The Greek Revolution, 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe, by Mark Mazower

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Anglophone readers have the good fortune of turning to the work of David Brewer and Roderick Beaton for learned histories of Greece’s rocky path to independence (the first nation-state to emerge after 1815). Mark Mazower is an eminent historian of Europe’s dark twentieth century and Greece’s troubled past. He is a household name among undergraduates across the world who devour his books. It must have been something of a gamble for him to stray outside familiar territory and enter post-Napoleonic Europe. The result is not merely felicitous but a page-turning tour de force. Few could hope to rival Mazower’s command of the languages needed to understand the Greek revolution … and what a revolution it was! Most revolutions have begun in urban centres and were led by intellectuals, lawyers and army officers in a bid to replace arbitrary rule with constitutional government. Greece’s casting-off of the Ottoman yoke could not have been more different. This revolution is best described as amphibious. The Aegean was to be a vital conduit for the spread of ideas, funds, supplies and weapons. It all started with a secret society (akin to the carbonari) known as filiki eteria (friendly society). Its adherents were Greek merchants whose networks stretched from the Black Sea to the Aegean and Adriatic. Their mission was not merely to instil ethnic solidarity among their diaspora; they also wanted to raise an armed rebellion against the Sultan. This was planned to take place not just in Greece, but was supposed to destroy the Ottoman navy in dock in Istanbul, at the very heart of the Empire (this plan was a dismal failure in the end). To the north, Prince Alexandros Ypsilantis ignited a shambolic rebellion in the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. This was quickly suppressed, and the Sultan then turned his attention to his quarrelsome governor of Albania, Ali Pasha, the Lion of Janina. With his troops deployed in besieging Ali’s stronghold in southern Albania, the Greeks of the Morea rose in rebellion under false promises from the eteria that Russia would intervene militarily.