6 dk okuma · 1,200 kelime

Week 8 - The Eastern Question and the National Liberation in Greece

  • We're picking up from where we left last time, which was as I said Napoleon's venture in Egypt
  • This and the Napoleonic Wars in general are the one important process:
    • In reaction to France's wars, diffusion of nationalism throughout the continent which is especially threatening to monarchies and more specifically to multiethnic empires like Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire
  • This process will greatly affect the position of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Mediterranean
    • Especially under the influence of nationalism, identities that were once plural will become more and more exclusive of one another
  • In order to observe this process I will be focusing on the example of Greece although a lot of what I will be saying applies to most other Balkan countries
    • The goal is to see how ethnicity and nationality imperfectly replaced religion as the relevant divide in the Mediterranean.
      • Our objective is to observe => ethnicization/nationalization of religious difference

Overview

1 The Context

  • The context around the Balkan revolts and independences is essentially the same:
    • Weakening of Ottoman Empire: Great Power rivalry in the region, essentially between Russia, Austria, France and Great-Britain
    • Social unrest linked to Ottoman misgovernment
    • The imagination and cultural construction of national communities by Westernized elites inspired by Enlightenment

Ottoman Decline and the Eastern Question

  • Weakening of the Ottoman Empire: Russia under Catherine II the Great is the first power to want to gain permanent access to Med.
    • Treaty of Küçük-Kaynarca, 1774:
      • Russian foothold in Crimea +
      • OE recognizes Russian effective control over portions of Black Sea
      • Free navigation of Russian ships in Black Sea and through the Straits
      • Protection of Orthodox population in Ottoman Empire
  • From the end of the 18th century onwards => emergence of the Eastern Question = namely the increasing appetite of Western powers to dismember and annex portions of the Ottoman Empire
    • From mighty foe, Ottoman Empire has become space to be colonized
      • This is the background against which the Greek Revolution occurs

Greek Influence in the Ottoman Empire

  • Context = small minority of highly placed Greeks control larger part of the commerce of Balkan peninsula;
    • dominate Orthodox church to which most of the Balkan Christians belonged;
    • enjoy monopoly of educational and cultural institutions in Balkan lands;
    • fulfill highest administrative and diplomatic institutions in Ottoman bureaucracy
  • From mid-18th c; onwards, Greeks (Orthodox hellenophones) find themselves in increasingly influential economic and political positions in the Ottoman Empire
    • Merchants controlling larger part of the commerce of Balkan peninsula + Eastern Mediterranean
    • But also highly placed civil servants in the Ottoman bureaucracy
  • So how did the Greeks manage to secure that influential position?
  • First step towards power = Ottoman decline in 18th c.
    • Series of devastating wars against Russia: Cf. Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, 1774
      • Now OE has to conduct protracted diplomatic negotiations with Western powers to counterbalance the influence of Russia
      • Necessity to employ people knowledgeable in Western languages and cultures
  • Rising importance of the Phanariotes who become secretaries and interpreters to the staffs of Ottoman officials
    • Phanariotes = inhabitant of the Phanar, Fener, Istanbul where Orthodox Patriarch has headquarters.
    • Merchants + imperial tax farmers + trade and frequent contact with the West
  • The merchants owed their fortunes to context of late 17th and 18th centuries
    • Protracted wars between France and other Western powers in 18th c. => disrupts Western trade in Med. (especially wars of Revolution destroying each other's merchant fleets)
      • Greek merchants replace Western trade firms
  • Politicians and Merchants = constant contact with West + French Revolutionary ideals => move towards revolutionary action for liberation from Ottoman Empire

Philiki Etaireia and Revolutionary Action

  • Creation of a secret organization by three Phanariote merchants in 1814, Philiki Etaireia in Odessa (Society of Friends) on Masonic model
    • Very quickly members attain tens of thousands in the Balkan region and beyond
    • Contact of Greek merchants, through trade and diasporas with Western countries where Enlightenment ideas were thriving
      • Rule of law against order defined by religion
      • Belief and technological progress
      • But also, and perhaps more importantly, assimilation of the universalistic pretensions of Enlightenment thought idea of progress and classification of different cultures on that scale of progress

The Greek Revolt Begins

  • Revolt in Peloponnesus begins 25 March 1821 with Bishop Germanos raising the standard of the cross

Early Military Successes

  • Some successes nonetheless: taking of islands, Hydra, Spetsai, but also Athens, Missolonghi, Thebes
    • Kolokotronis defeating Dramali Pasha at Dervenakia

Ottoman Reprisals and Foreign Intervention

  • Ottoman reprisals:
    • Massacres of Chios, 1822
    • Destruction of Kasos, 7,000 people killed or reduced to slavery by the fleet of Mehmet Ali
    • Hanging of Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory V
  • Deadlock until 1825: Then intervention of Muhammad Ali's son, Ibrahim, following request from Ottoman Sultan
    • Joint attack from south by Ibrahim and Egyptians and North by Turkish forces
    • Athens falls 1827
  • This is when France, GB powers and Russia intervene

The Philhellenic Movement

  • Throughout Europe = Philhellenic movement
    • Synthesis between liberals (see in the insurgents the descendants to Pericles) and conservatives (see the insurgents as Christians)
      • Death of Lord Byron at Missolonghi, 1826
      • What is important about philhellenes is that it is the imagery they developed and invoked contributed decisively in making Greece a European country
  • Navarino 20 October 1827: destruction of the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet
  • Leading to London Protocol, February 3, 1830: declaring Greece an independent and monarchical state with Count John Capodistrias as president
  • As successor, Great Powers impose Prince Otho of Bavaria as king of Greece in 1833
    • Greece nominally independent

Nation-Building and the Great Idea

  • Role of the University created in 1837: All teachers trained and converted in national values: community of language, faith, and later, on a history presented as unbroken process from Ancient Greece to nowadays
    • Athens becomes the national centre for the unredeemed Greeks all over the Mediterranean
      • The elites and teachers of Ottoman Greeks are trained in Athens and later they teach the gospel of nationalism
  • Role of conscription/draft in the army which instills the sense of belonging to a sovereign nation exceeding the boundaries of the village/district/etc
  • Great role of rewriting of history => superimposition of a narrative, a discourse giving coherence and purpose to a complex event = the nationalist narrative
    • Constantine Paparrigopoulos and his History of the Hellenic Nation, 1860-1877
      • Establishes historical continuity from Ancient Greece to his day through Byzantine times
  • 1844: Discourse on the Great Idea, which will become official Greek policy until 1923
    • Unify unredeemed Greeks under one same state
      • Series of wars against the Ottoman Empire throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries
      • These wars will help, in part, the crystallization of a Turkish national sense of belonging
Week 8 - The Eastern Question and National Liberation in Greece — Umut Yalçın Baki