By DR. FOTIOS MOUSTAKIS, Arab News
In “Hellas,” Percy Bysshe Shelley writes: “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece … we might still have been savages and idolaters.”
Written in the autumn of 1821 at the outset of the Greek Revolution in the Peloponnesus against 400 years of Turkish rule, the poem not only encapsulated Shelley’s deep personal engagement in the Greek struggle, but it also echoed the strong public interest in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and the US.
It appeared that, in countries in which the classical tradition was robust, news of the Greek Revolution almost exactly 200 years ago was thirstily sought after.
But why did the uprising of the Serbs against the Turks a few years earlier not rouse any passionate response or interest in Western public opinion? Was it because the Serbs were not perceived as the heirs to the classical culture of antiquity?
The truth is that many Europeans, especially among the well-educated and in aristocratic circles, perceived the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus and the Aegean islands not as simple, well-intentioned, illiterate peasants and seamen, but as descendants of the ancient Hellenes such as Themistocles, Pericles, Plato and Homer.
The sentiment of Philhellenism (a fascination with the art, politics, religion and society of ancient Greece) had also taken hold in America as well as in Europe. However, despite the support for the Greek cause that sprang up in many European and American towns, the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire progressed slowly.
The governments of the great powers of Europe (England, Russia and France), as well the US, did not rush to assist the Greeks. As there was an unwillingness to risk involvement in a conflict with the Ottoman Empire, a policy of neutrality was initially adopted.
Of course, it would be an oversight if one did not recognize the decisive role of some key Philhellenes such as Lord Byron, John Hobhouse and Edward Everett in the change of attitude in British and American foreign policy toward the Greek revolutionaries.
Byron, the British poet and champion of Greek freedom, ascended from being a Romantic rebel to a statesman devoting himself to the Greek political cause, laying the foundations for a new kind of European policy toward Greece.
Byron’s close friend Hobhouse, as a member of the British Parliament, raised loans for the provisional Greek government during the early years of the Greek War of Independence.
Meanwhile, American classicist Everett, a politician and professor of Greek at Harvard, received a copy of the proclamation of independence issued by the Greek revolutionaries in 1821. He then embarked on a consistent effort to promote the Greek cause in the US and he worked vigorously on its behalf.
In the end, it was not the shocking execution of Gregory V, the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, who was hanged at the gateway of the Patriarchate on Easter Day 1821 and whose body was dragged through the streets of the city and thrown into the Bosphorus, that led to the intervention of the three great maritime powers of the day, Great Britain, France and Russia.
It was not even the horrific devastation of the island of Chios in April 1822, when Ottoman vengeance led to the slaughter of 27,000 Greeks, while 43,000 more were sold into slavery.
Rather, the change of policy among the great powers can be explained by European rivalry and competition, power politics and the collapse of the Holy Alliance, which gradually shifted the political scene in favor of the Greeks.
It was a decision made out of geopolitical necessity following the realization that the Greek revolt was draining Ottoman resources and destabilizing the balance of power in the strategically important eastern Mediterranean region. From the British and French point of view, the imminent threat of a unilateral Russian intervention in Greece and the Balkans was also too great to be ignored.
The establishment of the Greek state was demonstrative of a change in European policies and heralded a new era.
Dr. Fotios Moustakis
The key moment in the Greek War of Independence came with the decision of the Sublime Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire) to reject any peace plan, which led to the Treaty of London (1827) between England, Russia and France, where the three states agreed that a military intervention would be authorized if the Porte did not accept the truce.
The establishment of the Greek state was demonstrative of a change in European policies and heralded a new era, with the creation of many nation states during the 19th century. Furthermore, it also led to the questioning of the legitimacy and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, which had been valid before the Greek Revolution and had been endorsed by the Holy Alliance.
Yet a pertinent lesson of the Greek War of Independence is the surprising outcome of the emergence of the principles of national self-determination, as endorsed in the London Treaty of 1830.
• Dr. Fotios Moustakis is Associate Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Centre for Sea Power and Strategy, University of Plymouth.
