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Names: Mazis, John Athanasios, author.
Title: Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis and Greek irredentism : a life in the shadows / John Athanasios Mazis.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This study examines the life of Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis (1878-1945), a Greek military officer and undercover agent in the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the author examines his role in Greek irredentism, his ideology, and his other connections to Ion Dragoumis”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054943 (print) | LCCN 2021054944 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793634443 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793634450 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054943
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054944
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
To all those who gave so much for Greece, and received so little in return.
Acknowledgments
The old stereotype of the scholar working alone, cut off from the world and without help from anyone, is not, at least in my case, true. During the long period of time it took to research and write this book, I became indebted to a number of individuals and institutions whose contributions were of great help to me. I am more than happy to express my gratitude for their support here; needless to say, any shortcomings one finds in this work are my responsibility.
I would like to start with my thanks to my home institution, Hamline University. Many thanks to my colleagues at the History Department of Hamline University for accommodating my teaching schedule, which allowed me to travel, research, and write. The staff of Hamline’s Bush Memorial Library helped me while I was compiling many of the secondary sources for my bibliography. Compiling primary sources required a number of trips to Greece; such trips were possible with the help of Dean’s Grants from Hamline’s College of Liberal Arts, Hanna Grants for Faculty Research and Publication, and the Hamline University Humanities Grant. My thanks also to the dean of Hamline’s College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Marcela Kostihova, for her support. Finally, many thanks to Dr. Fayneese Miller, president of Hamline University, whose personal intervention was instrumental in securing a sabbatical leave, which was crucial in bringing this work into fruition.
My research in Greece became possible through the cooperation of the staff of various libraries at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The Souliotis-Nikolaidis papers are housed at the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; I would like to thank the staff of that institution’s library, the archivist, Dr. Natalia VogeikoffBrogan, the research archivist, Dr. Leda Costaki, and especially the reference archivist, Dr. Eleftheria Daleziou. Finally, I am indebted to the late I. K.
x
Acknowledgments
Mazarakis-Ainian, who arranged for me to receive, through the good offices of Dodoni Publishers, the three-volume diaries of his father-in-law Philip Dragoumis.
Also, I would like to thank the hard-working people at Lexington Books whose diligent and high quality work made the publication of this book possible.
Over the years I have been the lucky beneficiary of support, advice, and encouragement from a number of individuals. I would like to thank two fellow historians and friends, all three of us graduates of the University of Minnesota’s doctoral program and advisees of Professor Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien Frary, professor at Rider University, and Theophilus Prousis, professor emeritus, University of North Florida, encouraged me to continue my research in this direction and became a sounding board for my ideas and frustrations.
During numerous and lengthy research visits to Athens, stretching back to my graduate school days, I have been the lucky recipient of the hospitality of Brigadier General Panayiotis Strantzalis (Hellenic Air Force retired) and his wife, Helen. Their superb hospitality has meant the world to me as it made my job possible and easier. Words alone cannot adequately describe my debt to them.
It is only fair, albeit a bit unorthodox, to take the time here to thank someone I never met but who was of paramount importance to my work. I would like to bring to the attention of the reader an individual who was instrumental in keeping the memory of Souliotis-Nikolaidis alive. Without that individual all the studies on Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s activities and thoughts, including this one, would not have been possible. Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis was unlucky in many ways. His professional life did not unfold as he would have liked it to, his dreams for the future of his country and his people did not come true, and the best friend he ever had met an untimely and tragic death. Yet, with all his bad luck, Souliotis-Nikolaidis was very lucky indeed when it came to his marriage. Sofia Soulioti became the guardian and champion of her husband’s legacy. In his handwritten last will and testament, dated November 29, 1943, Souliotis-Nikolaidis entrusted all his papers to his wife with the wish that she and only she would be in charge, allowing or denying access to scholars as she saw fit, and seeing if a book or books could be written from the notes he left behind.1 Sofia Soulioti was a worthy executor of her husband’s will, working diligently to make possible the publication of a few important articles and a book while she was still alive, and another important book completed after her death. My work would not have been possible without the publications she allowed to happen. But Sofia Soulioti went above and beyond the call of duty; she painstakingly copied in nice, neat
Acknowledgments
xi
handwriting all of her husband’s notes—his handwriting was at times atrocious—and presented her accurate copy next to his original, page numbers included, so the researcher could have an easier time! For the copying alone, she has my gratitude!
During the time it took me to research and write this book, life did not stand still. Besides the mundane, everyday events, there were important milestones in my life. My daughters, Misia and Zoe, graduated from college, moved out of the family home, and started their own adult lives. The death of my father, expected but traumatic all the same, became another signpost in my personal life. We even experienced historic, extraordinary, earthshattering events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the demands for major changes in policing following riots all over the world, which originated in my hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Through good or bad times, the constant support of my wife, Holly, remained a steady and calming presence in my life. Thanking her once more here is but a small indication of my debt to her.
St. Paul, MN, May 2021.
NOTE
1. Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis Papers. Gennadius Library Archives, American School of Classical Studies in Athens 25/III,2 68a.
Introduction
This book is the result, in some respects the continuation, of my earlier work on Ion Dragoumis. When I started that work, the name of Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis was completely unknown to me. This surprised me, as I have been studying Modern Greek history for most of my life. Naturally, I cannot remember everything I ever read, and I am sure I encountered many minor historical figures whose names I have forgotten since. At the same time, the name Souliotis-Nikolaidis is rather distinct; unlike names in the English-speaking world, one does not encounter many hyphenated Greek names. As it turns out, my experience is not unique; as far as I can tell from asking non-academic friends and acquaintances in Greece, the name Souliotis-Nikolaidis is unknown to the general public. While his close friend and collaborator Ion Dragoumis is widely known—there are streets and even a municipality named after him, as well as books written about his life and ideas, documentaries, and even a television series dealing with his life— Souliotis-Nikolaidis remains fairly anonymous. There are a number of reasons for that: Ion Dragoumis came from the upper strata of Greek society; he was the scion of a well-known family that counted politicians and men of letters among its members. Ion’s father, Stephen, as an example, was for many years a member of parliament, many times a cabinet minister, and eventually the prime minister of Greece. In comparison, Souliotis-Nikolaidis came from a respectable but obscure middle-class family of modest means. Additionally, Ion Dragoumis became a celebrated man of letters, high-ranking diplomat, and an elected member of the Greek parliament, with a very public and rather scandalous personal life. In contrast, Souliotis-Nikolaidis remained a lowto middle-ranking army officer whose work was, and remains to this day, largely unnoticed. Yet, as I came to realize, the work of this obscure man was anything but ordinary and deserves wider recognition.
Introduction
The first time I encountered the name Souliotis-Nikolaidis was in a reference about him being a friend of Dragoumis. Initially I did not pay much attention, but soon it became clear that Souliotis-Nikolaidis was much more than a friend; he and Dragoumis met when they were in their late twenties but became fast friends indeed, the closest friend each other ever had. The two became close collaborators in both the actions they took in the Ottoman Empire in pursuit of Greek irredentism, but also in formulating ideas about the future of Greece and Hellenism. At first glance, Dragoumis’s ideas appear to be the dominant element in that collaboration. Closer study, however, reveals that Souliotis-Nikolaidis was an independent thinker with a pragmatic streak in his way of thinking, something generally lacking in the ideas of his friend. Just as was the case with their ideas, the actions of Dragoumis in the Ottoman Empire made him the focus of attention then and today. At the same time, the actions of Souliotis-Nikolaidis, while not as well publicized, turn out to be important in their own right. Additionally, while the two worked in close collaboration, Souliotis-Nikolaidis was often exercised his own initiative working independently from his friend. In short, while a close collaborator of Ion Dragoumis, Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis was both an independent thinker and actor. Since Souliotis-Nikolaidis was never as prominent as Dragoumis, his work has not received the attention it deserves. He published a few books during his lifetime, but an account of his actions, based on his papers, was published only after his death. After reading such sources, I came to the conclusion that Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s life and work deserve recognition. While his work on behalf of Hellenism was mostly undercover, its contribution to Greek irredentism was, in my estimation, greater than that of most other actors. At the same time, his ideas, often attributed to his friend Ion Dragoumis, were important in their own right and reflect the ideological currents of Europe at the turn of the twentieth century and the later, post-WWI period.
The end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the time period when Souliotis-Nikolaidis came of age, has been of interest to me for many years. My place of employment, Hamline University, is a small liberal arts college with a four-member History Department. Thus, my colleagues and I need to offer a variety of classes, above and beyond our narrow areas of expertise, to better serve the needs of our students. As a result, over the years, I have offered courses in Russian and Greek history, general European history, and the history of the First and Second World Wars, among others. In the process I have had to explain to my students, and thus think and rethink myself, the impact of political and social ideas which developed in the nineteenth century and manifested themselves in earnest in the twentieth. Issues such as Greek nationalism and irredentism were not isolated
developments, but rather, they fit the general trends in European thought and politics. Alliances and diplomatic maneuvers between the Balkan states were but a microcosm of what was transpiring on a much larger scale in Europe at the time between the various Great Powers. Even questions that appear at first glance to be uniquely applicable to Greece turn out to be of general interest. In the late nineteenth century, some Greek intellectuals started questioning the place of Greece on the East-West axis. Was Greece a Western country? Should it be? If Greece were to be located intellectually in the East, what would be the implications? What was Modern Greece’s role as the inheritor of an ancient civilization? How could Greece expand and incorporate all of the historic Greek lands under one state? Should Greece be following a “Western” or an “Eastern” model? Questions of a similar nature were asked by European thinkers at the same time. It might have been Russians trying to locate their country on the East-West axis, Germans attempting to discover their ancient roots, or Italians aiming for the unification of the peninsula. A number of Greek intellectuals and politicians attempted to answer questions and issues such as the above. Some contributed through their writings and ideas, others through their actions. Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis was one of the rare breed who contributed with both word and deed.
In a historical twist, one of those that make history appear as if it is cyclical in nature, Greece faced at the start of the twenty-first century some similar issues as it did in the early twentieth. Just as the end of the nineteenth century presented Greece, and the world, with a new set of opportunities and problems, so did the end of the twentieth. The end of the Cold War opened new opportunities for a democratic and prosperous future for all, while Greece’s connection with the West—as a member of NATO and the European Union— made its position secure. At that point a major downturn in the Greek economy brought about major negative effects for Greece and the Greeks. All of a sudden, the exuberance of the successful Olympic Games of 2004 gave way to the financial crisis of 2010. Greece was able to weather the storm but not before it was forced to lose part of its sovereignty (at least in financial terms) to its Western allies/creditors/saviors. At that point the old questions reappeared; the same ones asked by, and attempted to be answered by, Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis, Ion Dragoumis, and others a hundred years before. It is for that reason, among others, that I believe the story of Souliotis-Nikolaidis is most compelling and deserves to come to broader attention. In that respect, my current work closes the loop that I started with the examination of Ion Dragoumis’s life. The two friends were not just kindred spirits and close collaborators, but also products and actors of the European and Greek historical evolutions.
The purpose of this work, then, is to present both facets of SouliotisNikolaidis’s life: to examine his ideas and their evolution over the years, as
well as to look at the more obscure and secret part of his service to his country. I will examine Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s ideas and put them in the broader context of similar ideologies popular both in Greece and Europe at that time. More important than his ideas, I will present a critical study of his undercover work on behalf of the Greek state in the Ottoman province of Macedonia, as well as his actions in Constantinople, the center of the Ottoman Empire. This last part is, in my view, fascinating and reveals much about the man’s character and capabilities. Indeed, Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s undercover work could be the basis for a great book of fiction of the spy/action-adventure genre.
My work starts with the last important episode of Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s life, just a few weeks before his death. This will introduce the protagonist to the reader and set the stage to explain why this ordinary man was anything but what he seemed to be. From that short introduction I will proceed with an overview of Modern Greek history from the Greek War of Independence in 1821 to the establishment of the Greek state in 1830 and then the trials and tribulations of Modern Greece in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter will put my work in its proper historical context and help the reader to better understand Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s world, and how his life was shaped by contemporary events and ideas prominent both in Greece and in Europe. My next chapter will follow the early life of Souliotis-Nikolaidis; here I will focus only on the publicly known part of his life. That will include his upbringing and family background and his ordinary career as a low-level infantry officer of the Hellenic Army. The next two chapters will delve into Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s less-known but fascinating life as an undercover agent of Greece in Ottoman Macedonia and Constantinople. In this part the reader will be presented with Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s undercover work and accomplishments. I will devote a chapter to his, and Dragoumis’s ideas for the future of Greece and Hellenism, ideas which motivated and shaped his actions. The next two chapters in the book will follow Souliotis-Nikolaidis’s life past his days of undercover adventures and shed some light on his activities as an army officer and public figure. Most of the information presented is unknown today even in Greece save for among a small group of historians. A note on transliterations, dates, and translations: I utilize the better-known English transliterations of Greek words. When it comes to proper names, I opt either for the transliteration most commonly used or, when known, the one preferred by the individual in question. Until 1923 Greece used the “old” Julian calendar which by that time was thirteen days behind the “new” Gregorian one. In the text, when referring to a pre-1923 date I use the Julian calendar; after 1923 I use the Gregorian. Finally, all translations from Greek into English in the text were made by me.
Chapter One
The End of the Line
March in Greece is an in-between kind of month. Most often it is quite warm and makes one feel that summer is just around the corner. At times though, it can be wet and cold, enough to make spring appear to be still far away. In March of 1945, an old man was lying in bed in a sanatorium just outside of Athens. He had been a resident for over two years having moved there at the time of the German occupation of the country during the Second World War. By now the Germans had left, the war was almost over and so it seemed the life of the gentleman. The sanatorium was not among the better ones in the city. It was clean and adequate, but there were no luxuries. The patients were housed in small rooms with a bed, a nightstand, a couple of chairs, a closet. It was not a place for the indigent, but neither was it the institution of choice for the Athenian elite. The patient in question was an old gentleman, in his late sixties. He must have been a strong and handsome man in his youth; indeed, old photographs depict a tall, dark man in an army lieutenant’s uniform with a military mustache of the type favored by officers at the turn of the twentieth century, strong jaw, and dark, piercing eyes. That was then; now the longretired lieutenant colonel had aged, and other photographs record how time had taken its toll. He was still tall but very thin, his skin had turned pale, and his mustache had turned white. His frail body could not stand and walk for too long, so he spent most of his time in bed. Instead of a uniform he wore pajamas and sometimes, when out of bed, or posing for a picture, an old suit which had seen better days. But the eyes were still there, piercing, fearless, looking straight ahead.
Since the sanatorium was at the outskirts of Athens, and public transportation was still unreliable so soon after the German occupation, the old colonel had few visitors.1 The only regular one was his wife. They had married late in life and there were no children; in her presence the tough old soldier softened;
theirs was a love match.2 They had lived through good times and bad, but the last few years had been challenging to say the least. Living on his army pension was fine but not great during peacetime; but the hyperinflation of the war impoverished them together with most Greeks. They moved from Athens to a small island where life was cheaper and still could barely make ends meet. Finally, the illness that seemed to bother him for decades flared up again and this time there was no easy fix. He moved to the sanatorium and he must have known after a while that he was never coming out again alive. Indeed, as he noted in a tiny notebook that he had to write his thoughts: “I think…that I see visions of the dead in the day or night sky.”3 During the last year or so of his life his constant worry was not about his health and impending death but for the well-being of his wife after he was gone. A lieutenant colonel’s widow’s pension was not enough for the kind of life he would have liked her to have had after he was gone. There was a time, many years before, when he tried to appeal to the powers that be and increase his pension. He made his case to the Ministry of Defense, submitted reports and other documents to buttress his request. He even enlisted the help of friends, retired officers like him, some of whom he knew from as far back in time as when they were all young cadets together in the Greek Military Academy. Political and other
Figure 1.1. Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis in the sanatorium. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Archives, Athanasios Souliotis Papers
The End of the Line 7 considerations caused his appeal to be denied. Now, many years later he was worried that his death would be catastrophic for his wife. She, a respectable middle-class woman, the daughter of a well-known poet, would sink to the lower socioeconomic strata.
Suddenly, out of the blue, there was a welcome development: an unannounced and unexpected visit by a small committee from the Greek Ministry of Defense. There, in the small, cold room of a second-rate sanatorium, retired Lieutenant Colonel Athanasios Souliotis was informed that he had just been promoted in retirement to the rank of major general! The newly minted general was delighted for his personal vindication and for the fact that a general’s pension would be enough for his wife after he was gone. The timing was impeccable; just a few days later, even a few days before the king of Greece officially ratified his promotion, a formality which did not change the fact, Major General Souliotis died; he was sixty-seven years old.
The story has as good an ending as one could expect under the circumstances; at the same time there remain unanswered questions. Who was Athanasios Souliotis, and what had he done to merit such a jump in promotion from lieutenant colonel to major general?4 His file from the Department of Army Archives, Army General Staff, is of little use. There are hardly any notes other than his name, place and year of birth, and name of father. The rest of the information recorded is brief and routine. He was commissioned as second lieutenant in 1900 and was promoted to first lieutenant in 1907, captain in 1912, major in 1914, and lieutenant colonel in 1917. The promotions were in regular intervals, a bit more rapid when Greece was at war from 1912 on, but there is nothing here to denote particular merit; indeed, many an officer of little distinction received such wartime promotions. He was also the recipient of some medals and decorations for his contribution/participation in various wars and patriotic activities but no decoration for valor or other extraordinary actions.5 Souliotis retired in 1922 at his request and at the time he was deemed to be “unfit for general military duties” due to reasons of health.6 During his time in the army Souliotis did not accomplish much; as a lieutenant he fulfilled routine garrison duties and took extensive leave of absence for reasons of health. During the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and then in the First World War, which Greece entered officially in the summer of 1917, his work was away from the actual fighting in various staff/desk appointments. He never commanded a military unit above platoon level in time of peace and never led men to battle, let alone did so with distinction, in time of war. What had he done then to deserve his general’s stars? It turns out this is the story of a seemingly ordinary man and mediocre army officer, but one who in reality led an adventurous and extraordinary life. Souliotis was an active participant in and often close to the highest centers of powers
during some of Greece’s most historic times. His life of adventure deserves to be examined as his life story was of the type that Hollywood uses as inspiration, often labeled as being “based on a true story,” for some of its actionadventure and spy movies.
NOTES
1. The sanatorium was in the area of Melissia, today a thriving and prosperous suburb of Athens, but at that time almost a rural backwater. See Athanasios SouliotisNikolaidis, Ο Μακεδονικός Αγών: Η «Οργάνωσις Θεσσαλονίκης» 1906-1908 Απομνημονεύματα (The Struggle for Macedonia: “The Thessaloniki Organization” 1906–1908 Memoires) (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1959), ιβ’.
2. Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis Papers, Gennadius Library Archives, American School of Classical Studies in Athens, 25/III,66 1. (Henceforth Souliotis-Nikolaidis Archives).
3. Souliotis-Nikolaidis Archives, 25/III, 65. The entry to the little notebook is dated October 9, 1943, not too long after Souliotis entered the sanatorium.
4. Throughout this work I will use the surname by which he was most commonly known at a particular period of time. Roughly speaking, Athanasios Souliotis 1878–1906, Athanasios Souliotis, but also Nikolaidis as needed, 1906–1912, and mostly Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis 1912–1945. While he used the hyphenated name to sign published articles and letters, he never changed his name officially, and all official papers, including that of his promotions, refer to him as Souliotis. Additionally, as is the common Greek practice, while his official first name was Athanasios, friends and relatives called him Thanasi.
5. Souliotis-Nikolaidis Archives, 25/I,2 8–12.
6. Athanasios Souliotis, Γενικό
Αρχείων (Hellenic Army General Staff, Department of Army Archives), File 072.2/27/1350086, 64.
Chapter Two Greece at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
THE GREEKS BEFORE MODERN GREECE
In March 2021 Greece celebrated the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek War of Independence and the creation of Modern Greece. The fact that Greece is only 200 years old might come as a surprise to most of the world which associates Greece with ancient political, military, and artistic glories. Greece and the Greek people are indeed an ancient culture existing in the same general area of Southeast Europe for millennia. Additionally, at some time or another Greek colonies, trade, and cultural exchanges were ubiquitous in the Mediterranean basin and the Black Sea littoral. Such facts and general information as well as ancient Greek myths might be well-known among the general public; what is not as well known is that for most of the long history of the Greeks there was no such entity as one unified Greek state.1 Ancient Greece was not a state but rather a number of city states and territories which, while recognizing a kinship, were often at war with each other. Those states had different political systems ranging from democratic Athens to oligarchic Sparta and everything in between. Eventually, the geographic area known as Greece submitted to the power of Rome and remained a province of that empire for centuries. After the empire split into two, the area of Greece found itself an important part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which became known as the Byzantine Empire. During that evolution the character of Greek culture underwent a number of profound changes. In the political realm, the Greeks lost both their autonomy of action, being subject people, and their preference for small and often democratic states. The other important change occurred as the Greeks, under pressure from the Byzantine state, abandoned their ancient religion and eventually embraced Christianity.
Chapter Two
Naturally, when the Christian Church divided between Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, finalized in A.D. 1054, the Greeks followed the latter. Greece’s major contribution to the Byzantine Empire was its language and culture.2 Starting as an almost identical twin of its Western counterpart, the Eastern/Byzantine Empire morphed and the Greek culture replaced the Latin with the Greek language becoming the lingua franca. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to call the Byzantine Empire a Greek state; it was rather a multiethnic entity where Greek language and culture, as it had evolved from its ancient roots, were dominant. While knowledge of the language was key to high office, such offices were open to all and even some of the emperors such as Leo III the Isaurian and Leo IV the Khazar, to mention just two examples, were often members of various non-Greek ethnic groups. The Byzantine era came to an end in 1453 when the Ottoman Turks, already in possession of most of what used to be the Byzantine Empire, conquered the city of Constantinople itself.3
The Ottoman period, known as Turkokratia in Greek, has been portrayed often as Greece’s dark ages with the Greek people being oppressed and persecuted in every which way. This picture is not corresponding to reality. The Ottoman period lasted, in some parts of what is present-day Greece, for up to 500 years and the conditions changed again and again. Early on, when the Ottoman Empire was at its height, the governing system was rather fair, and the average inhabitant of Greece had hardly any reasons to complain. The tax system was fair, law and order prevailed in the land, and people were left free to live, work, and worship as they chose.4 As time went by, and the empire declined, conditions changed. Local Turkish and non-Turkish elites took advantage of looser control from the center to enrich themselves at the expense of the people. Misgoverning and high taxes became the norm; corruption reigned supreme. But even under those conditions the average Greek was not governed any worse than many of his Western counterparts living under feudalism.5 While the majority of the people were indeed poor and uneducated there was a Greek elite which was able to assert themselves and gain position and wealth. Some educated Greeks who were merchants or lay functionaries of the Orthodox Church, took advantage of the weaknesses of the Ottoman educational system and became high officials of the state. Utilizing their knowledge of foreign languages and their skills as Church administrators some came to occupy such important positions as high functionaries of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the position of the Grand Dragoman, effectively the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, being occupied by Greeks for over 100 years.6 Others became governors of some Ottoman provinces with Wallachia and Moldavia in present-day Romania and the island of Samos having Greek governors for generations. Another category
Greece at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century 11 of successful Greek elite was the one that developed in the Greek populated provinces of the empire. Those were usually prominent local families which were able to amass large landholdings. Since the Ottoman authorities allowed self-government at the local level, wealthy Greek landowners became prominent in local government as well. They were appointed or recognized as such by the authorities, and came to dominate local political, economic, and social life. Next to the two elites described above there was also a mercantile one. The Greeks, and other Balkan people, have a long tradition in trade and many of them continued to prosper under the Ottomans. They were important in the import/export trade; and many invested in crafts and cottage industry. Others became involved in the ownership of merchant vessels carrying goods back and forth all over the Mediterranean world and the Black Sea. Such merchants developed extensive networks with other Greeks and non-Greeks alike throughout Greece, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and often Western Europe as well.7 The final Greek elite emerging at this time was the one associated with the Orthodox Church. In an ironic turn of events the Orthodox Church, a partner of the state in the old Byzantine Christian Empire, continued occupying the same place in the Ottoman Muslim Empire as well. The Orthodox Church was given great leeway in dealing with its flock and as a result the various positions of the Church, either clerical or lay, became positions of power and were sought after. The four elites described above were working side by side, often cooperating, and sometimes competing with each other. It was not unusual for an individual, and in time a number of individuals from the same family, to move from Church administration to the state bureaucracy while having interests in trade and influence at the local level. In order to fulfill its various functions, the Greek elite needed to be educated, and they often pursued that education at Western institutions of higher learning. In the process many Greeks became exposed to the political and social ideas of Europe and they in turn transmitted such knowledge back home. In that respect the political and financial elite of the Greek people became the intellectual one as well.8
The long era of Ottoman domination contributed to cutting off Greece, and most of the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe as well, from the West. As Western societies and political systems evolved, the East was left out of the process. Even such monumental developments as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment did not appear in the East. At the same time, it would be inaccurate to claim that the influence of such events was unknown. To be sure, the average Greek, poor and uneducated, was too busy trying to make a living to pay attention. Even many of the educated elite remained disinterested either because they were also busy living their lives or, especially among conservative circles in the Church, because the
Chapter Two
messages from the West were too radical and thus unwelcome. Nevertheless, the Greek elites did come in contact with western ideas and cultural currents and became a conduit to bring them to the Greek lands. Thus, some of the early artistic movements in Greece are found in the areas controlled by various Italian Republics. In the 1500s and 1600s the literary movement of the so-called Cretan Renaissance was a direct result of, and in connection with, western trends.9 That cross pollination continued in the eighteenth century as the political ideas of the European Enlightenment were brought to Greece; here they were discussed and examined and gave birth to a similar movement that has come to be known as the Neohellenic Enlightenment. This movement, more political than artistic in nature, found fertile ground in Greece. The educated Greek elite, many of them living or visiting the West, embraced the political slogans fashionable at the time. The quest for new and more democratic political systems, individual and communal freedom, were quickly accepted. Some went even so far as to embrace the idea of secularism, something foreign to the Greek society of the Byzantine and Ottoman eras. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution provided new hope and stimuli for many Greeks. Even the Napoleonic Wars, its complexities notwithstanding, appeared to promise a future where the Greeks could be in charge of their own house, free from the by now oppressive Ottoman control, and part of the modern community of Western European nations.10
THE GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
In 1821 the Greek War of Independence exploded, at last or unexpectedly depending on one’s sympathies. The war itself, lasting till 1829, has many of the elements of an ancient Greek drama: heroes and villains, triumphs and tragedies, and even, at the end during the most critical point, the appearance of a type of deus ex machina.
The narrative of that war is a fairly simple one in general terms. The Greeks, inspired by the European ideas which came out of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, revolted against their Ottoman overlords. The revolution was planned and initially financed by Greeks living outside of the Ottoman Empire as well as many of the Greek elites still cooperating with the Ottoman authorities. Initially the Greeks scored some major successes and the Ottoman authorities overreacted by massacring famous Greek leaders as well as many common people. Reports of such excesses painted a negative picture of the Ottomans in the European public opinion. To be fair, the Greeks were not above committing terrible acts themselves but somehow
Greece at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century 13 their misdeeds were swept under the rug.11 At that point the Greeks, as if they wanted to prove that they were indeed descendants of their ancient ancestors, started arguing among themselves and a civil war broke out, while the larger war of independence was still going on. The Ottomans made a comeback supported by the Egyptians, nominally their vassals, and by the late 1820s it looked as if the Greek War of Independence would die down. It was at this point that the aforementioned deus ex machina appeared to save the day for the Greeks.12
When the war started the Ottoman authorities were not alone in opposing it. This was only six years after Napoleon was finally defeated and the forces of reaction were well entrenched throughout Europe. The Great Powers of the day—the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia—did not view revolutions of any kind favorably. Thus, all the powers condemned the Greek revolt, even Russia which like the Greeks, followed Eastern Orthodoxy. The Greeks were viewed and were treated like brigands and pirates; and recognition of their cause was not forthcoming. Even the well-reported massacres by the Ottomans were not enough to induce the official governments to act in a pro-Greek way. It should be noted here that while the Great Powers condemned the Greek revolt there were, even among official circles, sympathetic voices. While the Great Powers were fearful of revolts, such as the ones in Spain and Italy, some believed that the Greek one was an exception due to the religious differences between the subject people and the state.13 There was even a voice that combined idealism with pragmatism. Not only were the Greeks right to revolt against an oppressive regime—noted in an official memorandum by the Prussian historian and official of the Prussian foreign ministry Friedrich Ancillon—but if the Great Powers did not act in unison and help the Greeks the Russian tsar would do so unilaterally under pressure from his people.14 Those voices though were unable to push the Great Powers in a different direction. But while official Europe was hostile, its public opinion embraced the Greek cause.
There were many reasons why European public opinion embraced the Greek War of Independence. To a degree it was the reaction to the conservative post-1815 regimes. After liberal revolts in Italy and Spain had failed there was another opportunity to upset the conservative European order. Many young people, typically more liberal than their elders, were drawn to the Greek cause. Surprisingly, many military men, a class usually not known for its revolutionary fervor, also embraced the Greek cause. Post–Napoleonic European states had decreased the size of their armies and forced into retirement many relatively young military officers. Most of them were deemed to be too sympathetic to Napoleon or the French Revolution; now many of them were looking for a good cause to bring them out of retirement. There
