Abstract
This year marks the bicentennial of the start of the Greek Revolution, which was declared in March 1821 and the formal two-hundred-year anniversary of which was celebrated on Greek Independence Day of this year, 25 March. A flurry of academic conferences and exhibits and a plethora of books connected to this world historic event have been undertaken to mark its anniversary. While the pandemic has put paid to much of the public programming planned around its commemoration, and while many books will likely find themselves still in the pipeline as the bicentennial year draws to a close, Paschalis Kitromilides and Constantinos Tsoukalas have managed to produce a volume that is not only of immense heft (literal as well as figurative – it is some 800 pages in all) but also one that has been impeccably timed, with a 25 March publication date. The precision timing signals that this is a book that takes its subject matter seriously!
This signal is borne out by the extremely thoughtful essays that comprise its pages, covering the Greek Revolution with staggering and fascinating depth from multiple standpoints. The book is divided into six sections: ‘Contexts’ considers the hinterlands of the Balkans, the Ottoman context, and the Greek diaspora and its relationship to and conceptualization of a ‘homeland’. The three essays that make up section II, ‘On the Way to Revolution’, lay out the array of secret societies at work in the wind-up to the Revolution, the different Greek communities of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, and the different ‘Forms of Resistance’ at play, as Vasilis Molos terms them in his excellent essay of the same name. Section III, ‘Events and Places’, walks us through the major sites of action, from Crete, to Macedonia, to Asia Minor. ‘Persons’, section IV, introduces us to the main players, giving each category an essay: clergymen, civilians, diplomats, intellectuals, military leaders and women. Section V, ‘Institutions’, covers the spheres of politics, economics, education, the church, and the press. ‘Ideas and Creative Expression’, section VI, addresses the Enlightenment, learning and print culture, popular culture, and ‘The Revolution as Creative Experience’ – the title of Peter Mackridge's fascinating essay, which focuses on two central poets of the revolutionary period. The book's final section, ‘Resonances’ considers the echoes of the revolution in eight excellent contributions that address commemorations and anniversaries, philhellenism, the Romantic imagination, and the musical and visual narration of the Revolution.
This kaleidoscopic approach might have resulted in chaos, but in the deft hands of the editors, it instead provides the patient reader with a deeply nuanced understanding of the Revolution and the many strands that fed into it, that nourished it while underway, and that continue to this day to constitute its legacy. With close to 40 contributors, it is impossible to give each one the attention that each deserves, so instead I will emphasize instead the book's full impact, which lies less in any specific essay – of unvaryingly high quality as each is – than in the effect of the whole.
In this respect Kitromilides and Tsoukalas’ book is a real exception in the landscape of academic edited volumes, which too often feel either hyper-specialized or disjointed. The editors have managed instead to produce a book that reads like a unified work, even while being comprised of so many perspectives and contributors, and framed from so many different angles. This coherency is helped by a very cogent introductory chapter by Kitromilides, ‘Revolution’, and by the fact that he himself contributes several other chapters, along with one by Tsoukalas. One imagines that a huge amount of time was invested by the editors in their volume's conceptualization and organization. If so, it has amply paid off.
This ‘critical dictionary’ provides a view of the Greek Revolution that shows its origins long before 1821, and its reverberations in the centuries beyond; its central action in Greece, but also the importance of other lands and indeed of the whole Revolutionary World of which it was so central and important a part. The dictionary is a fitting way, indeed, to mark its bicentennial. Its editors state that they hope not simply to provide ‘reliable information’ but also a ‘critical revisiting [and] rethinking’. They do so admirably, and they and their many contributors also provide ample content for further re-framings and questionings for anniversaries and academic studies yet to come.