National Regeneration vs Resurrection: The ideological framework of the Greek War of Independence

[Kritias]

Moral or national regeneration and its antithesis, moral/national degradation, is an oft-used talking point from the centre of the political spectrum and right-wards. It is definitely not an unknown theme for us Greeks. And the question is: does the idea of national regeneration hold any water?

In honor of two hundred years of Independence (sort of), this thread will trace the origins of one of the least remembered but more systematic efforts to implement these ideals of national regeneration in an often-unwilling populace: the Greek War of Independence, or as we know it, the Greek Revolution of 1821. This thread comes two years after an effort by Abdulmecid I, to trace the origins and causes of the Greek Revolution. You can read his thread here.

Since this is a rather extensive issue, I've broken my thoughts down into chapters which I then hidden into spoilers for the reader's convenience.

Chapter I: National Regeneration

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In order for someone to understand modern Greek history, it is imperative to understand this basic dichotomy: Grecian idealism coming from Western Europe on the one side, and the ties to a Byzantine heritage which seems to have been more grounded in reality. Of the two, the former would prevail until the formation of the Greek nation state but not without significant fusion to the latter. The Grand Idee, or Megali Idea, the foreign policy of the Greek government for a hundred and one years (1821-1922) stands as testament of how difficult unlearning one reality in favor of another proved to be for the Greek people.

Most records of European travelers to Greece in the late 1700s talk of a populace entirely disinterested of the ruins they lived next to. Local Greeks, Turks and Albanians looked on to travelers with a mix of curiosity and derision, and later with suspicion: when Europeans grecophiles, aghast at the locals not being able to parrot the classics back to them, launched programs to educate the local population of Plato and Aristotle, they were met with a feeble interest at best. William St Clair notes the efforts of Western tutors to force the local populace in the Ionian isles to renounce their Christian names in favor of names such as Xenophon, Pericles, and Demosthenes, which was met with great resistance, and of an antiquation of dress where traditional oriental clothing was systematically swapped for robes and sandals.


For local Greeks, divisions between them and their Turkish overlords were based in religion, not some ethnic understanding waiting to be awakened. The language they spoke, a continuation of medieval Greek spoken throughout the Byzantine empire was simply known as Romeika, and their national identity was summed up in the term Rum. A Roman citizen. Ancient Greek history was almost alien to them, showing clear preference to their Byzantine heritage. Ancient myths and gods were just the produce of pagan people who used to live where the modern Greek people resided.


The link of ancient to modern Greek people was naturally a point of great interest, even before the Greek War of Independence begun. According to Umberto Eco, western medieval travelers painted Byzantine Greeks as degenerate, lazy, cunning, and cheats. This view of medieval Europe seems to have come to extreme conflict with the view held with the Classicist period of Europe in the 18th century, where Romans and Greeks were basically seen as supermen: the heroes were the most heroic, the philosophers the wisest; a truly sublime and equally lost golden age of humanity. Contemporary reports coming from the Greek mainland painted a people who, according to most scholars of the period, had been bastardized and degenerated. However, and most tragically, scholars maintained that freedom would swiftly restore Greeks to their former glory. Lord Byron’s poems, but most importantly their popularity, is a testament of that European understanding. Here’s an example from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scatter’d children forth,
And long accustom’d bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylae’s sepulchral strait—
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb?
∗ ∗ ∗
When riseth Lacedemon’s hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens’ children are with arts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then mayst thou be restor’d; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shatter’d splendour renovate,
Recal its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

This European longing for classical antiquity seems to have been deeply understood by the Greek diaspora who, on the onset of the revolution, did not direct their attentions towards the peasantry asked to shoulder the fight but to the Europeans abroad. William St Clair shares one of the first Greek revolutionary manifestos circulating European governments:

Reduced to a condition so pitiable, deprived of every right, we have, with
unanimous voice, resolved to take up arms, and struggle against the tyrants. . . . In
one word, we are unanimously resolved on Liberty or Death. Thus determined, we
earnestly invite the united aid of all civilized nations to promote the attainment of
our holy and legitimate purpose, the recovery of our rights, and the revival of our
unhappy nation.

With every right does Hellas, our mother, whence ye also, O Nations, have
become enlightened, anxiously request your friendly assistance with money, arms,
and counsel, and we entertain the highest hope that our appeal will be listened to;
promising to show ourselves deserving of your interest, and at the proper time to
prove our gratitude by deeds.

Given from the Spartan Head Quarters
Calamata 23 March 1821 (O.S.)
Signed Pietro Mauromichali,
Commander-inChief of the Spartan and Messenian Forces

There is a story of how little the locals understood the nuances of referring to antiquity for contemporary political capital: one of the captains in Morea sent a letter to Mavromichalis welcoming the Messenian and Spartan forces to the revolution, asking him how many men he should expect and by when.


The Europeans, however, seem to have eaten up the propaganda; St Clair includes a contemporary piece from the newspapers in London, where fantastical battles both in sea and land (which in reality were mere skirmishes) were described with the grandest terms. For Europeans of the time, the Greek revolution became a major issue with racial and epistemological connotations. Simply put, the fake reporting of the action in mainland Greece seems to have reinforced the European idea about the possibility of regenerating a nation to greatness by sheer force of will.

It is hardly possible to name a spot in the scene of action, without starting some
beautiful spirit of antiquity. Here are victories at Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras;
at Rhodes, famous for its roses and accomplishments; at Cos, the birthplace of
Apelles, Hippocrates, and Simonides. But to behave as the Greeks have done at
Malvasia is to dispute the glory even with those older names.

According to St Clair, the newspapers in Europe seem to have been taken by a fake news flurry, where the whole country was reported to be in open revolt, a Turkish army of 30,000 men to be destroyed, Athens was reported liberated with not a single man dead etc etc. Nothing of the sort was really happening in mainland Greece; but since the reporting spurred a wave of philhellenism translated in volunteers, money and guns the local intelligentsia took it upon themselves to embellish the stories as much as possible by conducting a PR campaign. The proclamation of Alexandros Ypsilantis just at the outbreak of the revolution is telling:

Let us recollect, brave and generous Greeks, the liberty of the classic land of Greece; the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, let us combat upon the tombs of our ancestors who, to leave us free, fought and died. The blood of our tyrants is dear to the shades of the Theban Epaminondas, and of the Athenian Thasybulus who conquered and destroyed the thirty tyrants—to those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton who broke the yoke of Pisistratus—to that of Timoleon who restored liberty to Corinth and to Syracuse—above all, to those of Miltiades, Themistocles, Leonidas, and the three hundred who massacred so many times their number of the innumerable army of the barbarous Persians—the hour is come to destroy their successors, more barbarous and still more detestable. Let us do this or perish. To arms then, my friends, your country calls you.

The similarities between the addresses of the Greek intelligentsia to the newspapers published in London during the first year of the revolution is telling as to who the intended audience was supposed to be. Writings from the local captains of the revolution on the other side, mostly written after the revolution since the captains were by large illiterate (some in Greek, others completely), include sparse references to ancient Greece in subsequent editions, are surprisingly frugal of any nationalistic sentiment and appear to have understood the struggle against the Turks on a religious basis of Christiandom versus Islam. Records of the time show that the local parishes and the clergy also understood the struggle in this way, which at the onset of the revolution led to mass scale slaughter of Turkish populations in the Greek mainland.

Chapter II: The Greek Resurrection

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

During the twilight years of the Byzantine Empire Greek literature takes an apocalyptic turn which, following the Ottoman Empire, reached prophetic dimensions. For local Greeks, myths and fantasies of a Roman renovation walked hand in hand with the idea of Christ’s resurrection. Just as Jesus had risen from the dead, so the Roman Empire was meant to be resurrected from the ashes, when a holy war would deliver Constantinople to the Romans. This deliverance was expected to occur at the instigation of fellow Orthodox Christians which caused the local populace to look for assistance eastwards to Russia instead of westwards. Any mention of Greeks, Greece or Plato was not even considered worth including in the mass production of literary output of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. The term Romans is not just the main one used; it is the only one. By 1774, when another Russo-Turkish war had passed without the Russians capturing Constantinople and reviving the fallen Roman empire, the writings of the Ottoman Greeks show their general disappointment. An example:

since it has turned out that the time for resurrection appointed by the oracles was not the true one and [thus] the empire was not resurrected. The time appointed by the oracles for resurrection was 320 years after the Conquest (Sathas 1872, 119).

And another:

If, therefore, in the time appointed by the prophecies […] the Romans have not been liberated, then it will be very difficult for the resurrection of the Roman empire to take place (Komninos-Ypsilantis 1870, 534)

The situation seems to reverse with the introduction of the Amicable Association (Filiki Eteria), Greek merchantmen, educated in Europe, bringing European ideas about the nation-state in the Ottoman Empire. As one of the three founders writes:

If we are true sons of venerable Greece, as we boast that we are […] what are we waiting for? What excuse, however reasonable, could make us postpone this golden time which, as it appears, Providence has brilliantly ordained so that all the predictions, all the oracles about the liberation of the Genos, about the resurgence of Orthodoxy, may come true? (Xanthos 1845, 238).

Up to the point the Filiki Eteria emerges in Odessa, the “Greeks” have been more focused on calling themselves what they had for a thousand years – as Roman citizens. In just a hundred years any mention of “Rome” and “empire” is dropped by the intelligentsia, possibly taking wind of the European movement towards classicism and its practical benefit for the revolution.

However, and most importantly, the aspects of the former Romano-centric narrative, that of resurrection from the dead, becomes fussed to the modern Greek narrative. Albeit meant without its religious connotations, the Filiki Eteria seems to have understood the best way to propagandize their ideas of a nation-state clashed with the ideas of the local population about their Imperial heritage, and their manifest destiny to resurrect the Roman empire by recapturing Constantinople. The illiterate Makriyiannis, a general during the revolution, is a perfect example of this fusion:

Thou, O Lord, shalt raise the dead Greeks, the descendants of those famous men, who gave mankind the fair raiment of virtue. And by Thy power and Thy righteousness Thou shalt bring the dead back to life, and it is Thy just will that the name of Hellas shall be spoken once more, that she shall shine forth, and the worship of Christ too, and that the honest and the good, those who are the defenders of justice, shall live on (Makriyannis, Apomnimonevmata).

Chapter III: Conclusions

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Greek War of Independence is a prime example of the power of regeneration and the force of will in modern Greek political thought. Nationalism, a European concept that allowed the unification of fragmented city-states into empires during the 19^th century, came to Greece through the western-educated Greek diaspora but clashed with the religious preconceptions of the local Greeks. The narrative of national regeneration is scattered in declarations and manifestos of the period but the real effect it had on the common peasantry tasked with winning the war remains questionable. It is more probable that this narrative was aimed outwards to the West, where such sentiments were appreciated at that point in time. On the contrary, it seems that the local Greek populace was motivated by an ideal of manifest destiny to recapture Constantinople which was expressed by the religious idea of resurrection.

It’s interesting to note that similarly to other nations, like France, the US and even Russia, modernization went hand in hand with a rejection of religious authority. In Greece, this trend seems to have been the case for the early period of the revolution, where the excommunication issued by the Patriarchate on the rebels favored a break from traditional religious authorities. This break can be seen in the art of the time, where priests are depicted in darker tones and distrustful expressions. This break however seems to revert by the end of the revolution, where subsequent depictions of the fighting include and at point exaggerate the role of the church.

In a previous post I have written about the stance of the Ottoman Greek middle class and their reservations in taking part in the revolution. For brevity I will include this segment here. However, the role of the Greek diaspora in the West was the exact opposite of what I describe in that thread. Where local Greeks were cautious and rejecting of the war of independence, western Greeks seem to have pushed for and abetted rebellion for their own interests. The sporadic landing of men and resources, setting up their own private fiefdoms (in the case of Mavromichalis in Mani and Sparta, or Ypsilantis in Morea with the Baleste Regiment) created a split in how the war was fought and why. Even the army presented this duality: on the one hand, Greeks coming from the west, having served in European armies, wanted to create a standing army of line infantry to take the Ottoman forces head on; on the other, local Greeks understood the lay of the land and preferred guerrilla tactics and ambushes which lead to the first major successes in the revolution. The duality between westernized and local Greeks was so profound that a civil war broke out in 1825 between the factions; the final blow of western Greece would be given right after the end of the revolution, where local captains were persecuted and imprisoned or executed, and the majority of the fighting forces were left out from the first Greek army to starve and beg in the streets.

The power of the fief lords like Mavromichalis stood against any serious reform of the state into a centralized power. Kapodistrias, the first and last man to try to create a modern Greek nation met his end, shot by agents of the fief lords shortly after he had been appointed Governor of Greece. In addition to that, tying the country into debt slavery right from its formation shaped subsequent Greek history. Just for reference, Eric Toussaint has written an article about the odious terms of the revolutionary loans of 1823-24, the restructuring of these debts in 1878 and 1898 and the International Financial Control committee period leading to WWII. You can find this here.

The first hundred years of the modern Greek nation is divided between trying to Hellenize an unwilling population that was habituated in a Byzantine heritage and oriental value systems, as well as keeping the population in check by feeding their preconceptions of manifest destiny to resurrect the Roman Empire – albeit under the guise of the Greek Kingdom. During that time, despite the economy being captive in financial centers like the City of London and later the International Financial Control committee, the Greek kingdom doubled in size with the incorporation of Macedonia, Thessaly, the Aegean islands, Crete and the Ionian islands.

Following the Asia Minor campaign and defeat the Greek kingdom seems as if in free fall, having lost its main objective; during that time, and after seven subsequent dictatorships and coups, Metaxas imposes yet another dictatorship in 1936 and a new rhetoric of national regeneration – the Third Greek Civilization. But that’s an issue for another thread.