Finlay's ‘History of the Insurrection in Crete’

Abstract

The following article, sent by Finlay to The Times on October 3, 1867, and corrected in proof and returned by him on September 5, 1868, was never published, but is preserved, like the similarly unpublished article on the same subject for Blackwood's Magazine, in both the corrected proof and a copy of the original manuscript in the Finlay Library. The longest of all his newspaper articles, it contains his view of the ‘great’ Cretan insurrection of 1866–69; and, together with his subsequent articles on the same subject published in The Times of December 18 and 25, 1868, January 8, 16 and 22, and February 5, 1869, may be regarded as a supplementary chapter of his History. As a contribution to the history of this insurrection, it may be compared with Ballot's Histoire de l'Insurrection Crétoise, Hilary Skinner's Roughing it in Crete in 1867, and The Cretan Insurrection of 1866–7–8 by Stillman, then U.S. Consul in Crete, and subsequently correspondent of The Times in Athens and Rome—all three eye-witnesses—and with such later works as Wagner's Der kretische Aufstand, 1866–67, and ῾Η διπλωματικὴ ῾Ιστιρία τη̑ς Κρητικη̑ς ᾿Επαναστάσεως του̑ 1866, by Papantonakes, published in 1926. Finlay paid two short visits to the island during the insurrection, one described in The Times of June 1, 1867, the other in an unpublished letter to that journal, dated June 11, 1868. I have added a few explanatory footnotes.