SpringerLink
Log in

The Transnational Foundations of the Greek Revolution of 1821

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
New Perspectives on the Greek War of Independence

  • 248 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores the transnational foundations of the Greek Revolution of 1821 by focusing on the life and thought of a number of revolutionary actors who were born within empires and who spent a good part of their lives during 1790–1820 moving across the Eastern Mediterranean—a region that it understands to be larger than its geographical boundaries suggest. The main aim is to understand how and in what ways this multifarious spatial experience—transnational and trans-imperial in nature as it took place in a region where a number of empires met and conversed—fed into the revolution; how this movement and the networks that these yet-to-be protagonists of the revolution moved in influenced their thinking—their views of the world, their patriotisms, their political ideas, the political projects they sought to put into effect during the revolution. Compared to previous accounts that have focused mainly on diasporic intellectuals, this study seeks to expand the geographical and sociological focus to include merchants, professionals, officers, local notables, officials, warlords, primates, adventurers, revolutionaries, diplomats. It also seeks to give to ideas flesh and blood: to see what ideas people carried in their heads, how they formed them and where, how they changed them and why.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
EUR 29.95
Price includes VAT (France)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
EUR 117.69
Price includes VAT (France)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
EUR 147.69
Price includes VAT (France)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
EUR 147.69
Price includes VAT (France)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Frederick Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992; Petros Pizanias (ed.), The Greek Revolution of 1821: A European Event, Isis Press, Istanbul, 2011; Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla, Humanitarian intervention in the long nineteenth century: Setting the precedent, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2015; Ilıcak, Şukru, ’A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1826)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2011.

  2. 2.

    Konstantinos Demaras, La Grèce au temps des Lumières, Droz, Genève, 1969; P. Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution: The making of Modern Greece, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA., 2013; Vasilis Kremmydas, Syntomi istoria tou neoterou ellinikou kratous [A concise history of the modern Greek state], Kalligrafos, Athens, 2012; Nikiforos Diamantouros, Oi Aparches Sygkrotisis Sugchronou Kratous stin Ellada, 1821–1828 [The origins of the formation of a modern state in Greece, 1821–1828], ΜΙΕΤ, Athina, 2006.

  3. 3.

    See: Michalis Sotiropoulos, ‘To 1821 kai I Epochi ton Epanastaseon: Istoriografika provlimata kai prooptikes’ [1821 and the Age of Revolutions: Historiographical problems and prospects], in Anna Mandylara & Panagiotis Kimourtzis, Istoria, mia kalitechni: keimena afieromena sto G.B. Dertili [History: A fine art, essays dedicated to G.B. Dertilis], Asini, Athens, 2020.

  4. 4.

    The literature is quite large; see indicatively, David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmannyam, (eds.), The Age of Revolutions in global context, c.1760–1840, Palgrave, London, 2010; David Armitage, ‘Foreword’, in Robert Roswell Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014, xv–xxii ; Christopher Bayly, The birth of the modern world 1780–1914: Global connections and comparisons, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004, 86–169; Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014, 514–71; Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and revolution in the Iberian Atlantic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006; Gabriel Paquette, Imperial Portugal in the age of Atlantic revolutions: The Luso-brazilian world, c. 1770–1850, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013; Kate Fullagar and Michael A. McDonnell, Facing Empire: Indigenous experiences in a revolutionary age, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2018; Susan Desan, Lynn Hunt and William Max Nelson (eds.), The French Revolution in Global Perspective, Cornell University Press, Ithaka New York, 2013; Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves across the south: A new history of revolution and empire, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021.

  5. 5.

    Jeremy Adelman, ‘An age of imperial revolutions’, The American Historical Review, 113 (2), 2008, 319–40.

  6. 6.

    Among others see: Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou (eds.), Mediterranean diasporas. Ideas and politics in the long nineteenth century, Bloomsbury, London-New York, 2016; A. Woollacott, D. Deacon & P. Russell (eds.), Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700–Present, Palgrave Macmillan, London-New York, 2010; Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elisabeth March: How a Remarkable Woman Crossed Seas and Empires to Become a Part of World History, Harper Press, London, 2008.

  7. 7.

    Konstantina Zanou, Transnational patriotism in the Mediterranean: Stammering the nation, 1800–1850, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018; Joanna Innes & Mark Philp, Re-imagining democracy in the Mediterranean 1780–1860, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018; Maurizio Isabella, Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions, Princeton University Press, Princeton, forthcoming 2021; Isabella & Zanou, Mediterranean diasporas.; Maurizio Isabella, Risorgimento in exile. Italian Émigrés in the post-napoleonic era, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; Antonis Anastasopoulos & Elias Kolovos (eds.), Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760–1850: Conflict, Transformation, Adaptation, Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2007.

  8. 8.

    Zanou, Transnational patriotism; Isabella and Zanou, Mediterranean diasporas; Sakis Gekas, Xenocracy: State, class and colonialism in the Ionian islands, 1815–1864, Berghahn, New York & Oxford, 2016.

  9. 9.

    See the chapter ‘Crossing the Mediterranean: Volunteers, Mercenaries, Refugees’, in Isabella, Southern Europe; Dimitris Dimitropoulos, Christos Loukos and Panagiotis D. Michailaris (eds.), Opseis tis Epanastasis tou 1821: Praktika Synedriou Athina 12 kai 13 Iouniou 2015 [Aspects of the Greek Revolution of 1821: Proceedings of a conference in Athens, 12–13 June 2015], Etaireia Meletis Neou Ellinismou, Athens, 2018.

  10. 10.

    Christopher Bayly, The Birth.

  11. 11.

    Yanni Kotsonis, The Greek Revolution, Epitomé/EFA, Athens, forthcoming 2022.

  12. 12.

    Antonis Anastasopoulos (ed.), Provincial Elites in the Ottoman empire, Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2015 and in particular Yuzo Nagata’s, ‘Ayan in Anatolia and the Balkans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a case study of the Karaosmanoglu family’, 247–68; Ali Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2016; Robert Zens, ‘Provincial Powers: The Rise of Ottoman Local Notables (Ayan)’, History Studies, 3, 2011, 433–47; Kostis Papagiorgis, Ta Kapakia: Varnakiotis, Karaiskakis, Androutsos [The Pacts: Varnakiotis, Karaiskakis, Androutsos], Kastaniotis, Athens, 2003. See also Peter Hill, ‘How global was the age of revolutions? The case of Mount Lebanon, 1821’, Journal of Global History, 2020, 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000145.

  13. 13.

    Katherine E. Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999; Anastasopoulos and Kolovos (eds.), Ottoman rule.

  14. 14.

    Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire; Christine Philliou, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an age of revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2011; Dean J. Konstantaras, ‘Christian Elites of the Peloponnese and the Ottoman State, 1715–1821’, European History Quarterly, 43(4), 2013, 628–56, at 637–8; Thomas Gallant, The Edinburgh history of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The long nineteenth century, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

  15. 15.

    Pizanias, The Greek Revolution.

  16. 16.

    Zanou, Transnational Patriotism; Dimitris Arvanitakis, H Agogi tou Politi: I Galliki Parousia sto Ionio (1797–1799) kai to Ethnos ton Ellinon [The “Citizen’s Education”: The French presence in the Ionian Islands (1797–1799) and the nation of the Greeks], Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2020.

  17. 17.

    Zanou & Isabella, Mediterranean Diasporas.

  18. 18.

    Juan Luis Simal, Emigrados. España y el Exilio Internacional 1814–1834 [Emigrados : Spain and the international exiles 1814–1834], Centro Est. Constitutionals, Madrid, 2013; Gilles Pécout, ‘International Volunteers and the Risorgimento’, Special Issue, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 14(4), 2009, 413–90; Gilles Pécout, ‘Philhellenism in Italy: political friendship and the Italian volunteers in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 9(4), 2004, 405–27; Isabella and Zanou, Mediterranean Diasporas; Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile; see also the recently published Paschalis Kitromilides & Constantinos Tsoukalas (eds.), The Greek Revolution: a Critical Dictionary, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2021.

  19. 19.

    Anna Karakatsouli, Machites tis Eleftherias kai 1821: I Elliniki Epanastasi sti diethniki tis diastasi [Freedom fighters and 1821: The Greek Revolution and its transnational dimension], Pedio, Athens, 2016.; Maria Christina Chatziioannou, ‘Greek Merchant Networks in the Age of Empires, 1770–1780’, in Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, 371–82; Maria Christina Chatziioannou, ‘Merchants—consuls and intermediary service in the 19th century eastern Mediterranean’, in Anastasia Yiangou, George Kazamias and Robert Holland (eds.), The Greeks and the British in the Levant, 1800–1960s: Between Empires and Nations, Routledge, London, 2016; Roderick Beaton & David Ricks (eds.), The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797–1896), Ashgate, London, 2016.

  20. 20.

    Roderick Beaton, Byron’s war: Romantic rebellion, Greek revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013; Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece; David Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow. Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001; Douglas Dakin, British and American Philhellenes during the Greek War of Independence 1821–1833, Etaireia Makedonikon Spoudon, Thessaloniki, 1955.

  21. 21.

    Isabella, Southern Europe.

  22. 22.

    Zanou and Isabella, Introduction & footnote 51; see also: Michalis Sotiropoulos and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, ‘Patris, Ethnos and Demos: Representation and political participation in the Greek world’, in Innes and Philp, Re-imagining democracy in the Mediterranean, 99–124; and Joanna Innes’s & Mark Philp’s Introduction in the same volume, 1–22; see also: Mathieu Grenet, La fabrique communautaire: Les Grecs à Venise, Livourne et Marseille, 1770–1840, École française de Rome, Rome, 2016.

  23. 23.

    Riga Velestinli: Apanta ta Sozomena [Rigas Velestinlis: Complete works], Paschalis Kitromilides (ed.), 5 vols, Vouli ton Ellinon, Athens, 2000–3, iii, 31–71.

  24. 24.

    Dana Sajdi, The barber of Damascus: Nouveau literacy in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Levant, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2013, 31, 78–81.

  25. 25.

    Riga Velestinli, iii, 73–77.

  26. 26.

    Zanou and Isabella, Mediterranean diasporas, 1–23.

  27. 27.

    Zanou, Transnational patriotism; Arvanitakis, H Agogi tou Politi.

  28. 28.

    Anon., Elliniki Nomarchia, itoi Logos peri Eleftherias [Greek Nomarchy, or Discourse on Liberty], s.l., 1806.

  29. 29.

    In Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Graf Johann Kapodistrias, Kessinger, Berlin, 1864, 399.

  30. 30.

    Zanou, Transnational patriotism, 81; see also: Vassilis Panagiotopoulos, ‘Ignatios Ouggrovlachias’, in Vassilis Panagiotopoulos and Panagiotis Michailaris, Klirikoi ston Agona [Clerics in the Greek Revolution], Ta Nea, Athens, 2010, 49–62, at 59; Christos Loukos, Ioannis Kapodistrias, Ta Nea, Athens, 2010, 16–7.

  31. 31.

    Kanellos Deligiannis, Apomnimonevmata [Memoirs], 3 vols, Tsoukalas, Athens, 1955 (1st edition 1854), i, 55; Kotsonis, The Greek Revolution.

  32. 32.

    Dean J. Konstantaras, ‘Christian Elites of the Peloponnese’, 637–8.

  33. 33.

    Isabella, ‘Crossing the Mediterranean’; See also: Roderick Beaton, ‘Philhellenism’, in Kitromilides and Tsoukalas (eds.), The Greek Revolution: a Critical Dictionary, 593–613.

  34. 34.

    Dimitris Dimitropoulos, Theodoros Kolokotronis, Ta Nea, Athens, 2009, 22–31; Leonidas Kallivretakis, ‘Enopla Ellinika Somata sti dini ton Napoleonteion Polemon (1798–1815)’ [Armed Greek regiments during the Napoleonic Wars (1798–1815), in Vasilis Panagiotopoulos (ed.), Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 1770–2000 [History of modern Hellenism, 1770–2000], 10 vols, Ellinika Grammata, Athens, 2003, i, 185–200.

  35. 35.

    Isabella, ‘Crossing the Mediterranean’.

  36. 36.

    Isabella, ‘Crossing the Mediterranean’.

  37. 37.

    Theodoros Konstantinou Kolokotronis, Diigisis Symvanton tis Ellinikis Fylis apo ta 1770 eos ta 1836 [A description of events (Memoirs) of the Greek race from 1770 to 1836], T. Gritsopoulos (ed.), Athens, 1981, (1st edition 1846), 48–9.

  38. 38.

    Kolokotronis, Diigisis, 131.

  39. 39.

    Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the Worl, Verso, London & New York: 1998, 59–74; Sivasundaram, Waves across the south.

  40. 40.

    Engseng Ho, ‘Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat’, Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 46(2), 2004, 210–46; Nico Israel, Outlandish, Writing between Exile and Diaspora, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000; Sylvie Aprile (ed.), Exil et fraternité en Europe au XIXe siècle, Bière, Pompignac Bordeaux, 2013; Minna Rosen (ed.), Homelands and Diasporas: Greeks, Jews and their Migrations, IB Tauris, London, 2008; Dimitris Tziovas (ed.), Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2009; Zanou and Isabella, Mediterranean Diasporas.

  41. 41.

    Nearchos Fysentzidis, Anekdotoi aftografoi epistolai ton episimoteron Ellinon oplarchigon kai diafora pros aftous eggrafa tis dioikiseos meth’istorikon simeioseon [Unpublished handwritten letters of the most prominent Greek warlords accompanied by several documents of the central administration sent to them with annotations], Tachydromos, Alexandreia, 1893, 49–50; Quoted also in: Papagiorgis, Ta Kapakia, 71.

Select Bibliography

  • Anastasopoulos, Antonis (ed.), Provincial Elites in the Ottoman empire, Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anastasopoulos, Antonis & Kolovos, Elias (eds.), Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760–1850: Conflict, Transformation, Adaptation, Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayly, Christopher, The birth of the modern world 1780–1914: Global connections and comparisons, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaton, Roderick & Ricks, David (eds.), The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797–1896), Ashgate, London, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaton, Roderick, Byron’s war: Romantic rebellion, Greek revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dakin, Douglas, British and American Philhellenes during the Greek War of Independence 1821–1833, Etaireia Makedonikon Spoudon, Thessaloniki, 1955.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleming, Katherine E., The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gallant, Thomas W., The Edinburgh history of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The long nineteenth century, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gekas, Sakis, Xenocracy: State, class and colonialism in the Ionian islands, 1815–1864, Berghahn, New York & Oxford, 2016.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Heraclides, Alexis & Dialla, Ada, Humanitarian intervention in the long nineteenth century: Setting the precedent, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2015.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ilıcak, Şukru, ‘A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1826)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitromilides, Paschalis & Tsoukalas, Constantinos (eds.), The Greek Revolution: a Critical Dictionary, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2021.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konstantaras, Dean J., ‘Christian Elites of the Peloponnese and the Ottoman State, 1715–1821’, European History Quarterly, 43(4), 2013, 628–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kotsonis, Yanni, The Greek Revolution, Epitomé/EFA, Athens, forthcoming 2022.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Karl, Graf Johann Kapodistrias, Kessinger, Berlin, 1864.

    Google Scholar 

  • Philliou, Christine, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an age of revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pizanias, Petros (ed.), The Greek Revolution of 1821: A European Event, Isis Press, Istanbul, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roessel, David, In Byron’s Shadow. Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, Frederick, Bentham, Byron and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sotiropoulos, Michalis & Hadjikyriacou, Antonis, ‘Patris, Ethnos and Demos: Representation and political participation in the Greek world’, Joanna, Innes & Mark Philp, Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean, 1780–1860, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yaycioglu, Ali, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2016.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zanou, Konstantina, Transnational patriotism in the Mediterranean: Stammering the nation, 1800–1850, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, British School at Athens, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Michalis Sotiropoulos

Authors
  1. Michalis Sotiropoulos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michalis Sotiropoulos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Yianni Cartledge

  2. College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Andrekos Varnava

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Sotiropoulos, M. (2022). The Transnational Foundations of the Greek Revolution of 1821. In: Cartledge, Y., Varnava, A. (eds) New Perspectives on the Greek War of Independence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10849-5_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10849-5_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10848-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10849-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation