The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom from Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation by David Brewer. The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 376 pages, 2001, $35.00.
The appearance of this book, written by an English author trained in the Greek and Latin classics, in the very first year of the third Christian millennium is undoubtedly indicative of the fact that the struggle of the Greeks to constitute their nation in the form of a Western-style state independent of a foreign imperial structure remains a subject of perennial interest, not just among Greeks but also among Westerners more broadly. The post-Second World War era witnessed an intensification of scholarly research on the Greek Revolution, from Britain to the then-Soviet Union, as well as in France, Germany, Austria, and the United States. The bibliography on this historical event has now rapidly turned into a small ocean that only specialists can hope to master. Relevant works are not only vastly increasing numerically, but they are also now written in most European languages, as well as in Turkish, although the bulk of the research continues to be in modern Greek. Anyone not a master of the various levels of modern Greek cannot hope to deal with the sources and historical monographs written in these various forms of the language that have been employed from Adamantios Korais to Konstantinos Karamanlis, and will perforce have to rely on other languages, or secondary sources, for access to these writings. Finally, this Greek and international bibliography on the Greek Revolution includes widely ranging and often contradictory methods and points of views: nationalist, anti-nationalist, neo-Marxist, religious, secular, racist (a la Gobineau), propagandist (both local and foreign), structuralist, deconstructionist, and neo-anthropological.
In this respect, it is noteworthy that the author of The Greek War of Independence has practically no introduction that tells us why he undertook this well-written volume on the Greek Revolution, or what he understands the demands of his readers to be. My own reading of his book convinced me that he found this series of events fascinating in and of itself, with not only the internal and external forces being important, but also the character and actions of individual participants worthy of interest and attention. It is interesting that the author does not mention, either in his terribly abbreviated bibliography or in the more than 450 footnotes, the book of his compatriot Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821-1831 (Berkeley, 1973), which covers the same period and in which the chapter divisions and contents are, more or less, similar to those in his own book.
The broader interest in the Greek Revolution is based not only on the inherent interest in the events themselves, as reflected in Brewer’s book, but also because the Greek Revolution was not only a Greek phenomenon. It was, as well, a prismatic reflection of a number of major developments in the historical, economic, and social evolution of western Europe. Finally, it involved playing out two imperial traditions and cultures: those of Byzantium and the Ottoman empire. Brewer has effectively interwoven all these factors into his narrative as well. The Enlightenment and its emphasis on the secularization of knowledge and society, its elevation of the role of the citizen in the political and military life of the state, its creation of the new sciences and critical philology and historiography, furnished Greek intellectuals with a new political vision, which clashed with traditional Byzantine and Ottoman institutions and political theories.
When Alexander von Humboldt founded the University of Berlin, the study of classics became the foundation of higher education in the West. Romanticism added another ingredient to this complex of Western cultural baggage, with the idea of the unique genius of a people reflected in its simpler creations and manifestations. The Balkans soon became a museum for the study of their peoples’ folk poetry and songs, which were thought to be the products of societies closer to nature and therefore pure. People such as Goethe caught glimpses of these Greeks and Balkanites when their merchants visited the great German commercial fairs, and so Westerners began to collect their folk songs.
Finally, the dynamic development of Western industry and international commerce had a profound effect on the Balkans and the Near East. This gave room for the intensive development of shipping and commerce that created new wealth among Greeks, and exposed them to all the movements mentioned above. It was also the era of the creation of princely and museum collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Out of these arose a new strand in traditional Greek culture – a very important one – along with Western ideas, education, and technology, which began to compete with the older traditional culture and values. Out of all this arose the well-known movement of philhellenism, to which Brewer and many scholars have rightfully given considerable political attention.
Accordingly, the Greek Revolution was heavily influenced by contemporary Western institutions and ideologies. The history of any people, society, or culture can never be fully explained on the basis of its internal values and dynamics. External dynamics are of equal importance, and the evolution of any society must be understood as an interplay of these internal and external dynamics. Not the least important of the external dynamics in the Greek case were the events attendant upon the political and military decline of the vast, once powerful (and still militarily significant) Ottoman empire, the balance of powers in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, and their apprehension as to the situation (so marked with the Greek Revolution) that the collapse of the Ottoman state would create in the European political arena.
A great many of these important aspects of the Greek Revolution appear in Brewer’s book. His study and analysis reveal a keen perception of how most of them fit together, their relationship to one another, and their contribution to the dynamics of a revolution that went through constant change in its relations with both the internal and external factors of power with which it had to contend. These power relations often provoked spectacular highs and lows in the fate of the Revolution, as well as in the fate of Ottoman authority and even in the changing diplomatic positions of Russia and England. Brewer is also aware of the gray areas of loyalties, alliances, and economic advantages. This is quite in consonance with the regionalism that marked both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, and it was reinforced by geographic configurations and ethnoreligious factors among the various subjects and rulers of the Ottoman empire. The mountains, small and larger plains, the seas and islands, the elements of accessibility and isolation, played important roles, since both human and geographic factors are decisive in allegiances, betrayals, and smaller interests.
Brewer often focuses on the consequences of such factors in the military domain: the mountains tended to serve as a beginning and refuge, in times of difficulty, for the rebels; the sea became a haven for the Greek islanders and a bane to the Ottoman government; the walled towns felt more nearly secure. Militarily, it was guerilla warfare against large traditional armies; boats armed with “Greek fire” against Ottoman ships of the line; regional revolutionary centers resisting centralized Ottoman authority and large military expeditions. Both the Greek revolutionaries and the Ottoman sultan, having fought each other to a standstill, appealed to external military forces: the sultan to Mehemet Ali, his de facto independent governor of Egypt, and his modern Egyptian army and fleet; the Greeks to the British, in whose authority they placed their revolution. And so the military resolution of the situation was indeed decided by trial of arms in the Bay of Navarino in 1827, when the allied fleet destroyed Mehemet Ali’s armada and set the seal on Greek independence.
This new book does not tell us a new story, for, as indicated above, this tale has been told before. But inasmuch as the Greek Revolution is an epic, it needs to be told and retold over time in a fresh and interesting manner, for the art of narrative is in itself creative and has the potential to attract larger audiences. I believe that the present retelling is extremely intelligent, highly analytical, and to the point. Brewer is indeed an excellent narrator, and most chapters (but not all) have neither one word too much nor too little. The chapters tend to be balanced (there are two rare exceptions in which Brewer attacks the French historian Pouqueville on the myth of when and how the Greek Revolution began, a point settled by scholars some time ago); that is, they are balanced within themselves, and the entire work tends to a balanced picture of the internal and external dynamics of the Greek Revolution. Brewer’s descriptions, never drawn out, tend to be graphic, and his illustration of human cruelty in war, or his depiction of petty and larger self-interests, jealousies, incompetence, cowardice, and bravery are appropriately inserted to characterize both individual and group behavior under the stressful conditions of a long and brutal conflict. The relatively copious materials dealing with many of the heroes and villains of the piece – such as Ali Pasha, Omer Vrionis, Odysseas Androutsos, Ioannis Kolettis, Khurshid Pasha – or the descriptions of the defeat of Dramali Pasha by Theodoros Kolokotronis, the conduct of Kolokotronis’s son in Nafplion, the conflicts and arrest of Kolokotronis, the conduct of both Georgios Karaiskakis and of the Souliotes (in parasitic attendance to Byron in Missolongi), the haughtiness of Ioannis Capodistrias, are all successful and artfully narrated. One is thankful that alongside Brewer’s capable analysis of political and economic factors, largely impersonal, one see a healthy injection of the human personality and self-interest in determining outcomes.
Brewer has succeeded in reducing this extraordinarily complex and bewilderingly detailed uprising, which lasted the better part of a decade, to its essentials so that the unsuspecting reader can follow the flow of events and the political evolution in an understandable manner. Further, he has transformed it by the grace of his narrative style. He is brief, direct, and simple. One of his most useful artifices is the analytical narrative that poses and counterposes the forces at work, evaluates them negatively and positively, and then resolves them with a summation at the end that is both fair and attempts to be objective. Though there are some thirty-two chapters, each one makes for rapid and interesting reading, provides the reader with a relatively straightforward text, and then summarizes and justifies what has been said. This is probably the greatest virtue of Brewer’s narrative style.
There are some minor observations that should be made by way of conclusion. The two introductory chapters form an exception to what is otherwise an interesting and useful book. It is clear from the first and second chapters that Brewer does not have any profound understanding of Ottoman rule in the Greek or Balkan lands. The few data that he manages to give are almost entirely erroneous. For example, the stepmother of Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople, was not Greek; she was the Serbian princess Mara, the daughter of the Serbian despot Brancovich. Also Mehmet did not have Greek “blood” in his veins (his mother was a slave, probably of Jewish-Italian origin, as per Babinger et al), and he did not restore the patriarchate because he had a special “sympathy” for Greeks because of this “fact.” Actually, the restoration of the patriarchate was an example of the traditional, centuries-old method by which Muslim rulers ruled their Christian and Jewish subjects (i.e., by appointing their religious leaders to be heads of their respective communities). Erroneous also is Brewer’s dating of the introduction of the “child tribute” of Christian (and sometimes Jewish) boys for service in the palace and Janissary corps to a later period of Ottoman history. In fact, the history of this child-tribute (devshirme) is now clearly established as having begun in the fourteenth century, a period of vigorous expansion. Similarly, the few works on the Tourkokratia that Brewer uses are outdated and penurious. As for the Greek Enlightenment, all leading works on the subject are missing from his citations. In a future edition, these two chapters should be entirely reworked and rewritten.
Brewer’s work, and it is one for which we should be grateful, belongs to a rather well-established tradition of the historiography of the Greek Revolution as well as of the history of modern Greece. Figures such as Christopher Woodhouse, Richard Clogg, Douglas Dakin, C.W. Crawley, and William St. Clair are among the most illustrious of this English historiographical tradition. A rough tabulation and cursory analysis of the footnotes in his book, however, reveal very clearly that Brewer was overly dependent on this particular tradition. Of a little more than 450 references I have looked at, the ten authors to whom Brewer most frequently refers are: T. Gordon (54 references); G. Finley (28 references); Byron (28 references); Woodhouse (25 references); Trikoupis (24 references); Clogg (22 references); Howe (20 references); Kolokotronis (17 references); Temperley (16 references); and Green (11 references).
Thus in a total of about 450 references in his text, Brewer utilized English authors about 245 times. The only references to original Greek texts are those to the work of Trikoupis. Even Kolokotronis is quoted from an English translation, and Brewer turns to the English translations in a book edited by Richard Clogg for references to other Greek primary sources. This rather crude statistical summary indicates clearly that Brewer relies, and does so preponderantly, on English-language scholarly works and sources. What he offers his reader, therefore, is primarily an excellent analytical summary of the English tradition. As such, his book is both functional and very handy to have. It is, however, much less based on original research on primary sources and does not go beyond the traditional English historiography on the Greek War of Independence.