatya, Kumkapı, Narlıkapı and Yedikule, “Greek”

populations were almost wholly Turkish-speaking.55

Maria Todorova, in her book, Imagining the Balkans, argues that the primary

result of the establishment of the Pax Ottomana was the collapse of the feudal power

and state authority.56 The millet system contributed to the assimilation of different

ethnic groups. The most comprehensive of them was the Rum-Orthodox millet in

which all the other ethnic groups became assimilated to hellenic culture. The

Patriarch in Istanbul was always Greek. The Greeks strengthened their position

because of the Ottoman consideration that religious ties were the most important

distinction among different societies according to which the Muslims were the

54
R.Clogg.(1982). The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians
and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New
York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.185
55
R.Clogg.(1982). The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire p.185
56
M.Todorova. (2003). Balkanları Tahayyül Etmek(Imagining the Balkans).( İstanbul: İletişim
Yayınları) p.347
governors but non-Muslim Greeks were free in their internal organizations. They

were able to preserve their ethnic and religious identity.

The divided status of the Catholic and Orthodox churches was in the interest

of the Ottoman state. In the fourteenth century, the Ottomans conquered Macedonia.

The Church of Ohrid was recognized by the Ottomans. This church had been founded as

a patriarchy by the Bulgarians; the Byzantines reduced it to the Archbishopric of

Ohrid. The Ottomans preserved it, and it became the first and earliest Orthodox

church within the Ottoman Empire.5 When the Union of Florence was declared in

1439, the Archbishopric of Ohrid rejected it.

Orthodox churches were part of the Ottoman state system. Their area of

influence was defined by the Ottoman state and within their own millet they had a

distinct hierarchical order. At the beginning, millet system developed very slowly

and the privileges given to the Orthodox Church by Fatih Sultan Mehmet did not

come forward very quickly. The ferman given by Fatih Sultan Mehmet about the

legal status of Orthodox Church was lost and seventy years later the ferman had to be

prepared again with the witness of three old janissaries.57

What was expected in return for giving such great privileges to the Orthodox

Church was its obedience to the Ottoman Empire. If there was disobedience to the

Sultan, the Patriarch was responsible for this as the millet başı and the highest

religious authority. The leader of the Orthodox Church Patriarch V. Grigorios was

hanged by the Ottoman authorities in 1821 as he was held responsible for the Greek

uprising.

There was a real competition for the Patriarchy as this position, besides

religious force, bestowed political authority to the person who was elected.

57
R.Clogg A Concise History of Greece p.11
Therefore, the candidate for the patriarchy had to have political and economic

support from wealthy Ottoman-Greeks.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Greek culture was very influential among

the Balkan societies and the Greek language became the symbol of a higher culture.

Education Greek schools offered was well advanced. Among the non-Greek

members of the millet-i Rum, Greek culture and language were considered as higher

culture, and they had an enthusiasm about acquiring them. The Balkans were

culturally so much hellenized that western ideas and innovations reached non-Greek

members of the Rum millet through the censor and filter of Greek authorities. In later

periods the non-Greek Balkan peoples began to oppose the situation by reacting to

Greek culture.

An example of the attempts to hellenize the Balkans was the speech by the

Metropolitan Ignatios Oungrovalachias, at the opening meeting of the Greco-Dacian

Literary Society in Bucharest In July 1810 where he said:

“I see Greeks and Dacians /Romanians for long united by Holy

Religion and this our government, today united by another bond
of sacred philosophy. The Greeks, deeply aware of, and grateful
for, the asylum which Dacia has given them, try to repay this holy
debt with the illumination of learning and philosophy. The
Dacians, being very proud, do not wish to remain on a lower
plane than the Greeks. Enlightenment was not something new to
the Greeks. For the Dacians, however, it was totally new...Let
Socrates be your exemplar and model in virtue, Aristotle in
justice, Epameinondas and Phocion in honor.58”

Though the Orthodox millet held a privileged status, it is argued that the

Orthodox and other millets were not equal to the Muslim people in the Empire. As

the major millet of the Ottoman Empire was the Muslims, they had exceptional

rights. For example until the 19th century, witnessing in the court of a non-Muslim
58
R. Clogg. (1979) Elite And Popular Culture In Greece Under Turkish Rule (Indiana Social
Studies Quarterly, 32, No. 1) p.110
was not equal to a Muslim. Muslim-non Muslim marriages were forbidden,

Christians were neither allowed to carry gun. Ottoman officials used to collect

children of non-Muslim families for the service of Ottoman military and

administration. This system was called devşirme, and was welcomed by some of the

non-Muslims. Devşirme started during the reign of Murad and abolished by Murad

III. This was a chance for the children to get into the palace and become a high

ranking official in administration or military. The Muslim families are said to have

registered their children as non-Muslim so that their children could become high-

ranking officials in the administrationa.

The Ottomans, besides establishing the millet system, did not interfere with

the internal affairs of the Orthodox-millet, so the Orthodox Christian society

continued its evolution under the Ottoman roof without outside supervision. Small

groups were assimilated to the bigger groups; as a result, Greek and Slav cultures

established their dominance over other cultures. However, ethnicity was not an

important fact for the 16th and 17th century Ottoman subject. An ordinary Ottoman

subject regardless of his ethnic background, whether Slav, Bulgarian or Vlach,

identified himself as Orthodox Christian or as Greek (Rum) which was equivalent to

Orthodox Christian.

The view of the extreme hellenizers among the non-Greek Orthodoxy found

expression in Daniel of Moschopolis Eisagogiki Didaskalia printed in İstanbul in

1802, a rudimentary tetraglot Greek, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Albanian lexicon,

designed to facilitate the learning of Greek by those benighted enough not to possess

it as a native language. Characteristically, Daniel prefaced the work with the

following verses:

Albanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians, speakers of other tongues, rejoice

And prepare yourselves all to become Greeks,
 Abandoning your barbaric language, speech and customs,
So they may appear to your descendants as myths.
Do honor to your Nations, together with your Motherlands,
By making your Albanian and Bulgarian Motherlands Greek. 59

Daniel of Moschopolis, significantly, was himself a Vlach and his attitude

was by no means untypical. There were others of Vlach origin who embraced Greek

nationality in the nineteenth century and even later. Modern Greek frequently acted

as a filter through which the learning and literature of the West percolated to the

other members of the Orthodox millet, particularly in the Balkans but also in the

Arab world.

During the 19th century with the rising nationalisms, non-Greek members of

the Orthodox millet began to express their discontent with Greek domination of the

Orthodox church. Up until the period of Greek independence there was a widespread

admiration for, and a determination to, acquire a facade of Greek culture on the part

of many non-Greek Orthodox Christians. This was indeed acknowledged by Paisii

Khilandarski, the progenitor of Bulgarian nationalism, in his Slavo-Bulgarian history

compiled in 1762 . In a famous passage he attacked the Graecopjilia of the emergent

Bulgarian bourgeoisie and urged them to employ the Bulgarian language and to

interest themselves in the glories of Bulgaria’s past. “There are those,” he wrote, “

who do not care to know about their own Bulgarian nation and turn to foreign ways

and foreign tongue… but try to read and speak Greek and are ashamed to call

themselves Bulgarians.60

59
R.Clogg.(1982). The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire p.189
60
R.Clogg.(1982). The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire p.189
2.2.3.4 The Role of the Greeks in Ottoman Administration

The Ottoman Empire divided the conquered Greek lands into six

administrative units called Paşalık. These were Morea (Peleponnese), Negropont (

The Island of Evia) and the mainland opposite, South Albania (Including Western

Greece), Salonica (Selanik) and most of Macedonia), Crete and the Aegean Islands.

Under these units there were subunits responsible to the central government (Sublime

Port). Each paşalık was divided into districts to which the pasha appointed his

subordinates known as muteselims. These officials had overall charge of the military

forces, tax-collection and the judicial administration, which dealt not only with the

sultan’s Muslim subjects but also with the non-Muslim subjects in so far as they

were amenable to Ottoman law.

In Greece not all the non-Muslims were under control of the Ottoman

government. Some parts of Greece were able to escape direct effects of Ottoman

rule. The remote mountains of central Greece, for example, were called the Agrapha,

the "unwritten", because the empire had no census or tax records for the region.

Other areas were granted special status because they filled particular needs of the

empire. Dakin says that:

“Since Cavalry was not effective outside the plains, the

Ottoman Turks had failed to subjugate higher regions such as
Mani in southern Peloponesse, or the Pindus-Agrafa
mountains, Vermio, Pieria, Olympos or Parnasos. The so-
called Zagorochoria and the Kefalochoria rarely saw a Turk
and the villages in Mani were left alone to the rivalries of the
clans of Mavromichalis and Tzanetakis.” 61

Greece is a mountainous country and throughout the mountains there were

kleftocharia bandit villages. Ottoman authorities were concerned with the security of

61
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.17
the important routes, and control of the mountains was not that important for them.

These important routes were patrolled by local militia who were employed by the

Ottomans. These men were called armatoli and the land they controlled was called

armatoliki. These armatoli were ex-bandits and brigands of the Greek territories,

they were lawless and usually attacked the villages and took them under this control.

On occasion, they even attacked Ottoman military quarters and Turkish settlers. In

order to control them, the Ottoman Empire employed these bandits and gave them

the mission of controlling important routes. Besides armatoli, there were bandit

groups who were employed by the rich Greek landholders in order to protect their

property.

In Peloponnese, the number of Greeks was ten times more than the Turks but

the amount of land owned by the Turks were larger in proportion to the Greeks. But

the upper class Greeks became so strong and wealthy because the tax collection

business was left to them by the Turks.

Some Greeks who could speak foreign languages were employed by the

government as representatives of the Ottoman Empire. The chief interpreter of the

palace was usually chosen from Greek phanariots. The Greek dragoman of the

Ottoman fleet was a very important man. He was secretary to the minister of marine

and governor of the islands. One other important position that the Greeks held was

the “vekilides” whose privilege was reporting the performance of the local Turks.

These officials had direct access to the Ottoman government, and it was sometimes

as a result of their reports that a tyrannical pasha would be removed or some local

grievance redressed.

In Greek lands of the Ottoman Empire, like any other part of the conquered

Ottoman territories, the land was granted to the local military leaders by the sultan in
compensation for their services. This system was called tımar-sipahi. After a while,

the estates became hereditary and stopped serving their intended function and they

turned into private çiftliks. In Greek territory, this policy left massive landholdings

controlled by the Ottoman Turks and worked by dependent Greek peasants. As a

result, many provinces such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia

and Arabia had become almost independent. Strong local rulers like Ali Pasha of

Janina and Pasvanoglu who became pasha of Vidin extended their power. This was

how the Ottoman military and land system became spoiled and turned into a

decentralized feudal one.

One of the most important offices controlled by the Phanariot Greeks was the

Hospodars (governor) or prince of the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and

Moldovia. Over these, from their luxurious courts in Bucharest and Jassy, they ruled

as the viceroys of the Ottoman Sultans. As was the case with high office in the

Church, there was fierce and corrupt competition for these much-coveted posts, the

average tenure of which was less than three years. Phanariot rule was much resented

by the Romanian inhabitants of the Principalities but their reputation for capricious

rapacity was not wholly deserved.62

Hospodar usually appointed a delegate near the Divan in Istanbul, who

received directly from the ministers of the Grand Vezir’s orders which concerned his

government; and who ought, in case of need, to answer the questions of the members

of Divan, principally relating to the management of his principality. This delegate

was called Baş Kapı Kahyası who was also Greek.

Swan describes this office as:

62
R.Clogg A Concise History of Greece p.21
 “I call this office important; and in truth, it could not be more
so, since he who is invested with it holds, if I may say so, the
destiny of his principal between his hands”… “It is from
amongst these attendants, that the prince usually selects a trusty
person, who secretly watches over the conduct of the Bache
Capi Kiahaya; for, in this country, where intrigue and perfidy
are the order of the day, there is no confidence which does not
admit of some suspicion. The representative of the Hospodar is
almost always full of occupation, if he wishes to perform his
duties; for he ought, on the one side, to execute the commands
of his prince, and dispatch those which he receives from the
Divan; to distribute with all possible circumspection the
necessary feasts to the great men of the empire; to study the
character of one, and the thoughts of another, wholly for the
interests of his master. On the other side, he should have his
eyes continually open to the intrigues which the ambitious
Fanariotes, and particularly the fallen princes, direct against the
Hospodar;” 63

2.2.3.5 The Economic and Intellectual Progress of Greeks:

The presence of a population alien to the ruling group in Istanbul was not an

innovation of the Ottoman period. Due to the role it played as the capital and

especially as a great commercial center during the Byzantine period, particularly

under the Comneni and Palaelogi dynasties, the city had already accommodated not

only colonies from the West- Genoesei Venetians, Amalfitans, Pisans, Catalans, and

Provençals- but also from the East-Armenians, Arabs, Turks, Georgians, Jews.64 As

Mantran describes, Istanbul was always an important commercial center. After its

conquest, in order to repopulate the abandoned city, Fatih Sultan Mehmet invited

people who had skills in craft and commerce. He was not only planning to make the

63
C. Swan (1826) Journal of a Voyage in the Mediterranean
64
R.Mantran .(1982). “Foreign Merchants and the Minorities in İstanbul During the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries” in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The
Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.127
city a trade capital, but also a trade center for the whole Mediterranean. To this end,

he employed Jews and especially Greeks who had contacts with the west .

Within the Ottoman Empire, trade was done in three ways. The stable

markets, weekly markets, and annual fairs.65 Fernard Baudel noted:

“in Turkey the urban bourgeoisie-essentially a merchant class- was

foreign to Islam: Ragusan, Armenian, Jewish, Greek and Western. In
Galata and on the islands there survived pockets of Latin Culture…
Two foreign businessmen were prominent in the Sultan’s entourage,
one, Michael Cantacuzenos, was a Greek, the other, Joseph Nasi, a
Jew.”66

Galata district of Istanbul was the international trade center of the Ottoman

Empire. Greek merchants dominated commerce in Galata and rich Greek merchants

lived in Pera where they built residences from the seventeenth century-onwards.

They were specialized in “fur” trade. They worked as translators between Turkish

officials (tax collectors) and foreign traders because they were well located in the

internal market. They also worked as agents in the provinces for Western merchants.

Greeks benefited from ship ownership and their dispersion throughout the Empire.

They were employed by foreign embassies as dragomans.

Greeks were scattered all around the Ottoman Empire, especially around the

seaports and trading ports of the Empire. They had established colonies in Russia,

Austria, Netherlands, Italy, France, England and India. According to Richard Clogg,

one reason for this expansion was the general attitude within the Ottoman Empire,

which was against the business entrepreneurs.67 They benefited considerably from

65
H.Milas. (1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu. (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p.78
66
R.Mantran .(1982). “Foreign Merchants and the minorities in İstanbul during the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries” in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The
Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.135
67
R.Clogg. (1981) The Greek Mercantile Bourgeoisie: “Progressive or Reactionary?” Balkan
Society in The Age Of Greek Independence. (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.)
the treaty of Karlowitz (1699) which granted trading rights to Turkish subjects in the
68
Habsburg dominions. Greeks benefited from the decline of Venice and Genova in

the Levant as they benefited from the Russian expansion on the Black Sea. In 1779,

they got the privilege of flying the Russian flag and the protection of Russian

consuls. During the revolutionary wars, when the British drove the French out of the

East Mediterranean, Greeks replaced them. By 1813, they had 600 ships with a

tonnage of over 150.000. Dakin explains the situation of Greek commerce as

follows: “that is no exaggeration to say that Greece had a commercial Empire before

she had a state; and it can with equal truth be said that the Greeks as traders, just as

the Greeks as Christians, formed a kind of state within a state.”

Mantran summarizes the role of the merchant Greeks in the Ottoman Empire

as follows:

“The growing influence of the West during the seventeenth century

gave more importance to minority intermediaries and enhanced the
role they played especially since the Turks continued to shun
international trade. They arose an alliance between the minorities
and the westerners to the detriment of the Empire. As middlemen
the Greeks in particular sought the protection of a great power to
profit from their two-fold position. Some gained wealth and a
variety of new contacts. Faced with the inefficiency and stagnation
of the Ottomans, they began to consider the possibility of playing a
political role. Feeling superior to the Turks, they considered
working against their authority by promoting a “national”
resistance based on a “national anti-Ottoman consciousness” which
eventually cleared the way to independence. In the eighteenth
century the Greeks began to process; the Slavs followed suit. To a
large degree counting on the support, open or tacit, of the Western
Powers, they preserved. With the blessing of the Powers, this
process brought about the independence of the Balkan states, the
reforms of the Nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and the
growing presence –even in the highest position- of minorities in the
administration and government of the Ottoman Empire during the
second half of the nineteenth century. The disintegration and

68
D. Dakin, (1973). The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833(Los Angeles: University of
California Press).p.21
 dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire had begun with the
economic and later political penetration of westerners, and was to
culminate in the close ties of cooperation which the west
established with the minorities who were the ones to gain the
greatest advantage” 69

2.2.3.6 Greek Civil Society in the Ottoman Empire

Civil society refers to that arena in which manifold social movements and

civic organizations from all classes attempt to constitute themselves as an ensemble,

so that they can express themselves and advance their interests.70 Within the 18th

century Ottoman Empire, such an environment had developed which played an

important role in the 19th century Greek revolution. There should be some conditions

for the constitution of a civil society. Presence of a physical space which is suitable

for the conduct and effective organization of forces is important. Experts point to the

necessity of “a construct”, an image of themselves in social, political and cultural

terms and means of asserting their existence and interests. And finally the people

who are to constitute civil society have access to sources of power that are beyond

the immediate reach of state authorities. All these are necessary components of a

civil society because “no matter how it is defined, the term “civil society” is

meaningful only when used in relation to and especially in opposition to, the state”71.

Historically, Izmir and other port cities provided a setting where groups could

exist and interact in an environment that was relatively free from close government

supervision. This was because the Ottoman government had left the administrative
69
R.Mantran.(1982). “Foreign Merchants and the Minorities in İstanbul during the Sixteenth and
Seveenteenth Centuries in Benjamin Braude(ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:The
Functioning of a Plural Society Volume 1 (New York:Holmes&Meier Publishers, Inc.) p.135
70
A.Stepan, (1988) Rethinking Military Politics (Princeton University Press)
71
R. Kasaba. (1999). "Economic Foundations of a Civil Society: Greeks in the Trade of Western
Anatolia, 1840-1876," C. Issawi and D. Gondicas eds., Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism,
(Princeton: Darwin Press), p.78.
status of these places intentionally indistinct in order to encourage the continuation

of trade especially in Izmir. A series of international treaties had curbed the ability of

the Ottoman Empire to interfere with these places.

During the nineteenth century, activities of Greeks in western Anatolia

exhibited all the elements of a civic life. There were newspapers, schools,

professionals associations, social clubs and political organizations that addressed the

various concerns of their community. Most of these institutions were administered by

autonomous local councils. The growth of non-state arena with autonomous means

of wealth and mobilization was an important factor that undermined the effectiveness

of many of the reform measures that the Ottoman government tried to implement in

the nineteenth century. Though the central Ottoman authority conceived itself as the

sole authority within the Empire, it wasn’t the case.

The movement for Greek independence constitutes the best example of how

this wealth became a vehicle for cementing a civil society within the Ottoman

Empire. The organized activities of the merchant communities scattered around the

Eagean and the Black Sea played a decisive part in determining the outcome of this

movement.
 CHAPTER 3:

GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONALISM

3.1 Greek Printing and Press

Printing machine was first brought to the Ottoman Empire in 1512 by the

Jewish society of Salonika. The first printing office of the Greek society was

established by the Patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris (1623-1638) in 1627.72 At the same

time, Loukaris, in collaboration with enlightened Theophilos Korydaleas had worked

to translate the Holy Bible into Modern Greek language, which could be understood

by ordinary Greek people. However, the conservatives of the church had given a

negative reaction: he was accused of being Calvinist73. Loukaris had been dismissed,

the Greeks had destroyed the printing office and finally he was killed.

Greek printing, that is to say, printing for a Greek readership, was established

in Italy at an early date but in the course of the 18th century it underwent a dramatic

increase.74. Venice was the center of Greek printing. The Greeks established several

printing houses. There were also many Greek printing houses in Vienna, Pest and

Leipzig. During the 18th century the Greeks published a certain number of books

72
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 44
73
E.Macar. (2003). Cumhuriyet Döneminde İstanbul Rum Patrikhanesi (İstanbul: İletişim
Yayınları) p.41

74
R.Clogg. (1980). "Elite and Popular Culture in Greece Under Turkish Rule." in. John T. A.
Koumoulides (Ed). Hellenic Perspectives (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America). p.113
under control of the Ottoman Empire. Presses were established in Bucharest in the

Danubian Principalities and, briefly, in Moschopolis.

The number of books printed by the end of the 18th century had increased

incredibly fast. Between 1700 and 1730, out of 228 publications in Greek, 180 were

concerned with traditional religious matters. By the decade 1780-90, this had

changed: publications on religious on religious themes numbered 157, on secular

themes 153. Between 1790 and 1800 out of a total of 320 only 128 were works of

piety or on theological themes.75

The Greek Press was born at the end of the 18th century by the Greeks living

abroad and in the context of particularly favorable historic and social conjunctures.

The first Greek newspaper was published in 1784 in Vienna by the Zante Pressman

and publisher Georgios Ventotis. As a result of the diplomatic pressure on Austrian

authorities by the Ottomans, the publication was stopped in July of the same year.

The Ephemeris of Markides Poulioi was also published in Vienna (1790- 1798) with

news about the French Revolution and various European events but, also, with

information of particular interest for the Greek people of that time. The publication

of this newspaper was directly connected with hopes about social change -born out of

the French Revolution- in the Balkans. Although the newspaper was shut down

because of its relationship with Rigas Velestinlis and his revolutionary ideas, the

Greek press had already taken its first fundamental steps. During the decade 1811-

1821, much printed material was published in the printing houses of Vienna and

Paris. In 1811, the clergyman Anthimos Gazis published the fortnightly newspaper

Logios Ermis with the permission of the Austrian government. This newspaper
75
C.Dimaras.1969. La Grece au temps des Lumieres, (Geneva:Ritser) p.104
became the focal point of many spiritual quests and innumerable literary discussions.

Athena, Melissa and Mouseio were newspapers published in Paris and Irida was

published in London.

Before the revolution of 1821, Greeks established a press in the academies of

Chios and Ayvalık, but they were to e short lived. As far as Greece was concerned, in

1812 the newspaper Ioniki was published in the Ionian Islands. Salpigx Helleneke of

Ioannis Tombros with Theokletos Farmakedis as editor was characterized as the first

official Greek newspaper. It was published on the 1st August 1821 in Kalamata at the

same time of the Greek Revolution. The Greek conjecture played a decisive role in

the progress of the press in the country. The new reality of the national liberation put

new goals and demanded new options. The newspapers of the fight tried, on the one

hand, to provide people with news about the development of the war and, on the

other, inform them about more general political and social issues by publishing

articles on political theory, criticizing the authorities and supporting the principles of

the freedom of the press. In 1822, the handwritten newspaper Aitoliki was published

in Central Greece (Sterea Ellada), while in 1824, the Swiss philhelene Iakovos

Mayer published the newspaper Ellenika Chronika in Missolonghi.

The first newspaper in Athens was the Ephimeris ton Athenon which was

published in 1824 by Georgios Psyllas. It was written in the language of the people

(demotic- Romaic) and published a series of articles on the cultural activities of the

period. The Geniki Ephimeris tis Elladas, which was later renamed into Ephimeris tis

Kyverniseos (Official Gazette) and is still published to date, was published in 1825 in

Nafplio with Theokletos Farmakedis as editor. 76

76
http://www.mfa.gr/english/greece/today/media/press.html, 31.04.2005
 It should be emphasized that the great bulk of Greek publishing during the

Tourkokratia consisted of books of religious content. It has been estimated that

between 60 and 90 per cent of the capital of the Greek printers of Venice was

devoted to the publication of religious books, most of which were printed for

liturgical use. Nonetheless, during the course of the 18th century one can detect a

significant shift in the content of Greek books. During the first twenty-five years of

the 18th century, that is to say between 1700 and 1725, a total of 107 books were

published. Of these 80 were religious in content, ten were grammars of one kind or

another, and seventeen were of miscellaneous secular content. During the last

quarter of the century, that is to say, between 1776 and 1800, the total number of

books published for the Greek market had risen to 749, from 107 during the first

quarter. Of this 749, 395 were religious in content, 104 were works of grammar,

while some 250 were of miscellaneous secular content. Thus at the end of the 18th

century books of religious content still considerably outnumbered those of secular

content. Nonetheless, whereas the publication of religious books had increased in

proportion of 4.9 to 1 between the first and last quarters of the century, those of

secular content had increased in proportion of 14.7 to 1.27 These figures certainly

indicate a degree of secularization of Greek culture during this period; the ecclesias-

tical monopoly of learning had effectively been broken.

The publication of Greek books continued to accelerate during the first two

decades of the 19th century. Whereas some 750 books were published in the last 25

years of the 18th century, well over 1300 were published in the first twenty years of

the 19th century. Moreover the trend towards an increasingly secular content

accelerated dramatically. During the five year period before the outbreak of the War

of Independence in 1821, books of secular content amounted to some 66 per cent of

total output, while books of religious content totalled only 34 per cent. Liturgical

texts constituted only some 14 per cent of the total. New titles amounted to some 58

per cent of total output, while repeat editions fell to 43 per cent. Whereas, in the

17th century, Venice had enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the printing of Greek books,

in the five year period before 1821 its share of the total output fell to 36 per cent. 28

Many more Greek books at this time were being printed in Central Europe.

3.2 Greek Education

Education was provided in a number of schools scattered all over Ottoman

Balkans, most prominent among them being the princely academies of Bucharest,

founded between 1678 and 1688, and Iassy founded in 1707. Their instructors

included some of the most influential members of a new Greek Orthodox Balkan

intelligentsia that emerged in the late 1750s.

A book written in western languages did not have to be translated into Greek

for circulation among the Greek intelligentsia because most of them were located

outside the Ottoman Empire. Greek merchants were capable of speaking at least one

western language. Commercial ties between northern Greece and Central Europe

during the early years of the nineteenth century were so well developed that one

traveler, J.L.S. Bartholdy, found in the Thessalian town of Ambelakia, much of

whose produce of spun red cotton was exported to Central Europe, an amateur

theatre in which productions in German were performed. He discovered that a

German theater “wie in der ganzen uberlagen cultivierten Welt Kotzebue's

Menschenhass und Reue” was being performed and that, as elsewhere, it reduced the

audience to tears. It was also noted that in the late 18th century all the best connected

and wealthy Greek youths of Istanbul were learning Italian and French.
3.3 National awakening and reinvention of history in the Greeks:

The first time Greek nation was imagined in the sense Benedict Anderson

described in his book “Imagined Communities” with the influence of enlightenment

and by using the Greek language as the tool for communication. For the first time

distinct ethnic identities were pointed out in literature written under the influence of

enlightenment and was printed in Greek

The spirit of nationalism grew strong in Germany, where thinkers such as

Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte had developed the idea of

Volk, which then became the roots of national awakening in Europe. It was this

hypothesis, upon which the well known historians such as Konstantinos

Paparigopoulos had built their ideas. He tried to introduce his state with a long

history of nationality, linking contemporary Greece to medieval past and seeking to

establish uninterrupted continuities of national existence beginning from the ancient

Greece. Besides the local historians of Greece, Western historians helped the Greeks

to justify this assumption by writing on Balkan politics and history similar to their

Balkan counterparts.

The movement known as “Greek Enlightenment” had begun in the middle of

the 18th century and reached its climax in the beginning of the 19th century. In this

period, two important events that influenced the Greek millet were the Treaty of

Küçük Kaynarca (1774) as the Russians began to use Orthodoxy to influence the

Orthodox millets and the French Revolution (1789). It is not proper, however, to see
77
the enlightenment movement as a result of these two events. It would be more

appropriate to see these events as the accelerator of the movement. The famous

77
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 46
thinkers of this Enlightenment period were those who worked for spreading Greek

language and the ideas which came originally from the west: M. Anthrakites, E.

Boulgares, Beniamin Lesbios, K. Koumas, Th. Kaires, Kh. Pamplekes, Th.

Pharmakides, Katartzes and most importantly Rigas and Korais. These enlightened

Greeks had emerged in the industrial and commercial centers and were working in

schools, which were called “lyceum” or “academy”. These schools were at the

beginning financed by rich people and later by the Greek society.

Enlightenment impact on the Greeks was felt mainly among the middle

classes, as they were the literate people. The educated youth was under the influence

of France. During the eighteenth century European education and ideas made

themselves felt among a considerable part of the intellectual Greeks. This was only

two percent of the whole population and considerable proportion of this two percent

was antagonistic to the impieties of west, preferring to remain within the traditional

ideological structure. As in France, before the revolution, so in the Greek world

publications, which expounded new ideas, were met with a counterblast of traditional

doctrine. 78

Reforms in education boosted in the enlightenment period. The Phanariot

princes of Moldavia and Wallachia supported some excellent schools and collected

libraries of European books. Knowledge of French was quite widespread at their

courts.79 In Istanbul there were good schools, and foreign languages were spoken and

foreign literature was read. Wealthy merchants founded. Under Venetian rule the

78
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.23

79
Hugh Seton-Watson.(1977). "The Greeks and the 'Great Idea', Nations and States: An Enquiry
into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism”, (Colorado: Westview Press), pp. 110-
117.
Ionian Islands offered Greeks the chance of education and access to Italian culture.

Small but growing numbers of Greeks from the Ottoman Empire studied abroad,

especially at Padua but also at Vienna, Leipzig and other German universities. Greek

colonies in Western Europe helped the education of their compatriots both by

inviting individuals to study in the West and by sending money to found and support

schools on Ottoman territory. Increasing contact with the West introduced the ideas

of the European Enlightenment to Greeks. This process was encouraged by many of

the Phanariot rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, but was disapproved by the

Patriarchate, although individual priests and even bishops favored it. Natural science

and rationalism were fperceived as a threat to Orthodox piety.

The Orthodox hierarchy disliked this mixture of classics and rationalism.

They, too, were becoming impatient with the Ottoman rule as they saw it declining,

and, were becoming affected by a new pride in being Greek. But if the Ottoman

Empire were to be destroyed, they hoped that it would be replaced by something like

the old Byzantine empire, based on autocracy and Orthodoxy, probably under the

protection of autocratic Orthodox Russia.

The struggle between the supporters of Orthodox Church and reformists had

been very violent in the period of Greek Enlightenment. Both sides were

uncompromising, and criticizing each other very harshly and were even trying to

destroy the other side. Neophytos Bambas, a Greek intellectual and student of

Koraıs, explains this faction among the Greek society as:

“Either apathy or as a result of its principle, the Sublime Port

never challenged the reemergence of education in Hellas. The real
enemy of this happy development is among us. As being the most
important element of the Hellen nation, if the prejudges or
 disinterestedness of this very strong spiritual class is taken under
control, nothing important we have to do against the Turks.”80

The enlightenment movement witnessed among the Greek intellectuals of the

Ottoman Empire was basically a late adoption of the developments in Europe.

Between the years 1748 and 1751 there were cultural developments, which shocked

the European continent such as Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Law, Buffon’s Natural

History. For the first time in 1776 Boulgares translated Voltaire’s works into

Greek.81

3.3.1 Criticism of the Greek enlightenment

Most of the Greek intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries in general, and

nationalists in particular, were greatly influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment.

But the Enlightenment did not come to Greece in an “ideal” form. Many ‘neo-

Hellenic Enlightenment’ thinkers sought to translate the basic ideas of the

Enlightenment to the geographical, social and cultural environment of what was to

become modern Greek kingdom. Besides, many of these thinkers were clerics, and

understood Enlightenment through the lenses of Orthodox dogma.82

Greek enlightenment had two dimensions; one was the reforms in language,

the spread of Greek language and developments in the Greek philology. Some

intelligentsia tried to reemerge ancient-Greek (attic dialect) while others tried to

make popular Greek as the language of Greeks. The conservatives were the

supporters of the ancient-Greek, which was used in the Byzantine period and could

80
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 120
81
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 46
82
Nikos Chrysoloras, (1996)Orthodoxy and Greek National Identity An analysis of Greek
Nationalism in light of A. D. Smith’s Theoretical Framework. Department of Government and
Hellenic Observatory, LSE p.10
not be understood by the contemporary Greeks while the westerners were in favor of

the popular language.

3.4 Rediscovery of the Ancient Past

The second dimension of the enlightenment movement was the rediscovery of

ancient-Greece. Ancient culture became popular among the Greeks. Greek families

began to give names of the ancient people to their children. The reemergence of

classical ancient-Greek history during the Western Enlightenment strongly affected

the secularization of the Rum millet. During the Enlightenment period, philosophers

saw history as the unraveling of human progress. Within this understanding, ancient

Greeks were acknowledged as the “fathers” of civilization. Reason, philosophy, and

freedom to shape one’s personal destiny were the central features of ancient Greek

culture. As a result, while the rest of Eastern Europe was depicted throughout the

eighteenth century as essentially “backward,” travelers to Greece emphasized and

reinforced a romantic, nostalgic view of ancient Hellas 83

For centuries, ancient Greek language existed through icons, literature and

history among contemporary Greeks. However, with the effect of Renaissance and

reform movements, Greeks of the Ottoman Empire began to pay attention to the

ancient Greeks more than ever.

There was the reaction of the Orthodox Church to the rediscovery of Ancient

Greek culture. Patriarch Grigorios in his patriarchal encyclical says

“…and the innovation introduced, as we have heard, of giving

ancient Greek names to the baptized infants of the faithful,
83
V. Roudometof, (1998) From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and
National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821, p.23
 taken as a despising of the Christian practice of naming, is
altogether inappropriate and unsuitable. Therefore it is
necessary that Your Reverences give strong commands to
the priests of your parishes, and spiritual admonitions to
your blessed parishioners, to abandon forthwith this abuse
... and parents and godparents in future are to name at the
time of the holy and secret rebirth with the traditional
Christian names, to which pious parents are accustomed, the
[names] known in Church, and of the glorious saints that are
celebrated by it, so as to be overseers and guardians of the
baptised infants ...” 84

Greek enlightenment movement was the reflection of the nationalist

movements and romanticist philosophy of European thinking in Greece. The

argument about the language of the Greek nation was not between two totally

different ideologies, but it was between the two different perceptions of one romantic

movement. Some thought the current society as ideal and the language of the current

society as supreme, while the romantics thought the ancient as original and as

supreme and defended the ancient Greek language.

In the Academy of Ayvalık, one of the well known schools

of the Greeks in the Aegean, the aim of the scholars was to
use ancient Greek as the language of the Greeks. “Under the
direction of Theophilos, Grigorios and Efstratios, teachers
in the Academy (Ellinomouseion) of Kydonies, on the 20
March 1817, the undersigned have resolved: wishing to take
up our ancestral tongue, and ardently desiring to reject the
gross and vulgar language, as wholly unbecoming to us the
descendants of those Hellenes, we have all decided to
decree this law, so that each of us, whenever we gather
together, is obliged to converse in the Hellenic tongue
[ancient Greek]… Each of us is to speak, as far as possible,
in the Hellenic language. Whoever does not do this, is, as a
punishment, to recite a page of Homer before us” 85

84
K. Th. Dimaras. (1953). O Korais kai i Epokhi ton (Athens,) pp. 299—304

85
R.Clogg.(1972). Two accounts of the Academy of Ayvalık(Kydonies) in 1818-1819, (1972) pg
78-79
 Again, another Greek Grigorios Zalikoglou in 1809 talks about the importance

of preserving the ancient language:

“Fellow countryman, we must guard our language, if we

want our nation and our faith to exist vigorously for all
time… the language…makes it easier for us once again to
assume the enlightenment of our ancestors. It is the only
ancestral treasure that remains to us, the one certain pole,
which draws us together and embraces us, the one natural
bond that unites us. Myriads of others share the same
faith, but not having the same language, will never
become one with us. For as long as we preserve
uncorrupted this divine language, this sacred fire, the race
of the Greeks remains immortal, and we, and our
descendants, bear the marks of our nobility, that we are
the true blood descendants of those who laid the first
foundations of the civilization of the human race, both
now and in the future, until the end of the world. What
happened to the descendants of the Greeks in Asia, in
Africa, in Sicily, in so many other islands, in Italy, in
Greater Greece? Neglecting the tongue of their fathers,
they forgot both name, glory and pride. But what do we
seek afar? Those around us called Turks, are they not,
most of them, the descendants of Greeks? Are they not
our brothers? Are they not Greeks? In fact the millions of
them that inhabit Greece today came neither from Asia,
nor elsewhere, but because they abandoned the language
and name of their ancestors, they do not partake of their
glory.”86

In addition to the defenders of Ancient Greek as the language of the new

nation, there were also those who opposed them. But they were harshly criticized by

the supporters of ancient Greek. For instance, in a letter sent by Daniil Philippidis of

lasi, Moldavia, to Barbie du Bocage, Paris in 27 October 1803, Philippidis complains

about the ancient passion of some Greeks:

“O my friend, how most of our lettered Greeks are

pedants! Stupidly attached to antiquated words and
phrases, they regard true knowledge, knowledge of the
things so useful and necessary to man in all respects, as
something frivolous, which ordinarily concerns men

86
R.Clogg.(1972).Two accounts of the Academy of Ayvalık(Kydonies) in 1818-1819, pg 78-79
 without religion, atheists. This, dear friend, is the epithet
that the ignorant and superstitious lavish on those who try
to develop the faculties that the Creator has endowed
them with, on those who study nature and whom I regard
as truly religious. A few days ago they denounced me as
an atheist to the metropolitan. The scoundrels! When one
is not ignorant and immoral as they are one is an atheist!
But I have replied to their infernal informing in a manner
satisfactory to everyone. This is what caused their
abominable protest. Some time ago the overseers of the
public school, where up to the present only literary Greek
has been taught, in a pedantic manner that is to say never
learning it, have proposed that I accept a place to teach
mathematics and physics. I have agreed. My agreement
made the Greek teacher furious. He wanted to oppose it,
and not having any other argument against me, for I enjoy
here with the prince and his court some reputation, he
employed the insults that the ignorant usually hurl at
educated people, but by this step he only attracted the
scorn of almost all the nobles.” 87

There was enthusiasm about ancient Greece in Europe beginning from the

Enlightenment period. Philhellenes were aristocratic young men, recipients of

classical education, who saw themselves as the inheritors of a glorious civilization

and were willing to fight to liberate its descendants from the Ottoman Empire. They

were all around the world. Most famous of them were Goethe, Schiller, Victor

Hugo, Alfred de Musset and Lord Byron many of whom were involved in the Greek

revolution. Greek philosophy was seen as superior to Christianity. Greeks living

outside the Ottoman borders also learned about their past from this literature. Greek

history was presented to the Greek public from the eyes of European philhellenes

As a result, schools were founded, curricula was modernized with the

introduction into schools of the natural sciences, new textbooks were written, Greek

printing presses were founded, libraries were created, and scholarships were

provided for young Greeks to study in Western universities. The nascent bourgeoisie
87
Daniil Philippidis. (1966) in Catherini Koumarianou (ed.), Barbie du Bocage-Anthimos Gazis,
Allilographia (1794-1819) (Athens,) pp. 122-3.)
was becoming increasingly aware of its rights and sought to train its leadership.

Contacts with the West, which in earlier times had been encouraged by a section of

the enlightened higher clergy and by the Phanariots, now took on a new

significance. Wider social strata had come of age so they had the power to satisfy

their thirst for learning and their need for a meaningful and effective education.

What in previous decades had been the privilege of certain limited groups was now

opened up to a broader cross-section of society. Education took on a new, more

substantial importance. It began to develop at an altogether faster pace. 88

There were various books published by the Greek intelligentsia during the

19th century According to Catherina Koumarianou89 among these books The Elliniki

Nomarkhia is one of the most well-known works of the Greek revolution, in which

the anonymous author analyses the problems confronting the nation, and also makes

proposals for their solution:

“Come, brothers, the time of deliverance is upon us. Do not

weep for a little blood shed for your freedom and your happiness
. . . Take up the sword of righteousness and let us storm against
the cowardly Ottomans, and grind our chains to dust . . .Let us
now examine the reasons why it will be easy to bring about the
regeneration of the Greeks. The first is the progress of our nation
in learning. O what a difference can be seen between Greece
often years ago and the Greeks of today! A great difference, my
brothers”

Within and outside the Ottoman Empire there were many Greek academies,

which had very large libraries with modern books written in modern Greek. Among

them was the Academy of Ayvalık (Gymnasion Kydonion), which was the most

famous. It offered international education around the Aegean and with the

88
R.Clogg. (1992). A Concise History of Greece .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.10.

89
C. Koumarianou (1993)“The Contribution of the Intelligentsia” in Richard Clogg (ed) The Struggle
for Greek Independence. London: Macmillan Press p.81
establishment of a printing house in Ayvalık, it became the center of Neo-Hellenic

Enlightenment in the Aegean. As Richard Clogg mentions it in his book “Two

accounts of the Academy of Ayvalık (Kydonies) in 1818-1819”,

Ayvalık and the academy was once visited by an unknown

individual and his words about the library gives information
about the situation of Greek enlightenment in the Ottoman
Empire. “ …They then showed me the library consisting of
700 or 800 volumes among which is a complete set of
Greek Classics. They have also many astronomical and
other scientific instruments… The college, library, Printing
Press and every thing of this kind is wholly undertaken and
supported by the liberality of the natives of Haivali. The
Public, national spirit of the Greeks deserves great
commendation.” and he continuous his observations the
next day “ Friday May 22. This morning I went to the
College to attend the lectures. Gregorius had about fifty
scholars sitting round the large room, whom he lectured
scientifically on Greek Grammar. He was explaining the
tenses, which he did as well as Lindley Murray… I next
attended Theophilus. About thirty were present, while to my
surprize he lectured on the 11th section of Newton… they
mentioned that the elder scholars taught the younger… I
asked how many Masters they had furnished for Greece?
They enumerated about twelve schools in various towns &
islands, which had sprung from them. They are small, but it
is a hopeful sign!90

The Patriarchy was against reforming the ancient language.

Patriarch Grigorios, mentions the importance of learning ancient

Greek.

“ For it is not possible for us to pass over in

silence some unbecoming things, which coinciding with this
pleasing inner disposition of ours, have cut short our hopes
… These things are some satanic obstacles hindering the
progress of our youth in achieving true education, and in the
fulfillment of its end, that is the accomplishment of
Christian works. In some places there flourishes a despising
of grammatical teachings and a complete- neglect of the arts

90
D. Philippidis, (1966) in Catherini Koumarianou (ed.), Barbie du Bocage-Anthimos Gazis,

Allilographia (1794-1819) Athens pp. 122-123

 of Logic and Rhetoric, and above all the teaching of the
highest Theology. This despising and neglect derives from
the complete dedication of pupils and teachers as well
wholly to mathematics and the sciences, and [there exists] a
coldness towards our unblemished faith, and an indifference
to the traditional past, deriving from certain immoral
men…They put it about that the language of [our]
ancestors, that Greek voice, is both difficult in
comprehension and use and is in a way superfluous to the
Nation today, and intrude some grotesque innovations and
new rules, so that some have dared, as we have learnt,
openly to come out against it and to use against it insulting
and unbridled language …This Greek language is admired
and applauded by all learned Europeans, and is the only
valuable treasure vouchsafed to us, and the only
characteristic relic of ancestral nobility so that those
crooked lipped ones and acrobats with words and misfits are
manifestly raving mad and are shamefully lying. And the
teaching of grammar, in comparison and contrast, is more
beneficial to the nation and more necessary than the
teaching of mathematics and the sciences, for the one
[grammar] contributes generally to all, or to most
professions and the usefulness of the other [mathematics] is
seen in other things. And the present state of the nation
demands that the former [grammar] be taught in the
schools, and that the main work should not become a
sideline and the sideline not become the main work, and the
merely useful receive preference over the necessary. For to
what benefit are the young dedicated to such teachings, to
learn numbers, and algebra, and cubes and cube roots, and
triangles and triangulated tetragons, and logarithms and
symbolic logic, and elliptical projections, and atoms and
vacuums, and whirlpools, and power and attraction and
gravity, and peculiarities of light, and the northern
lights,and optical and acoustic matters and a myriad of the
same kind and other monstrous things, so as to measure the
sand of the sea, and the drops of a rainstorm and to move
the earth if a place to stand is given to them, in the words of
Archimedes. If as a consequence in speech they are
barbarians, if they are ungrammatical in their writings,
ignorant in the things of religion, degenerate and frenzied in
morals, injurious to the state, obscure patriots and unworthy
of their ancestral calling? …” 91

According to Greek intelligentsia, the Patriarch and the Phanariots were in

91
K. Th. Dimaras, (1953) O Korais kai i Epokhi ton (Athens:Kais) pp. 299-304.
betrayal of the Greek nation by remaining loyal to the Sublime Port. The merchant

class was only thinking of their own interests. This behavior of the upper class came

under heavy criticism. One way of criticizing the Greek upper class was through

satirizing by poems. One of the best example of this kind of poem was an

anonymous one entitled “Rossanglogallos” in which a Russian, an Englishman and a

Frenchman, are touring Greece and perceiving its shameful situation, In order to

understand why it is like this, they ask first a Greek patriot, and after him a

metropolitan, then a hospadar of Wallachia, then a merchant and then a notable. And

last of all they met with Greece itself. A part of the poem is like this:

All:

Tell us, patriot, how you bear slavery,

And the inconsolable tyranny of the Turks?
How the beatings, the abuse and iron bondage,
The unheard of spoliation of children, maidens and women?
How the daily slaughter of your own kind,
Unjust, without cause and without mercy?
Are you not descendants of those Hellenes,
Free, wise and patriotic?
How is it that while they died for freedom,
You now submit to such a tyranny?
And what race was as enlightened as yours
In wisdom, strength and in all things renowned?
What have you made of enlightened Hellas!
Alas! as a skeleton, as a burned out candle!
Speak, beloved Greek, tell us the cause;
Do not hide anything from us, remove our doubt
The Patriot:
Russian, Englishman and Frenchman
Hellas, and none other,
Was, as you say, so great.
But now [she is] wretched,
And unworthy,
From the time that ignorance set in.92

92
K. Th. Dimaras, (1962) To keimeno tou Rossanglogallou, (Athens:Ellinika), pp. 189-99.
3.5 Greek Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire

Nationalism energized and gave definition to the various ethnic groups

residing within the Ottoman Empire, challenging not only the temporal authority of

the Ottoman Sultans but also the spiritual authority of the Greek Orthodox Church

and the Patriarch of Constantinople. 93 The Greek insurrection cost the Patriarch his

life and terminated the careers of many Greeks in in the administrative service of the

Ottoman Empire.”

Greek national consciousness which contributed to the emergence of the

Greek nation was first expressed by individuals in the 15th century and appeared as a

social force in the 18thcentury. Plethon Gemistosv (1355-1452) is known as the first

individual (philosopher and politician) to publicly say, “We… are the members of

the hellenic race.” He was living in the Mistras region of Morea and he worked for

the unification of the churches. Gemistos’s call did not find any hearing and just after

him came the Ottoman administration in which for a long period hellenistic ideas

were shelved. Other than Gemistos, nationalistic approach was observed in

Konstandinos Laskaris who was involved in the humanism movement and in 1476

had published a Greek grammar book.94 The first modern Greek book was published

in 1526. National consciousness was also rooted among the Greek speaking people

outside Greece who were following the reforms.

Among the individuals expressing national consciousness, there was Leo

Allatius (1586-1559) who was a member of the Uniate sect. He had expressed the

salvation of the “genos” (a word similar to nation) in his book Helleas that he wrote

93
K.Legg&J.M.Roberts. 1997. Modern Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery (Colorado:
Westview Press) p.15
94
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 49
in Greek.95 In the same period Nikolaos Sophianos, living in Italy had expressed the

backwardness of the Greek “genos” in comparison with the Europeans. Frankiskos

Skoufos, a scholar who was born in Crete in 1644 wrote in popular Greek, and in his

pamphlet he advocated the rights of the “genos”. Konstandinos Mavrokordatos

(1711-1769) and Eugenios Boulgares (1716-1808) were also members of

intelligentsia who were familiar with the ideas of the west. Boulgares had expressed

“the salvation of the nation” 96 The Greek speaking Orthodox millet defined itself as

“ethnos” or “genos”. These words meant “community” or “race”, and when it was

written in capital letters it was referring to the Greek Nation.

3.6 Debates Over the Name of the new Nation

There was a debate about the name of the nation. What should the name of

the new nation be? Rum, Greek or Hellen? The Greeks wanted both religious and

secular rhetoric, which would appeal both to classical glory and to Orthodoxy. The

use of word “Hellen” can be seen very rarely in Greek history. A century after the

fall of Istanbul, Antonios Eparkhos wrote “a requiem for the fall of Hellas”. Kosmas

Aitolos (1714-1779) predecessor of Korais and Regas, visited many villages and

advised people to teach Greek. He said: “Learn Greek, because your church speaks

hellenic and your race is helen.

95
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 50
96
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 50
 According to Rigas Velestinlis, this nation was composed of “Romios”. Rigas

also used the word “helen” but this word did not refer to an ethnic identity. What he

meant by the hellenic community were people living in the Ottoman Empire

regardless of religion or language.

There were also those who opposed the name Rum. Korais, one of the leading

ideologue of the revolution said: “ you are not Romanian, this name stands as the

brand of slavery on our forehead… it may seem as if we are pleased with slavery. ”97

Some Greeks had reservations about the name “helen”. For centuries the name

“helen” was used to identify the idol worshippers of the ancient times. A Phanariot

intellectual Demetrios Katartzes (1730-1807) asked: “How could it be that the name

“helen” is proposed as the name of the new nation?”

However, the word Hellene was soon accepted as the name of the Greek

people, and the new word Ellinismos, which combined the two meanings of Greek

civilisation and of the whole Greek community in the world, came into general use

by politicians and intellectuals.

3.7 Ideologues of Greek Nationalism

The intellectual basis of nationalism came from the affluent and prominent

diaspora Greeks of the eighteenth century. The two most prominent leaders of this

group were Adamantios Korais and Rigas Velestinlis. These intellectuals worked for

the spread of nationalism among the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire

97
H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 53
3.7.1 Rigas

One of the most well known ideologue of the Greek national movement was

Rigas Velestinlis Fereos, son of a merchant. He was born in 1757 in Velestino near

the ancient Ferai-Thessaly. He was educated either at the Greek school of Ambelakia

or at Zagora.98. Later on, he left the region; his quest for further education took him

to İstanbul (1774) where he met with Phanariots. He became the secretary of

Alexandros Ipsilantis, the dragoman of the Porte, and later (1774) prince (hospador)

of Wallachia. He then went to Wallachia, where Ipsilantis established a regular army

of 12000 men nearly all of whom were Greeks. Ipsilantis was planning to establish

an independent Greek state with the help of Russia.

Rigas was aware of Ipsilantis’ plans. Soon the Ottoman government had

realized what was going on. Ipsilantis returned to İstanbul to clear his name. Rigas,

meanwhile, began to work as a secretary to Grigorios Brancoveanu who was a

hellenized Vlach and in 1787 he entered the service of the hospador, Nikolas

Mavroyenis, who appointed him governor of Craiova. Mavroyenis was executed by

the Ottoman government for alleged complicity with the Russians. With the capture

of Bucharest by the Austro- Russian alliance he moved on to Vienna for a period of

six months (1790), where he met with Kirlianos, Baron de Langenfeld, and became

his secretary. In Vienna he printed his first two books The School for Delicate Lovers

and A Handbook of Physics and announced the future publication of a translation in

Greek of Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois, although this latter project was never

realised.

His knowledge of foreign languages, which enabled him to follow European

intellectual developments, served to broaden his horizons. He spent the next five

98
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.27
years in Bucharest, became dragoman to the French consulate of Bucharest and also

secretary to the hospador Michail Soutsos. He closely followed the developments in

France after the Revolution, and studied the new republic’s constitution. He fostered

a vision of a pan-Balkan, multi-ethnic democratic republic. He eventually went back

to Vienna (1796) where he published in twelve sections his famous pictorial and

commemorative map of Greece and also a portrait of Alexander the Great. He wrote

for the newspaper Efimeris. In October 1797 the Markidis-Poulios printing house

published 3000 copies of Rigas’s revolutionary manifesto, which contained a

proclamation, a declaration of the rights of man, a Greek constitution, and a martial

hymn calling on the Balkan Christians to fight for liberty.99

Napoleons military success impressed Rigas. He decided to ask Napoleon for

his support in the Greek uprising. To that extend, he went to Vienna, wherehe talked

with the large Greek community and told them of his plans. He created a map of

Greece that involved many territories, including Istanbul of "Great Greece" that

included all Greek-speaking territories. He then sent this map anywhere where there

were Greek communities. Rigas decided to meet Napoleon and went to Tergesti from

there he was to go to Venice where Napolean was. At Tergesti he was arrested by

the Austrian police for attempting to cause a revolution. It was these publications,

which led to his arrest by the Austrian authorities. He was taken into custody in

Trieste along with seven other companions. After spending months in prison in

Vienna he was handed over to the Turks in Belgrade where he was executed in the

summer of 1798.

99
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.28
 The Greek people were influenced by the writings of Rigas Fereos. His

famous poem Thourios greatly influenced the people; the poem was like a

revolutionary manifesto. It was especially the following verses of one of his poems

had influenced the Greek revolutionists:

Shall we live in mountain passes, like warriors of old?

Shall we live alone like lions, on the top of mountains?
No! better an hour of freedom, than forty years as slaves

Rigas had helen culture and education, he was writing in Greek, and he could

be classified as a member of the Greek national movement but what he imagined as a

social system was a multinational construct.100He believed in the supremacy of the

law “let the law be our country’s only guide” Rigas proposed as a state's basic

principles: liberty, equality, security of life, security of property, freedom of speech

and of religion. Rigas uses both religious and secular rhetoric in his poems and

speeches. While he wants the revolutionists to swear on the cross he also wants

people to swear on the King of the World.*

Rigas’s constitution was part of the revolutionary manifesto with the

declaration of the rights of man and Thourios. Rigas imagined a Balkan-Asian state

with a dominant Greek culture. This state was to be composed of all ethnic groups

*On the other hand according to Milas, the poem was written not for ethnic purposes but for
mentioning class differences. The main purpose was the destruction of what he called “the tyrants.”
“When the government harasses and disdains the rights of the people, then the people should take the
arms and punish their tyrants.”So he addressed called the Muslim rulers and reaya who were unhappy
with the Ottomans. For example Pasvanoğlu (Pasha of Vidin) was a warlord who had defied the
Sublime Port. Rigas in his poem for Pasvanoğlu says:

Pasvanoğlu, why do you remain so impassive

Throw yourself on the Balkans, nest there like an eagle

Join with the rayas if you wish to conquer.

(H.Milas.(1994). Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) p. 98)

living in the Balkans regardless of their religion. The Turkish ruling elite and the

Patriarchy which was in collaboration with the Turkish elite had no place in this new

government. This state, or Hellenic Republic, though embracing different races,

tongues and religions, was one and indivisible. Everybody, including the Muslims,

would have the right to vote and to hold administrative office. The state would be a

centralized one with a common Greek language. Rigas was impressed by the

victories of Napoleon in Italy and he was excited with the occupation of the Ionian

Islands. He wanted to meet with him and offer the cooperation of Greek

revolutionary organizations, which Rigas thought, would be towards the East.101

3.7.2 Korais

Korais was one of the most influential member of the Greek intelligentsia

during and after the Greek revolution. Korais was born in 1748 as son of a merchant

but spent most of his life in Paris where he died in 1833. He was inspired by the

ideals of the French Revolution; he committed himself to Greek independence and

worked to draw the attention of the chief European Powers against the Turkish rule.

From 1772 to 1779 he worked in his father business company in Amsterdam.

In 1782, his father's business collapsed, and he went to Montpellier where he studied

medicine, and did translation for earning money. He translated German and English

medical works into French. He then settled in Paris where he lived until his death in

1833. Korais encouraged awareness of the intellectual heritage of classical Greece.

On the other hand, the Byzantine influence in the society prevented him from doing

so. He criticized the ignorance of the clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman

Empire. His first great effort towards reviving and eliminating foreign words and
101
D.Dakin. The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821-1833 p.29
terms from the language was to compile a hellenic dictionary.102 Even though Greek

had undergone fundamental changes over time than most ancient languages, the

problem facing Korais was to balance the common language spoken by most Greeks

at that time, while removing from the language foreign words and constructions. In

effect, Korais' solution was what he called the 'middle way'- a compromise between

ancient Greek and the language spoken in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Accordingly, Korais' version of this 'pure' language, based on ancient principals

known as karthavousa 'purist Greek', came into existence.

For Korais, the need for modern Greeks to rediscover their historical origin

reflected a broader program of political modernization. By adopting the knowledge

of the ancients that was preserved in the West, modern Greeks could rise again and

regain their proper position in the world. Of fundamental importance to such a

program was the assumption of continuity between the “ancients” and the

“moderns.” In Korais’s writings, this continuity was strategically employed in order

to establish the necessity for modernizing the hellenic world103. In order to become

worthy of the sacred name they bore, modern Greeks needed to be “enlightened,” an

argument justifying Korais’ modernist orientation without directly questioning the

traditional ecclesiastical discourse. But even if cultural continuity with Orthodox

philosophical tradition was to be preserved in principle, most of the Balkan

intellectuals emphasized Western scientific achievements in order to defeat Orthodox

religious conservatism.

102
http://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/katharevousa.html , 21.04.2005
103
V. Roudometof, From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and
National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821, p.26
 Korais wrote many times to Jefferson asking for his support to the struggle of

Greece for independence. He lived in Paris, met Jefferson there around 1785, when

Jefferson served as the ambassador of the new Republic to France. Following

Jefferson's return to America in 1789, the two men continued their friendship

through correspondence. Korais' letters to Jefferson were passionate and full of

patriotic expressions, repeating all the time why it was to the best interest of America

and the American people to help Greece. "Help us, fortunate Americans," wrote

Korais in a letter dated July 10. 1823, "We are not asking you for a handout. Rather,

we are providing you with an opportunity to augment your good fortune." Korais

knew that appealing to powerful and enlightened philhellenes, such as Jefferson, to

intervene and influence their respective governments for the recognition of the Greek

cause was the right thing to do. As an "enlightened revolutionary", he believed that

the power of intellect and diplomacy was more effective than the might of soldiers

and arms. Through correspondence and personal contacts, Korais convinced many

foreign intellectuals that the unbroken use of the Greek language since classical days

together with a continuous habitation of the same lands and of common religion, his-

tory and tradition were conclusive evidence of the existence of a Greek national

identity, thus establishing a strong argument for the recognition of an independent

Greek state. 104

Korais began work on the Elliniki Vivliothiki (Greek library), a publishing

program initiated in 1805 which lasted for sometime and which aimed to familiarize

the Greek public with the ancient writers. In his book Prolegomena with which he

introduced various texts, he examined contemporary Greek problems, putting special

104
http://www.ahepafamily.org/d5/Grk%20Inde-mar02.htm , 28.02.2005
emphasis on educational matters. He set out his own attitude towards them, and

proposed ways and means of overcoming the problems. He worked ceaselessly in

this endeavor, along with his other intellectual pursuits for the fifteen years preceding

the outbreak of the war of independence. Even during the war he continued, with

special classical texts chosen, to serve the needs of a time of crisis to strengthen the

morale of a nation at war, or to help in the political education of the Greeks. He also

published texts which were purely political in nature, in which, despite his advanced

age, he re-discovered the fighting passion of earlier times, when, inspired by the

French revolution, he had written and published polemical pamphlets, some

advocating new ideas, others seeking to counter conservative attitudes but all with

the common aim of preparing individuals to take a conscious part in the struggle to

gain their freedom.105

Korais has often been criticized for his opinion that the revolution of 1821

broke out somewhat prematurely. Similar observations were also expressed by other

responsible Greeks, among them the metropolitan Ignatios of Oungrovlakhia and

Alexandras Mavrokordatos. Their reasons were the same: they considered that if

such a harsh and unequal struggle was to be undertaken successfully, if, in other

words, the Greeks were to be ensured not only freedom, but, equally important,

independence and good government, then a period of moral and material preparation

was indispensable. They did not believe that this process of preparation had yet been

fully carried out.

105
C. Koumarianou. (1993)“The Contribution of the Intelligentsia” in Richard Clogg (ed) The
Struggle for Greek Independence. (London: Macmillan Press) p.81
3.7.3 Kapodistrias

Ioannis Kapadostrias was a Greek origin diplomat in the Russian Empire. He

worked for the independence of Greece and after the independence he became the

first president of the Greek nation state.

He was born in Corfu which was at that time under Venetian control.

Kapodistrias studied medicine at Padua in Italy. When the Ottoman Empire and

Russia ended the French control in the Ionian islands and established the suzerain

Septinsular Republic, Kapadostrias became the secretary of the new state. When

France regained control of the islands in 1808, Kapadostrias left Ionia for Russia and

he began to work in Russian foreign service. He became an expert on Balkan affairs,

which earned him a post with the commander of Russia's armed forces on the lower

Danube River. After the army marched north to oppose Napoleon's invasion of

Russia in 1812, Kapodistrias was assigned as a diplomat to the army staff in 1813

and later was sent by Alexander I on a special mission to Switzerland. He attended

the Congress of Vienna as a Russian diplomat and helped negotiate the 1815 peace

treaty between France and Russia. In the same year he was appointed Foreign

Minister of Russia. He opposed Alexander's Holy Alliance with Austria and Prussia

and criticized Alexander’s approval of Austria's suppression of the revolts in Naples

and Piedmont. As a result, Austria's Chancellor Metternich became hostile to him

and he tried to undermine Kapodistrias’s position. Kapodistrias, supported the

Greeks in their rebellion against the Turks. Though earlier he had refused to lead the

major Greek revolutionary organization. When Alexander refused to support the

Greek revolt against Turkey, this time he decided to help the Greek revolts. In 1822,

he resigned from the Russian service and settled in Geneva where he sought financial

and diplomatic support for the Greek War of Independence. In April 1827, he was
elected as the president of Greece. He negotiated with Great Britain, France, and

Russia, the settlement of Greece's frontiers and the selection of its new monarch. He

worked to organize an effective government apparatus and to subordinate powerful,

semiautonomous local leaders to the authority of the new state. In the process,

however, he acquired many enemies, two of whom, Konstantinos and Georgios

Mavromikhalis of Maina who in 1831 assassinated Kapodistrias as he entered a

church.

3.7.4 Katartzis

Connection between Enlightenment, language and nationality was fully

elaborated during the 1780s by Demetrios Katartzis, a high official in the court of

Wallachia and one of the foremost theoreticians on the use of the vernacular as the

language of education and culture in the Balkans of the time. Katartzis extolled the

virtues of the Greek vernacular as spoken by his contemporaries in the urban centers

of the Ottoman Empire, and argued that as a medium of communication and

expression it was equal to classical Greek and much superior to any other language.

He indicated that the cultivation of the vernacular through the composition of books

in the language amounted to the best form of education for the 'nation'. Katartzis was

probably the first among authors writing in modern Greek to use the Greek word for

nation, ethnos, to describe a collectivity clearly delineated by its language and

cultural heritage. The sense of a modern Greek nation defined by its vernacular

language runs throughout Katartzis's writings and forms the major premise of his

argument for the linguistic reform that would elevate spoken modern Greek into one

of the major languages of civilization. The feeling of pride in the language reflected a

deeper pride in the nation, which, Katartzis stressed, existed indisputably as a distinct
'civil society' with its civil laws and ecclesiastical institutions and partook through

the privileges of its church in the exercise of authority in the empire to which it was

subjected.106

3.7.5 Ipsilantis and the Friendly Society

Among the revolutionary organizations, which were established with the aim

of liberating Greek lands from the Ottoman Empire, the most influential was Philiki

Etairia or Friendly Society founded in Odessa in 1814. Founders of the society were

three diaspora merchant Greeks: Emmanouil Xanthos, Nikolas Skouphas, and

Athanasios Tsakaloff who set up a secret organization after the death of Rigas

Velestinlis. According to Clogg, it was “strongly influenced from free masonry, the

society insisted on elaborate initiation rituals for its four basic categories of

membership. Betrayal of its mysteries was punishable by death.”107

In the first few years of its establishment the society could find very little

support. But after 1818 especially in 1820’s just before the revolution, the

membership increased rapidly.

106
P M. Kitromilides.(1998) “Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question
in the Balkans” p.153
107
R.Clogg. 1992. A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p.32
 CHAPTER 4:

NATION BUILDING IN GREECE AFTER THE REVOLUTION

4.1Transfer of Identities from one imagined community to the other:

Origins of Greek nationalism can be traced to the enlightenment and national

awakening in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. An examination of

this process of intellectual and cultural change shows how ethnic consciousness was

cultivated so that a sense of national identity could be created upon a social group.

As Benedict Anderson discusses in his book “Imagined Communities” this process

can be described as the mental construction of nations as 'imagined communities'

As mentioned in the theory section, the nation building experience in Greece

was not the same as the nation building process in Western Europe. The transfer of

identity in the “imagined communities” of Western Europe was less problematic. In

France, the King was the ruler of a community in which majority of the people were

French so there was not any major problem of defining or transfer of the identities.

Being in the center of Renaissance and Reformation movements, the intellectuals’

influence over the society in France was more intense. In contrast, the Balkans were

politically divided between the two Empires during most of the 19th century. Greek

intellectuals were not able to freely express their revolutionary ideas. It took years

for the revolutionary ideas and influence of enlightenment to spread among the
peasants. The new Greek identity formed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries had some very important differences. In parallel with the necessities of the

time, “Rum identity” transformed into “Greek” national one. In this change a number

of very important components of the neo-hellenic culture were adapted such as the

language of the new Greek nation and the role of Orthodox Christianity in the Greek

national identity.

The incorporation of Greek national identity of Rum millet was an inevitable

result of the Ottoman millet system. This had caused the ethnic Greeks to consider

the ancient Greeks as their ancestors. They imagined the Hellenes as creatures of

extraordinary stature and power, capable of superhuman tasks. Popular folk tales

dated the Hellenes’ existence to the beginning of time.

4.2 Erosion of Orthodoxy from the Greek identity after Independence

For centuries, Orthodox Christianity in cooperation with the Ottoman Empire

and its millet system played a major role by preserving and cultivating Greek culture

and identity. Orthodoxy guided the “national awakening” but modern concepts of

secularism and nationality associated with the ideas of the Enlightenment and

Western rationalism weakened both Ottoman rule and Orthodox unity in the Balkans.

Reflection of the European Enlightenment in the Greek lands were different

from the original ideas that rose in Europe since the ideas of Enlightenment were

transformed to the Greek society by passing through the filter of the Orthodox belief.

Enlightenment ideas were changed. They became autonomous of those who created

them, in books, or orally interpreted differently, it experienced the effects of power

struggles, it mutated to adapt in different environments. This is the only way the

Enlightenment survived and become influential in a variety of different contexts. 108

In Greece the ideas of enlightenment had to be explained differently because

of the different context of the Ottoman Empire because the Greek nationalists of the

Ottoman Empire were constrained by the deeply Orthodox society. Orthodoxy was the

force uniting the non-Muslim populations in Ottoman Greece because the people had

very few common characteristic rather than being Orthodox Christian. It was an

important part of everyday life of the non-Muslims. It was used by the nationalists for

communicating with the people. Although the Patriarchy was formally against the Greek

war of Independence, many low-ranking clerics supported the revolution. That was one

way the nationalists communicated with the Orthodox people. In addition, although he

declared his disapproval of the Greek revolution, Patriarch Gregory V who was executed

by the Sultan, became a martyr of the revolution and his opposition was forgotten.

Despite the fact that the official position of the Patriarchate in Constantinople

was against the Greek War of Independence, many low-ranking clerics supported the

revolution this legitimized it in the eyes of the people. After the revolution, in the years

of Greek nation building, the state took control of the Greek Church and used its

authority and its popularity among the people in order to legitimize its policies. During

the ten year war, the Orthodox Church had not fulfilled its obligations in the eyes of

the revolutionaries who had freed the state so they initially wanted to extract the

church from the nation building process. But later they used the church as an

intermediary for communicating with the Orthodox people. As a result, the four

hundred years old Orthodox Rum identity of the Greeks, which was present within the

108
Nikos Chrysoloras. Orthodoxy and Greek National Identity An analysis of Greek Nationalism
in light of A. D. Smith’s Theoretical Framework (Department of Government and Hellenic
Observatory, LSE) p.10
multinational Ottoman Empire, was replaced in a smooth way with the Helleno-Christian

identity, which was present within a nation state, which is composed of only the Greeks.

Helleno-Christianity is the term used to define historical intellectual and

spiritual heritage that has contributed to shape modern Greek identity. In Greek

historiography “Helleno-Christianity” became a term used by intellectuals to

represent the historical and cultural continuity of ancient Greece, through Byzantium,

into modern Greece109. Helleno-Christianity has played a key role in modern Greek

identity. In Greece the Church has always had legitimacy in Greek society as the key

player in the construction of the modern Greek nation. Helleno-Christianism became

the most suitable type of identity among the options of nationalisms because it was

more appealing to the people since it drew on pre-modern and pre-national existing

communal ties. This type of nationalism was compatible with many of the other

identities (familial, communal, religious, linguistic, ethnic) that subjects were

holding during the formative periods of Greek nationalism, since it was based on myths,

symbols, traditions and memories with which large parts of the population were familiar.

Speaking an archaic Greek dialect, going to the Church, and disliking the Turks
110
were practices of this new national identity. In the process of the Greek nation

building, like in any other nation building, the national identity was built with a two

sided formation, on the one hand, including the population with some common

properties who began to call themselves “we”, on the other, this process excludes some,

who are identified as the threat to the “we” who are called “them” . In the case of

Greece, nation builders identified “Turks” or the Ottoman “Empire” as “them”

109
V.Makrides, (1991) ‘Orthodoxy as a Condition sine qua non: Religion and State Politics in
Modern Greece from a Socio-Historical Perspective’, Ostkirchliche Studien, December
110
Nikos Chrysoloras, Orthodoxy and Greek National Identity An analysis of Greek Nationalism
in light of A. D. Smith’s Theoretical Framework, Department of Government and Hellenic
Observatory, LSE p.10
 These practices were experienced by individuals as aspects of the “Greek way of

life”. National identity is constructed on the basis of different criteria by different types

of nationalism. The Church remained the only pre-modern institution, which retained its

importance throughout the modern era in Greece. It managed to ‘relocate’ pre-modern

cultural material into the modern nation-state environment, thus enhancing national

identity.

This possible function of churches is outlined by Jon Hutchinson:

“In spite of significant differences between pre-

modern and modern societies, long established
cultural repertoires (myths, symbols and memories)
are ‘carried’ into the modern era by powerful
institutions (states, armies, churches) and are revived
and redeveloped because populations are periodically
faced with similar challenges to their physical and
symbolic survival.’

After the War of Independence, as part of modernization efforts the Church

was placed under control of the State, which did not allow the creation or the

development of an independent Greek Church. The Church of Greece is governed

by its own Holy Synod but remains under the authority of the Ministry of Education

and Religious Affairs which pays the salaries of priests and approves the

enthronement of bishops and the licensing of church buildings for all religious

denominations.111

111
C. Papastathis (1996) ‘State and Church in Greece’, in State and Church in the European
Union, Ed. by Gerhard ROBBERS, Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos, Verlagsgesellschaft.
4.3 The Process of Nation Building in accordance with the New Greek Identity.

Greece emerged as an independent state in 1832 after a ten years war of

liberation. Then it faced the problem of nation building. The building of a nation

from a traditional society combined with religious ties was not an easy task that the

new rulers had to tackle. Greek nation building had two dimensions: internal and

external. Internally the traditional society had to be reorganized into nationalist

Greek citizens and externally, the plan was to seize the Ottoman lands where Greek

communities lived. The most critical necessity for the Greek nation state was

“national unity” which had three dimensions. On the social dimension it expressed

the national unity of Greece with uniformity and homogenization becoming

prevalent norms of cultural discourse; on a geographical level it stressed the unity of

hellenism, of the Greek nation as an integral whole bringing together its constituent

parts within and outside the kingdom; and on a historical level it stressed the unity of

the Greek nation along a temporal dimension, emphasizing its uninterrupted

continuity throughout the centuries from Homeric through Byzantine to modern

times.112

The projection of the Greek nation in course books on history underlined the

positive aspects and the virtues of Greek nationality. Sometimes, negative aspects

were included, too. These ‘national’ virtues are mentioned to create role models for

Greek youth; they included wit, originality, inventiveness, studiousness, devoutness

and patriotism.113 The internal process of nation building attempted to bridge the gap

between the new state that emerged in independent Greece and the traditional society

upon which the modern state institutions had to exercise their control. Nation-

112
P M. Kitromilides. Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the
Balkans p.167
113
Stavros Skrinis. Nation-State Building Process and Cultural Diversity: Greece p.3
building, in the sense of cultivation of a homogenizing national identity had to mend

social cleavages that independent Greece had inherited from its past and from the

conflicts of the War of Independence.114 The most problematic segment of the

society was those who fought in the war of independence. For the establishment of a

central authority, the banditry organizations, which had a long tradition going back to

the Ottoman Empire, had to be abolished and these bandits had to be organized under

a regular army. The state had to stop centrifugal sectionalism. Rapid solution to

these problems was the establishment of a regular army by which sections of the

Greek society would be adapted to the ideas of nationalism.

The next important tool for the nation builders was educational institutions.

The primary education had to be provided to every individual in any corner of the

country. In these schools, national history of the Greeks going back to the ancient

Greece by the nation builder would be taught. The number of schools increased very

rapidly. From seventy-one schools in 1830 the number rose to 1172 in 1879. This

represented an increase of 1650 per cent115

One other problem that nation builders had to tackle was different dialects of

Greek language which were not comprehensible by each other and the cultivation of

non-Greek speaking people; especially the integration of Albanian speaking

Orthodox population was necessary for a centralized Greek state.

The two ideological initiatives whereby the Greek state attempted

programmatically to strengthen its national identity were the creation of an

autocephalous national church and the establishment of a national university in the

capital of the kingdom. The announcement of the independence of the Church of

114
P M. Kitromilides. Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the
Balkans p.161
115
P M. Kitromilides. 'Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the
Balkans p.163
Greece from the Patriarchate of Constantinople was advocated in the very first year

of the War of Independence by Adamantios Korais as an essential precondition of

national liberation.116

The external dimension of nation building included the expansion of the

nation state borders, reaching the Greek populations outside the national borders and

involving them to the Greek nation state. This was obviously an irredentist policy.

The new established Greek nation state was constructed over the most backward

territories among the lands where Greeks lived throughout the Aegean. The new state

contained only one-third of the total Greek population. The rest was still located

within Ottoman lands and the purpose was to expand the territories until the nation

state contained all the Greeks within the Balkans and Anatolia. On the Aegean coasts

of Anatolia the population was speaking a variety of languages so there was no

linguistic unity among them. This was a major problem for the Greek state which had

irredentist plans over the Aegean coasts of Anatolia.

The revival of the language naturally opened the way for the cultivation of

feelings of ethnic identity, the politicization of ancient memories, and the gradual

transformation of traditional religious loyalties into national attachments. The

teachers were soon followed by other groups who had benefited from the outlet of

higher education provided by independent Greece. Lawyers, doctors and journalists

trained in Athens rather than in Italy, France or Germany returned to their native

cities in increasing numbers toward the end of the nineteenth century. They became

protagonists of the transmission of the political culture of the Greek state among the

Christian subjects of the Ottoman sultan and eventually played a leading role in

116
P M. Kitromilides. 'Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the
Balkans p.165
nationalist agitation.117

The Greek state established ties with the Greeks living outside the nation-

state in Anatolia. They established schools in Greek language where Greeks could

learn the language of their own culture. There were schools in Ankara, Kütahya and

İzmir.

Stathis Gourgouris, in his book Dream Nation examines the role of the

enlightenment on Greece nation building. He says that:

“it is misguided to perceive the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment

merely as the vehicle for the Westernization or the modernization
of Greece. According to Gourgouris, neo-Hellenism “does
involve the transposition of the currency of European ideas
prevalent during the late eighteenth century a new tradition, it
institutes a new image of what Neo-Hellenic culture is.” 118

4.3.1 Consolidation of State Formation in Greek Territories after Nation

Building

The most vital part of the process of national identity formation started after

the War of Independence in 1821. After the war Greek revolutionaries opened a new

phase in which the Greek identity was constructed and the borders of the Greek

controlled areas were enlarged. As a new developing modern-nation state, Greece

had to assign to one of the two categories.119 The category, which is called state-first

117
P M. Kitromilides. 'Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the
Balkans p.172

118
S.Gourgouris (1996) Dream Nation Enlightenment, Colonization and the Institution of Modern
Greece (California: Stanford University Press) p.16

119
K.R.Legg&J.M.Roberts. 1997. Modern Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery. (Oxford:
Westview ) p.10
model, is the western European way of state formation. In this case, the boundaries

of a small, centrally or strategically located kingdom, princedom, or duchy expands

through dynastic marriage, inheritance, purchase, war, or annexation by using

various centralizing institutions bureaucracies, schools and universities, military and

the local loyalties of the population living within the boundaries, their languages and

dialects, and sometimes even their religious affiliations. Parochial populations

transform into a single, largely homogeneous national community.

The second category is the nation-first or national awakening model which is

found mostly in the eastern and southern regions of Europe. The development pattern

includes the eruption of a common national feeling among a minority population that

is either living in a single state or is scattered across several different states or

empires. In this scenario, a movement for national independence, usually one

involving revolt and military action, is necessary in order to bring the state into

existence. The nation, then, precedes the state.

In the Greek history models, the Greek state and the Greek nation developed

simultaneously.120 Peloponnesus, the territory where Greece was established and "old"

Greece had never been unified under a single flag. Greece’s enlargement occurred

either with war or as a reward of Great Powers, then produced Greece's modern

boundaries. If we look at the territorial expansion of Greece through military

operations, Greece seems to have developed according to the state-first model. In the

beginning of the process of state-building, Greek intellectuals of the new state

constructed a national identity and worked for assimilating those populations with

similarity to the constructed national identity regardless of whether they were Greek

or non-Greek. History of the Greeks was mythologized. The "imagined" Greek

120
K.R.Legg&J.M.Roberts. 1997. Modern Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery. (Oxford:
Westview ) p.10
national history became an important part of the process of producing Greek

identity. For this purpose, political leaders explicitly designed the institutions of the

new Greek state to promote a particular vision of the future.

Nation building and specifically the formation of the Greek national identity

can be considered as the continuation or the second phase of modern Greek

Enlightenment. The Greeks were enlightened by the French Revolution by

connecting the ancients and the moderns through a genealogical tie while the

Orthodox and Byzantine past had been undermined to some extend. The next step

was the unification of these enlightened people under a single flag so at the end of

this long process, what came out can be called the transformation of the pre-modern

individuals into Greek ‘nationalist subjects’.

As Alexis Politis mentions:

“ Greeks today have great difficulty in grasping that the sense of

the continuity of the nation, as we encounter it in the general
climate or at the school, was an invention of the mid-nineteenth
century, and that the overwhelming majority of Greek intellectuals
who envisioned, and saw the realization of an independent Greek
state felt a cultural and political affinity with the ancient Greeks
alone, and considered the entire Byzantine period to be part of the
history of the Greeks under foreign subjugation, a mere
continuation of Roman rule.” 121

The undermining of the Orthodox and Byzantine past was a political

necessity needed for the transformation of the religiously based identity into a

national based one.

121
Alexis Politis.1998 From Christian Roman Emperors to the Glorious Greek Ancestors, in Ricks
and Magdalino(ed) Byzantine and Modern Greek , (Kings College, London) p.1
4.4 Reinvention of History

The idea of coming from the ancient Greeks was popular in the first years of the

Greek state because there was an admiration by westerners for the Greek culture, and

the language spoken by the contemporary Greeks was similar to the ancient one. But

in the second half of the nineteenth century, and after the defeat by the Turks in 1897

which ended with the loss of territories, Greece paid war indemnity to the Ottoman

Empire and an international commission began to control its finances. Greece

122
declared its bankruptcy. The problems of rural population and land acquisition

for the peasants created problems which caused a significant increase in migration,

largely to North America. As Skrinis mentions, “a resurgence of this kind (ancient

Greece) implied a leap of two thousand years. This could not motivate those Greeks

who did not speak Greek, even though many of them had played a major role in the

War of Independence prior to 1832"123 Response of Greek intellectuals to this was to

offer redefinition of national culture away from purist language and antiquity and

toward popular culture and language. They believed that if Megali Idea (the

recapture of Constantinople and the reconstruction of Byzantium) was to be

implemented, average Greeks would work for this purpose and under any

circumstances would not migrate from Greece. Therefore the importance of history

shifted from ancient to folk culture as a result of the growing middle class. Unlike

the early intellectuals of the modern Greek state, the intellectuals of the late 19th

century aimed at linking modern Greeks not only with the ancient classic city states

but also with Hellenic empire of Alexander, Byzantine Empire, and even the

122
K. Legg & J.Roberts. (1997). Modern Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery Colorado:
Westview Press pp.95-96
123 Stavros Skrinis Nation-State Building Process and Cultural Diversity: Greece p.2
Ottoman past to the national history of the Greeks. But the ancient has always been

mentioned as glorious while the word used for the Ottoman period was “oppression”.

Land demands of the Greek State changed too in the 19th century. In the early

periods Macedonia was not mentioned in the geography books as part of ancient

Greece but the Macedonians were considered Greeks as they were involved in the

first Olympic games and speaking a language similar to Greek. The interest of

Greeks in Ottoman Macedonia increased when nationalism rose in the Balkans and

the Bulgarians expressed their demands on the same regions.124

CONCLUSION

Greek national identity is an imagined one constructed as a necessity for the

establishment of a Greek nation state from the ashes of a collapsing empire. Modern

Greek Enlightenment started in the 18th century Ottoman Empire, inescapably

followed by the Greek nationalism. These two movements finally led to the Greek

uprising in 1821. The transition from Rum millet to Greek nation was a hard and

bitter experience for the Greeks. In this mighty route to the nation state history of

Greeks is invented. This phase is the universal method used in most of the nation

formation processes.

The millet system was the tool used by the Ottomans from 15th to the 20th

century for the internal control of the multi ethnic and multi religious state. In the

Ottoman millet system, people were classified according to their religion. Muslim

millet was the largest and most influential millet, although Ottoman Empire was a

multi religious state, the Muslims were in a privileged position as being the ruling
124
Koulouri, Ch. (1988), History and geography in greek schools (1834S1914). Athens. p.73
class. Besides the ruling Muslim millet, there was the Jewish millet, the Gregorian

Armenian millet, the Catholic millet (in the nineteenth century, a Protestant millet)

and finally the Orthodox millet, the largest after the Muslims.

Orthodox millet was also known as the Rum millet the name Rum which

turned to an ethnic name in the 19th century was the name given by the Ottoman

Empire to all the Orthodox people within the Empire regardless of their ethnic

background. It was not clear who was ethnically Rum(Greek) and who was not.

Besides that Greek culture was regarded as the high culture within the Balkans. So

many Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and Latins identified themselves as Rum. As a result

of this just before the Greek uprising Greeks claimed their population as 10 million.

Within the Ottoman Empire, Rum millet was influential in the Ottoman

administration and trade. Rums were occupying a position in which there were

working as a mediator between the Ottoman governors and the local people. Rum

people were capable of speaking more than one language they were also controlling

most of the Ottoman trade with the foreign countries which gave them the

opportunity to contact with the west and knew about all the developments before any

other millet. These facts explain why the environment was so ready for the

enlightenment of the Greeks. In the 18th century with the effect of Enlightenment

ancient Greece began to draw attention of Western Europe. They believed that

ancient Greeks were the ancestor of all the European civilization they also believed

that contemporary Greeks were the descendants of the ancient Greeks and should be

freed from Ottoman control. This idea was mentioned by the group of people called

Philhellenes among them were famous Lord Byron, Goethe and Pushkin. In addition

to all these provocations the French Revolution brought the ideas of freedom equality

, and brotherhood to the lands where Greek lived. As a result they underwent a
process in which they invented an imagined identity called Greek and Greeks revolt

against the Ottoman Turks not as the Rum millet but as the individuals of the Greek

ethnic group. After ten years of war in 1832, they became the people of the new

established Greek nation state. They rediscovered their heroic ancient history with

the help of the Greek intelligentsia. The Orthodox church lost its control over the

Greek society and became an institution of the state. In the late 19th century Greek

history changed according to the necessities of the time and the profile of the Greek

nation was expanded according to the Megali İdea.

Today, modern Greece is exceptionally homogeneous in terms or its language

culture and religion. This is the result of a conscious policy followed by political

leaders from the beginning of the state designed to create a single national identity

for all Greeks, including those within the state and those outside it. In reality, the

existence of a single Greek nationality was the result of the Neo-Hellenic culture

which had very strong components.

As the famous novel of Reşat Nuri Güntekin Yaprak Dökümü, (The Falling

Leaves) portraits the disintegration of a family because of debt, deterioration of

standards of living and misunderstanding of westernisation, similarly the crumbling

of the Ottoman Empire and the setting up of nation states one by one by former

Christian subjects were the falling leaves for the Ottoman Empire. It was first the

Serbs, who obtained a large degree of autonomy, then the Greeks, leaving the old

almighty Empire alone. Its subjects each time took land from the Empire. Now the

great big tree was lonesome owing to the stripped leafs and was living its chilly

autumn on its own.

As Ernest Gellner mentions: nationalism is not the awakening of nations to

self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.

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