“The Greek Revolution” captures an important truth, which applies to many nationalist uprisings. Yesterday’s unrealistic goal can become today’s imperative, given the rapid shifts of sentiment that bloodshed and suffering engender
After six years of grinding warfare, economic ruin and atrocities, the calculus shifted. Europe’s masters felt they had more to fear from an Ottoman victory, with all the punitive killings and deportations that would follow. In October 1827 the British, French and Russian navies—notionally bent on enforcing a truce—sank the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet in Navarino Bay. That did not instantly create a functioning Greek state, but it was a matter of time.
A powerful view of the drive for Greek independence is cynical about all this. And some Western philhellenes were indeed horrified when, after arriving in this supposedly enchanted land, they found that in appearance and manners the insurgent Hellenes were not so dissimilar from the Ottomans. One volunteer, Thomas Gordon, was dismayed by seeing a massacre of Muslims and Jews in the Peloponnesian stronghold of Tripolitsa.
And they capture an important truth, which applies to many nationalist uprisings. Yesterday’s unrealistic goal can become today’s imperative, given the rapid shifts of sentiment that bloodshed and suffering engender. Common agony can be an effective glue, as many would-be repressors of rebellion, including the British in post-1916 Ireland, realised too late.Bulgarians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and Balts subsequently claimed and gained their independence.
That bears out Mr Mazower’s portrayal of the insurgency as a truly transformative revolution. Many readers will see parallels with modern times more broadly. After all, in the past 30 years there has been a resurgence—and then a crash—of gung-ho liberal internationalism, which often echoed the pro-Greek sentiments voiced in Western capitals in the 1820s.
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