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Mediterranean democracy, Year 2
Athens, 10-11 January 2014
University of Athens: 6 Themistocleous Street
Present, Greek specialists (indicating areas of main interest): Antonis Anastasopoulos
(Ottoman-Greek world), Eleni Calligas (day 2 only) (Ionian islands), Dimitris Christopoulos
(day 2 only) (citizenship), Antonis Hadjikyriacou (Ottoman Cyprus), Marios Hatzopoulos
(Ottoman Balkans, concepts of national identity), Anna Karakatsouli (book history, war of
independence), Ioannis Kyrakantonakis (Orthodox church), Sofia Matthaiou (intellectuals and
new Greek state), Marinos Sariyannis (Ottoman political thought), Lycourgos Sophoulis
(Greek mid C19 politics and religion), Michalis Sotiropoulos (University of Athens and
formation of Greek state and culture), Ioannis Tassopoulos (Greek constitutional and legal
history), Konstantina Zanou (Greeks and national identities), Paschalis Kitromilides (Greek
enlightenment), Yanna Tzourmana (British and American cultural and intellectual history),
Perikles Vallianos (Hegel, German idealism, political thought), Socrates Petmezas (Greek
economic and social history), Nassia Yakovaki (formation of the public sphere in Europe,
including Greece).,
With other specialist interests: Andrew Arsan (Middle East), Gianluca Fruci (Italy), Caitlin
Gale (North Africa), Stella Ghervas (Europe, Russia, Balkans), Peter Hill (Middle East)
And: Joanna Innes, Maurizio Isabella; Mark Philp, Eduardo Posada Carbo
Apologies, or expressed interest but didn’t appear: Nikos Alivizatos, Sakis Gekas,
Leonidas Kallivertakis, Kostas Kostis, Mark Mazower, Margarita Miliori, Grigoris Molyvas,
Tassos Pachlivanidis, Michalis Psalidopoulos, Elpida Vogli, Aggelis Zarokostas// Marc
Aymes, Adam Mestyan, Florencia Peyrou
DAY 1
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Joanna Innes explained that the project had been running for ten years; currently it was
operating on the basis of three years of Leverhulme funding, which allowed them to hold a
series of meetings across southern Europe every year. This was the second Greek meeting.
The object was both to trace how certain themes played out in a Greek context, and to allow
some visitors specialising in other regions to develop and offer their comparative
perspectives.
The project was concerned with how democracy became modern: with how a concept that in
1750 was understood to be applicable primarily to the ancient world became an important
category for understanding the modern world. Tracing these process entailed attending to
vocabulary, concepts and practices: words acquired new meanings (so e.g. it became possible
to term a representative system a democracy); they were embedded in new discourses (e.g.
about sovereignty, the people and the nation), and new practices developed, sometimes in an
attempt to give substance to concepts (such as representative government, mass voting, public
meetings and petitioning).
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The first phase of the project, which had been pursued from 2004-10, had focussed on the
North Atlantic (America, France, Britain and Ireland). A major conclusion from that had been
that vocabulary, concepts and practices developed in very different ways in these different
places: there was no one standard trajectory by which democracy acquired modern meaning.
In this second, Mediterranean phase of the project the object was first, to explore more
variations on the theme: to add a new set of places into the mix. It was not supposed that
these places were necessarily more like each other than they were like other places.
Nonetheless, the possibility that they, or some of them, might share significant features also
seemed worth exploring. Possible common features of interest included: histories of past
greatness; especially in early C19, subordination to northern ‘great powers’ (Britain, France,
Austria, Russia); in that context, facing simultaneously of challenges of asserting effective
state sovereignty and coming to terms with new (and contentious) theories of popular
sovereignty.
The project took words as its guiding thread: the idea was not to impose our idea of
democracy but to see what they called democracy (with whatever positive or negative
valence). Yet it was not conceived as a study of word-use only. Rather, the object was to look
at language in context: to see what descriptive or evaluative work it was being asked to do.
People who had been invited to this conference spanned the greater Greek world and not just
what became the Greek state: they included people interested in Thessaly, the Ionian islands,
Crete and Cyprus. Among visitors were people with interests in various parts of the eastern
Mediterranean: Italy, the Middle East and North Africa. Ideally Spain and Portugal would
also have been represented, but people invited from those places hadn’t been able to come.
Although Greece had a distinctive intellectual and cultural, as well as institutional heritage,
some parallels could probably be drawn between its experiences and patterns of development
and patterns elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, and in southern Europe more generally.
In retrospect, these countries all tended to be seen as late developers, economically, and
therefore, it was sometimes suggested, politically. However, it was not clear that was how
things were seen, or how they were, in this period. In the early nineteenth century, as the
Restoration order clamped down on northern Europe, some liberals and radicals there saw the
south as a frontier of opportunity: the region in which the conservative Vienna settlement was
most likely to crack. And in fact Spain (at intervals in early C19, and then from 1869) and
Greece (from 1844) did institute forms of universal suffrage at a time when these were by no
means standard elsewhere in Europe. Rather than asking if these arrangements lived up to
modern standards was perhaps a less worthwhile exercise for historians than simply enquiring
into how they did work, novel as they were, in the context of their times.
She concluded by noting that each paper-giver was asked to speak for 20 mins. Each paper
would be followed by 30 mins of free discussion.
Marinos Sariyannis (FORTH, Crete), Ottoman discourse – [the following represents a
slightly abbreviated version of his written paper]
Autocratic monarchy seems to have been the standard way of rule the Ottoman authors could
conceive. The traditional image the Ottomans had for their state or any other was provided by
the “administration according to the Holy Law” (siyâset-i şer’iyye, a notion coming from Ibn
Taymiyya and analyzed in an Ottoman context by the much-read Dede Çöngi Efendi, for
instance) or the neo-Aristotelian concepts of the “virtuous state” (madina al-fazıla), as
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formulated by al-Farabi and passed to the Ottoman tradition through the Persians Nasireddin
Tûsî and Devvanî. Kınalızâde explained that a political community couldbe either virtuous or
imperfect (medîne-i fâzıla, medîne-i gayr-ı fâzıla). The virtuous state is only of one kind,
while the imperfect ones have three forms: In the “ignorant state” (medîne-i câhile), it is the
bodily powers rather than the faculty of reason that lies behind the need for association
(accordingly, there can be the “irascible ignorant state” or the “appetitive ignorant state); in
the vicious or wicked state (medîne-i fâsıka) the faculty of reason exists among the people,
but faculties of the body prevail; finally, in the “erroneous state” (medîne-i dâlle) people use
their reason but consider wrong for right. The “erroneous state” can be either infidel, like the
Frankish or Russian states, or Muslim, like the Kızılbaş (Sürh-ser, meaning Safavid Iran).
Such deviations can be explained by the fact that humans vary enormously in terms of
intelligence and morality. But when copying or drawing from the earlier tradition of NeoAristotelian political philosophy, Ottoman authors generally omitted all reference to the
various types of government, focusing only in what they perceived as self-evident, i.e.
government by a king.
A key concept moderating the king’s absolute rule is consultation or meşveret. Hasan Kâfî elAkhisarî, for instance, writes that the real purpose of consulting is to show the sunnet among
the community of believers. Not only the king must take counsel with his viziers, but they
also should take advice from ulema, as well as other intelligent and sagacious people. A key
notion for the right, or indeed the duty of consultation is the precept of “commanding right
and forbidding wrong” (emr-i ma’rûf ve nehy-i münker); this traditional Islamic obligation
was usually a tool in the hands of “fundamentalist” movements with a view to reinstalling
orthodox life, such as the (in)famous Kadızadelis throughout the seventeenth century. Yet the
same concept was used by Dihkânîzâde Kuşmânî in 1806, when he tried to establish his right
to speak against the opposers of the nizam-ı cedîd reform: he admitted that he was neither a
soldier nor a receiver of state salaries; but, on the other hand, even an itinerant dervish is still
a Muslim, and all Muslims are similarly responsible (since the Holy Book was not given in
different forms to the travelers or the nomads) for “commanding right and forbidding
wrong”; and if one raises the objection that ulema should know better, the author argues that
unfortunately they do not care, and all the more so, this neglect to command right and forbid
wrong from their part could be disastrous.
A wind of change seems to blow by the mid-seventeenth century, linked to what Baki Tezcan
named the development of “the second Empire”; the idea that societies and states are not
static but have to respond to their environment gained place. The beginning of this current is
marked by the introduction of the Ibn Khaldunian theory of society stages by Kâtib Çelebi.
This concept of change, however, still passed through the absolute rule: according to Kâtib
Çelebi, what is needed is a “man of the sword” (sâhib-i seyf) who will “make people submit
to the right way”. Yet this absolute rule should take into account the customs of people;
rulers should not force their subjects to comply even with Holy Law, because divisions in
mankind are inherent and what a wise man should do is to get to know the beliefs and tenets
of every class of people in every country, rather to try to impose his own.
Still, Ottoman authors continued to find it very difficult to perceive a form of government
other than monarchy, although they had deep conscience of the limitations of the latter and its
potential and checks and controls. One of the first Ottoman descriptions of Venetian power,
that made by Mustafa Celalzâde in the mid-sixteenth century, barely mentions “the chieftains
of Venice” (Venedik beğleri). An anonymous chronicler writing in the beginnings of the
eighteenth century mentioned the “kings of the Netherlands” (Felemenk kıralları); possibly
though meaning the stadtholder William III of Orange. However, his contemporary Defterdar
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Sarı Mehmed Paşa writes of “the commonwealth of the Netherlands” (Felemenk cumhûru).
By this time, the same expression was also used for Venice, although no less than Na’ima
speaks occasionally of the “king of Venice”, i.e. the Doge. As for the English Revolution, its
only known description belongs to Müneccimbaşı Ahmed b. Lutfullah (d. 1702), who used
European sources in his universal history up to 1672 and reported the English civil war as
follows: “In the year 1648 the English people (Angliya kavmı) revolted (hurûc... edüp) and
killed [King Charles] bringing [his dynasty] to an end; henceforth the English people did not
appoint any king upon themselves (üzerlerine bir kıral nasb etmeyüp); apart from this
extinction (of the line, inkıraz) we know nothing more of their affairs”.
Na’ima’s famously alleged that one of the leaders in the 1703 revolt wished “to turn the
Ottoman state, ruled for four centuries by kings, into a popular assembly and a state of
crowds, like the polities of Algiers or Tunis” (istiklal-i müluk ile mazbut ve muntazam olan
devlet-i Osmaniye’yi... cumhur cemiyyeti ve tecemmu’ devleti kıyafetine koyup). Thus,
whatever they knew of practice elsewhere, it was again political formations in their own
cultural milieu they turned to whenever they wished to describe a government other than
monarchy.
We have to wait until the first decades of the eighteenth century to find a renaissance of the
Aristotelian theory of the kinds of government –together with one of the first instances of
“democratic rule”. And it is a Hungarian convert, İbrahim Müteferrika (ca. 1674-1745),
educated as a priest either in a Calvinist or a Unitarian college and ultimately founding and
directing the first Ottoman Turkish printing house in 1727, who re-introduces this thread of
thought. In his Usûlü’l-hikem fî nizâmi’l-ümem, composed in 1731 and printed almost
simultaneously, he advocated military reforms in the European style, but first he laid down a
general theory of society. Like his predecessors, he stated that the various peoples are
naturally inclined to submit to wise rules necessary in order to control injustice, and every
community is subject to a king (her cema’at bir melike tâbi’ olub). Thus, people have created
various states and appointed rulers (hâkimler ta’yin etdiler) by various names –caliphs,
Sultans, kings, khans, Kaisers or Czars.
Yet, proceeds Müteferrika, “as everyone knows”, the religion and disposition of the kings
vary; the same applies for the forms administration of human affairs may take, and that is
why the structures of states and societies differ from each other. In this matter, most
philosophers follow the views of three great philosophers of old, namely: (i) Plato’s view;
according to Plato, people must submit and obey to a wise and just king. People trust all their
state affairs to his hands and must obey to his decisions and orders. For a person to be
established in this place, a noble lineage (neseb-i âlî) is necessary. Most of the states in the
world administrate their affairs in this way; Greek philosophers named this kind of state
“monarchy” (munârhıyâ). (ii) Aristotle’s view; rulership must be in the hands of the
magnates of the state (a’yan-ı devlet), who choose a head (re’is) from among them. In this
way, nobody is raised above the rest by lineage or personal merits, and the head of this
government cannot part from justice by acting independently. This form of state is called
“aristocracy” (aristokrâsiyâ –from Aristotle’s name, claims Müteferrika) or “rule of the
magnates” (âmme-i tedbir-i ayan); an example is the state of Venice. (iii) Demokratis’ view;
administration should be in the hands of the people (saltanat tedbir-i re’ayanın olmak
gerekdir), so that they may avoid by themselves the oppression of anyone among them. In
this form, government is conducted by election (tarik-i tedbir ihtiyardır): people from every
ten villages elect one or two whom they deem wise and experienced, and send them as
representatives (muhtar) to the centre of the government. In their turn, these representatives
elect one from among themselves, and in the end a council of ten elected persons administers
state affairs. These ten persons sit in the council for one year; after this term another ten
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people are elected in the same way; they inspect the accounts of the previous year’s
government and punish those that have oppressed people. This form of state, called
“democracy” (dîmukrâsiya) or “rule of the elected” (âmme-i tedbir-i mehârîn), is used in
England and the Netherlands. All nations and religions in general, concludes Müteferrika, are
governed according to one of these three forms of state.
Müteferrika’s introduction of the term and concept of democracy did not find any immediate
followers. Even the French Revolution was not perceived immediately as a major challenge
for Ottoman thought.The earliest Ottoman source for the revolution is to be found in the
dispatches of Ratib Efendi, envoy to Vienna during 1792: he describes it as “the rising of the
rabble”, led by the “Jacobin bandits”. Although he attributes the revolution mainly to the bad
finances of the French state, Ratib Efendi notes that the insurgents had “tasted freedom”. He
even translates Jacobin arguments, claiming that kings are “human beings like us” and that it
is “us that make them kings”. In his chronicle, composed from 1808 to 1814, Câbî Ömer
Efendi writes that Napoleon “appeared in the French state and killed its king (França
Devleti’nde zuhûr ve kralı i’dâm), whose brother fled”. The other European countries
declared that “France became a democracy” (França cumhûr makûlesinden oldu) and that
Bonaparte “was not [a king] from a dynasty of many generations” (eben an ceddin kral
değildir); to which he answered: “Kings did not descend from the skies with the angels. I will
work and make them recognize me as their Emperor” (kral olanlar gökden melâike ile
inmedi. Ben kendüme imparatorumuzsun [dedirtince] bu maddede çalışırum). Elsewhere in
Câbî’s work, we read again that Bonaparte was a “rebel” (zorba) who killed the king and
took his place, something that could set a bad example for other countries as well; this
discussion contains an interesting distinction between an usurper and his state (“we still shall
not call this state Bonaparte’s state, it is always the state of France”). Earlier documents on
the issue of the French republic’s official recognition speak of the “communal state”
(cumhurluk) of France, which has to be recognized by one of the “kings” or “states” (kırallar,
devletler) of Europe.
Closer to the source, as he was the Ottoman ambassador to Paris from 1797 to 1802, Moralı
Ali Efendi speaks of “the French republic” (França cumhûrı) already in the first sentences of
his report. He notes that “the French nation, capricious like the colour of the chameleon, had
been divided into three estates which went one against another”; he marks the anniversary of
the execution of Robespierre, from whose “tyranny and oppression the French were saved”
and describes in some detail and in a rather neutral way the function of the Directoire
(müdîrân-ı hamse) and of the Council of Five Hundred (beşyüz vükelâ, beşyüz meclisi).
Another memorandum, composed in 1798 by the reisülküttâb Âtıf Efendi, contains a detailed
description of Napoleon’s Italian campaign, urging the Sultan to take sides against France.
Âtıf Efendi stresses the atheist side of the Revolution: followers of the well-known atheists
(zındık) Voltaire and Rousseau, he writes, introduced to the common people ideas such as the
abolition of religions and the sweetness of equality and democracy (müsâvât ve cumhûriyet),
drawing all the people to their cause. Thus they succeeded in abolishing the churches, killing
or persecuting the monks and more generally persuading the commoners (‘avam-ı nas) that
“this equality and freedom” (serbestiyet) was the sure means for total worldly happiness. Âtıf
Efendi argues that there is an imminent danger of these atheistic ideas to expand with ease
into “all states and republics” (kâffe-i düvel ve cemâhîr), “of true or false religions”: the
French have translated “what they call [the proclamation of] human rights” (hukûk-ı insan)
and try now to incite every people and nation against their king (matbû’ları olan mülûkun
aleyhine). He notes repeatedly that they intend to turn all states into democracies (“i.e.
interregna”: cemî’ düveli birer birer cumhûriyete ya’ni fitret sûretine tahvil etmek), as they
did with Genoa or the Helvetic Republic; if they succeed, they will renew one-third of the
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members of the consultation bodies (erbâb-ı meşveretlerinin tecdîd-i sülsi içün nasb ve
ihtiyar olunacak vükelâ-yı millet) and most of the new members will belong to the Jacobin
sect, known for their tendency to execute and confiscate. As shown by the example of the
Ionian islands, which were turned “under the regime of freedom” (serbestiyet sûreti), this
could be threatening the Ottoman lands as well.
The most intriguing study of the French Revolution’s significance for the Ottoman Empire
comes from Şânî-zâde Mehmed Atâ’ullah Efendi (ca. 1770-1826), one of the most
insteresting figures of Ottoman intellectual life in the period preceding Tanzimat. Şânî-zâde
had a good education in religious studies, medicine and mathematics and knew quite a few
European languages (including Greek), apart from his usual Arabic and Persian. Şani-zâde’s
understanding of European languages, just like İbrahim Müteferrika’s almost a century ago,
seems to have made the difference with his predecessors, at least as far as it concerns
information (for his other views belong more to the known Ottoman ideological currents,
including a strong influence by Ibn Khaldun).
Trying to explain French victories under Napoleon, Şani-zâde moved beyond military
reasoning, attributing the “perfection of the military arts” to the “national unity” (ittifâk-ı
milliyye) exhibited by the French: a tribe that used to have fallen into lethargy, was made
strong, enhanced by “patriotism, fraternity, equality and liberty” and under the motto
“freedom or death” (el-hürriyetü ve’l-mevtü). Elsewhere, he speaks again of the French
Revolution: because of the words of some philosophers (feylesof), the inhabitants of Europe
(Frengistan) started to seek equality and parity (tesâvî vü i’tidâl) and thus threatened the
safety of their old notables (ser-i kâr ve ricâlleri), turning the high against the low; everybody
aimed to seize the life and property of one another in order to obtain any whim of theirs
(tasarruf-ı keyfe mâ-yeşâ’).
He admits that, while in the old times all “classes and persons, strangers and peasants knew
their limits and their duties, which were recorded and registered, now, and due to the general
changes that came with the time, there arose the need for a reordering (tekmîl-i nizâm), that
would deal with the general idleness and lethargy prevailing in all affairs. But on the whole,
Şani-zâde’s attitude toward the revolutionary ideas is negative. One of his most concrete and
long pieces of political thought is contained in his discussion of the 1821 Greek Revolution,
forming a kind of introduction to the narration of the events. There he cites Fâzıl (Şamseddin)
Şehrezûrî (late 13th century), who talks of the four kinds of government “according to
Aristotle”: tyranny (siyâsetü’l-galebeti), which ends in the humble and ignorant taking over
the country, aristocracy (siyâsetü’l-kerâmeti), or the government of those seeking wealth and
honour, government of communities (siyâsetü’l-cemâ’ati), or the “government according to a
common law (‘alâ vefkı’l-kânûni’n-nâmûsiyyi’l-mevzû’i) shared by various groups (fırak)”,
and monarchy (siyâsetü’l-meliki), which is “the government of governments” and the state of
the virtuous. However, goes on Şani-zâde, there are times where such evil people may
effectively pursue their selfish ends; they may succeed into entering the ranks of the military
and thus destroy the worth of the whole army.
The form of democratic government also appears in another excursus, where Şani-zâde
describes the events in Europe after Napoleon’s death. He narrates the Liberal Triennium in
Spain (1820-1823) as a demand for “Demokratis’ law” (kânûn-ı Dimukrâtî üzere; cf. İbrahim
Müteferrika’s discussion), i.e. for an administration by unanimous consent with the votes of
the representatives of the community (vükelây-ı cumhûr re’yleriyle ittifâk-ı ‘âmme sûretinde
ru’yet) or, in other words, for a “democratic rule” (cumhûriyyet kâ’idesi; a little later, Şanizâde uses the term “democratic government”, hükûmet-i cumhûriyye). The reaction of the
other European states (the Congress of Vienna) is interpreted with their fear for general
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insurrection, since there was danger of the peoples preferring this kind of rule by freedom
(serbesiyyet) to the “absolute government or monarchy” (“monarşi” ta’bir etdikleri hükûmeti müstakılle).
The notion of consultation kept developing. In a traditional way, Müteferrika in the late
seventeenth century included taking decisions without counsel (müşavere), as well as
avoiding counsel by people of knowledge and experience among the reasons of Ottoman
military defeats. A century later the influence of the French Revolution is evident: Şani-zâde
sets on to describe a council or rather a series of councils (mecâlis-i meşveret) summoned for
dealing with the 1821 revolution, with the participation of “a great number of people, as there
was an assembly of [even lower janissary officials], the wardens of the bazaar and other
guilds in crowds”. This unusual decision caused some surprise; and even if this could have
been a device for obtaining information, Şani-zâde notes, the benefit from simple information
is by itself a trifle. Now “some wise have argued that the proper administration of public
affairs (umûr-ı cumhûr) duly needs the consent of all individual; and in some organized states
(düvel-i muntazama) this advice of wisdom has caused ease and security among subjects and
sovereigns. In these countries, and because this practice has been followed in a great degree
in their state laws, whenever need arises two classes of consulting experts, namely the state
servants and the representatives of the subjects (hademe-i devlet ve vükelây-ı ra’iyyetden
‘ibâret iki sınıf erbâb-ı meşveret), discuss matters in a free manner and confer their view of
the best possible course by way of a petition; their sovereigns either approve it and put it into
execution or, if they discern any weakness or conceive any better course, they always have
the power to do what they deem best. In the aforementioned states, both important and trivial
affairs are conducted this way, without complaints or quarrels; however, to be elected by the
people (muhtâr-ı nâs olmak) a representative must belong to the experts who have knowledge
and wisdom, who are literate and can discuss affairs; and the right of a representative to enter
and serve in the councils of power (mecâlis-i hall ü ‘akd) depends on such qualifications. In
the opposite case, there will be no sense whatsoever for the Exalted State –where the Sultan
has his own independent opinion- except that the high councils of viziers and ulema and the
assemblies of the higher notables will fall without reason into the shape of democracy
(cumhûriyyet), with the vain quest for majority (‘abes yere teksîr-i sevâd)”. Decisions in the
Ottoman Empire, Şani-zâde concludes, must depend of the will of the Sultan of the Muslims
according to the Holy Law; only in some important affairs it is an ancient custom that only
viziers, ulema and state servants consult and give their opinion in accordance with the Sunna
and the religious precepts. Şani-zâde records his opposition to such enlarged assemblies in
other occasions as well; he argues that there must be some wisdom in the creation of certain
old arrangements for decision-making, as “not all our ancestors could be mad so that we
despise them”. Every man tends to think that he holds the most perfect opinion; but the
proper way of action would be that everybody looks his own business and abstains from such
envy and selfishness.
“Consultation”, thus, tended to be used not in corroboration of but in contrast with the
concept of freedom; Şani-zâde himself uses the word (meşveret) for summit meetings such as
the Congress of Vienna, while much later the increasing influence of the ulema in the
Tanzimat rhetoric led to the newly introduced “freely conducted system” (nizâm-ı
serbestâne) being replaced by the more traditional “consultation system” (usûl-ı meşveret), as
a description for constitutional rule in the Hamidian era.
Discussion:
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Paschalis Kitromilides said that he had heard the rising of Christians against Turks was
interpreted as in itself a sign of decline.
Marinos said more to explain why the Ottomans were failing to repress them. He noted that
in early C19, another part of Ibn Khaldun came into fashion: the notion that as nomads settled
down and formed states, civic spirit declined. This notion was much drawn on in the early
stages of the Greek rising: it was argued that the Ottomans had become too settled, and
should become nomads again. The sultan decreed that a state of nomadism should prevail:
every Muslim should be armed; laws were also passed against luxury.
Several comments were collected. Since Marinos responded to each in turn, this report
repositions his comments after each question.
Ioannis Kyrakantonakis asked about the continuing relevance of earlier Ottoman political
thought in the Tanzimat period. Marinos said that in Islamic theory, the ruler was not
absolute, but a delegate bound by holy law or justice (these constraints were especially
stressed in the Persian tradition, and not always with a religious emphasis). Legitimacy
derived from right conduct. This was a continuing theme.
Stella Ghervas considered there was a philosophical opposition between a
“republican”/secular, and a “patrimonial”/religious view of politics. In the “republican” view
of society (from “res publica”, the affairs of the state belong to the public), political
legitimation was based on a social contract built from the bottom up, instead of being
conferred by God. Also she was curious that at one point he had set up a contrast between
aristocracy and monarchy; it seemed to her that they were conjoined at that time, but that
democracy was really the antonym of aristocracy: democracy implied that the political rights
should be extended to the largest number, while a monarch could stay in power in a
constitutional monarchy. Marinos said both democracy and aristocracy were antonyms of
monarchy.
Nassia Yakovaki wanted to know if the Ottoman for democracy was cumhur or some
version of ‘democracy’. Marinos said that the latter seemed to be used only for direct
translation.
Antonis Anastasopoulos said that he was very interested in one passage in the account of the
English revolution, in which the common people seemed to be attributed agency. He
wondered how common that was. Marinos said there was an echo of what was said about
early elections of caliphs.
Ioannis Tassopoulos wasn’t clear what basic ideas informed the idea of democracy. Was it
seen as an expression of natural law? Or did it derive from Aristotle? Marinos said
references to Aristotle in this context were extremely rare.
Maurizio Isabella noted that in C18 France, the Ottoman empire was sometimes described
as a democracy; in C19, it was praised by some as liberal. He wondered if the Ottomans were
aware of these characterisations. Marinos said that although Tezcan says that the Ottoman
state can be considered to have been a kind of democracy, he doesn’t think this was their selfimage.
Michalis Sotiropoulos noted that democracies seemed to appear out of crises, and wondered
if they were seen as an effect of crisis. Marinos said that it was only represented in that way
by some authors, and the French revolution wasn’t seen in those terms: they were seen
actively to be trying to incite revolts elsewhere. There was a fear they might try to stir revolt
in Ottoman lands.
9
Marios Hatzopoulos would have liked a summary at the end of the paper to pull its
arguments together. Would it be possible to summarise in a few words what the Ottoman
conception of democracy was? Marinos said that it was not conceptualised as a possibility in
an Ottoman context; only discussed in relation to other states.
Anna Karakatsouli (University of Athens) Discourses of rebellion and independence [the
following represents a slightly abbreviated version of her written paper]
She planned to focus on the period preceding the Greek War of Independence, i.e. on the
cultural moment described as the Modern Greek Enlightenment, and to survey modern
historiography on its contribution to the Greek rising. The ‘Modern Greek Enlightenment’
refers to the sense of intellectual awakening and import into Greek thought and education of
models originating in the philosophical and scientific culture of Western Europe, esp. from
late C18. As demonstrated by Professor Kitromilides, these included a) the transition from
Neoaristotelianism to rationalism, b) the introduction of the attitudes, temper and methods of
modern natural science, c) the secularization of historical thought and the transition to a
perception of a distinct historical lineage that connected the modern Greeks with classical
Hellenism, and d) the emergence of a new geographical literature that focused on Western
Europe.
One feature was the transformation of political thought, with the development of conceptions
of citizenship and of the nation-state, leading to a liberal republican vision. The 1790s was a
period of radical aspirations and liberal hopes, marked by emphasis on the opposition
between enlightened despotism and political radicalism, and debate over whether the
liberation from Ottoman rule should come through foreign intervention or by the Greeks
themselves. Liberal aspirations became dominant among merchants, esp in the Greek
diaspora, and intellectuals. After the Napoleonic wars, economic slump and international
competition hit Greece’s maritime commerce hard. By 1820 the sharp decline of profits had
induced even wealthy merchants to seek membership in the Philiki Etaireia.
Bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment declared not only the right to armed resistance
against an unjust ruler and the hope for national independence but also the demand to
reconstruct Greek society according to the standards of the free countries of Western Europe
and North America; latterly these ideas were connected with anticlerical feeling and the
prospect of social transformation. Constantinos Dimaras singles out five key texts: the
Anonymous of 1789 (a violent parody of the clergy), Korais’ Mémoire sur l’état actuel de la
civilisation dans la Grèce (Paris, 1803), and the anonymous Rossagglogallos (1805),
Hellenic Nomarchy (1806) and the pamphlet Kritonos’ Reflections (1819), a condemnation of
sumptuary practices of the higher clergy burned publicly in Constantinople by order of the
Patriarch.
Radical republicanism is best represented in the works of Rhigas Velestinlis (1757-1798),
who made his living as clerk of well-known Phanariots and as a successful businessman by
moving between Bucharest, Vienna, and Wallachia. While in Vienna, he embarked on an
ambitious publication program connected with his grand plans for the liberation of the
Balkans from Ottoman rule. His central vision was a vast, multinational, unitary state,
dominated by Greek language and culture, graphically displayed in his celebrated map of
Greece (Χάρτα της Ελλάδος). He advocated the overthrow of Ottoman autocracy and the
establishment of institutions of governance, representation and participation on the model of
10
the Jacobin constitution of the French Republic of 1793. The vast geographical extent and
ethnic diversity of the new republic he envisaged posed problems; he put his faith in the
effectiveness of republican institutions and the moral and psychological power of the ethic of
patriotism and free citizenship. In his patriotic hymn 'Thourios' he urged freedom-loving men
to rise, inspired by patriotism and guided alone by the laws, to join forces fraternally with the
other subject nations, 'black and white', and driven by the impetus of liberty to assault
tyranny, break the yoke of despotism and establish justice and freedom for all.
The other great figure of Modern Greek Enlightenment, Adamantios Korais, was primarily
known his authoritative editions of ancient Greek texts. Living in France, he gained
recognition there, especially following his appearance at the Société des Observateurs de
l’Homme in 1803, and later in Britain through his correspondence with Jeremy Bentham and
Philhellenes in Europe and the US. To Rhigas it was obvious that the achievement of Greek
national independence must be preceded by a period of national awakening; therefore
education needed to be spread prior to proceedingto achieve the Greeks’ sovereignty. His
more radical thoughts are contained in his political pamphlets published anonymously and
openly urging for revolution, such as his Franco-Greek scheme of liberation written in poetic
form, the Song of War (Άσμα πολεμιστήριον) in 1800, and the Trumpet of War (Σάλπισμα
πολεμιστήριον) in 1801, the last translated into Russian and French. These texts were
composed during Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt, when the prospect of liberation through
foreign intervention was still valid.
It is interesting that in the second edition of his Trumpet, in 1821, after Napoleon’s fall and
the outbreak of war in Greece, Korais added an Introduction by a supposed French translator
where he distinguished between recent revolts – namely the French Revolution as well as the
Spanish and Neapolitan insurgencies – and the Greek rebellion: “The Greek cause is not
similar to that of the French Revolution. Revolts in enlightened Europe are carried out by one
part of a nation against the rest of it; in Greece all people are against the conquerors.”
Similarly in later newspaper articles he contrasted the Greek War of Independence and liberal
revolutions in Italy and Spain. Critical of Jacobinism in his commentaries on the violent turn
of the French Revolution in the 1790s, he continued to express reservations about whether
subjective conditions for the Greek uprising existed. Even after March 1821, he continued to
argue that national independence was necessary but not sufficient for the creation of a free
society. For that, constitutional guarantees were necessary.
The leading theoretical monument of Greek republicanism was a fervent 'discourse on
freedom' that appeared anonymously in Italy, most probably in Livorno: Hellenic Nomarchy,
1806. The radicalism of the tract consisted primarily in the use of the term 'nomarchy' (= the
rule of law), opposed to the conventional idea of Christian monarchy and of its latter-day
adaptations by the theory of enlightened absolutism. Disillusionment with the prospects of
liberation with Napoleon’s aid is clear. Independence could now only be achieved through a
massive collective effort of the entire community of patriots. The example of the Serbs, who
were at the time embarking on their own revolt against the Ottomans, is cited by the
anonymous author as a model, but the Serbs were not invited to join a common nomarchy.
She concluded with brief look at the print production that conveyed the ideas described. Book
circulation at the turn of the eighteenth century was facilitated by maritime commerce;
successful editions sold up to 1,500 copies. Funding came primarily from wealthy merchants,
but publishers also solicited subscribers for particular editions. However, only 7% of
subscribers resided in the regions that would eventually become the Kingdom of Greece;
cultural ferment was largely confined to the Greek Orthodox diaspora in Italy, Central
11
Europe, the Danubian Principalities, Constantinople, and Smyrna; literary journals also
proliferated in the same areas.
She had intended to examine references to contemporary revolutionary turmoil in Europe by
the Greek press. Imperial censorship in the Habsburg Empire, however, kept all publishing
activity under close control and did not allow subversive articles or news to see the light.
Greek journals and newspapers published in Restoration Europe had to confine themselves to
inoffensive literary or educational matters or news of commercial interest to the Greek
merchants of the Diaspora.
These publications, first initiated by printers and later by scholars, are hard to classify.1
Logios Ermis or Melissa, for example, exhibit characteristics of an encyclopedic journal. their
tables of contents included such headings as: Bibliography, Greek Archaeology, Curiosities,
Art History, Greek Philosophy, Chemistry, and Physics. Mainly based on western data, they
aimed to educate.. By contrast, the Viennese Ephemeris of 1790, or Εllinikos Telegraphos of
1812, although not coming out on a daily basis, were more like newspapers. Ephemeris gave
information the clashes in Europe after the French Revolution and the war of 1787-1792
between Russia and Turkey. Ephemeris, which is the main publication of interest for our
subject today, was a bi-weekly illustrated paper published in Vienna by the brothers Markides
Poulioi from 31 December 1790 to 11 December 1797. Officially it adopted a negative stance
to the French Revolution but in 1794 its printers began to publish also clandestine uncensored
issues. They were eventually accused of helping Rhigas by printing and distributing his
manifestos and in February 1798 the Austrian authorities ordered the closure of the press and
expelled the Markidis brothers from their country. The fact that they were Austrian citizens
saved their lives. Logios Ermis ventured into current affairs only in its last issue dated May
1st 1821, almost two months after Ypsilantis’ march into the Danubian Principalities, but a
month before his defeat, when it published two letters Patriarch Grigorios V of
Constantinople sent to the Metropolitan of Moldavia. In these letters the Patriarch pledged
allegiance to the Turkish government and fiercely condemned Ypsilantis’ actions.
During the War of Independence printing presses were for the first time installed in the Greek
lands. In total we have six presses: in Kalamata-Corinth (1821-22), Messolonghi (1823-26),
Psara (1824), Hydra (1824-27), Athens (1825-26) and Nafplion-Aegina (1825-27) donated by
Philhellenes (Stanhope, Didot) or manufactured locally that produced about 50 books or
pamphlets, 216 broadsides and 7 newspapers in Greek or foreign language.2 They mainly
served administrative and educational needs as well as the propaganda for the Greek cause
and they publish mostly official pronouncements, news of the war (usually manipulated for
obvious reasons) and about the Philhellenic movement in Europe and the US. Freedom of the
press was a constant subject of discord.
It can be argued that the discourse on rebellion and independence among Greek scholars
before 1821 was directly influenced by events in France and French presence in the
Mediterranean. Though it focused primarily on the liberation from Ottoman rule, it was also
1
In chronological order and up to 1821, the year of the Greek Revolution, the following titles were published
in Vienna: Ephemeris (1790), Ermis o Logios (1811), Ellenikos Telegraphos (1812), Philologikos Telegraphos
(1817), and Kalliopi (1819). In addition Melissa and Athena (both in 1819) were published in Paris. In Paris also
came out the short-lived Mouseion (only one issue) in 1819. Furthermore, an announcement in Logios Ermis
(Issue 8, 15.4.1819, p. 307) informed readers about the forthcoming publication of a periodical that was to be
printed in England. As we now know, this operation failed. [Mastoridis, p. 74]
2
Telegrafo Greco (Missolonghi, 1824, in English, French, Italian and German) and L’Abeille Grecque (HydraAegina, 1827-29).
12
marked by new social values, issues about the future political organization of the independent
state and anticlerical criticism. It evolved from the expectation of liberation through foreign
intervention, Russian or French, the emergence of a liberal democratic vision of selfdetermining emancipation by general uprising. Commentary on contemporary events was
prevented by police authorities in Restoration Europe, so all subversive printed material had
to circulate secretly and under great danger.
She concluded with the declaration of the revolutionary Greeks to the civilized world on
January 1, 1822 as a prologue to the Provisional Constitution of Greece, epitomizing the
ideological emblem of the Greek War of Independence:
The Greek Nation, under the dreadful Ottoman despotism, unable to bear any longer
the most oppressive and unprecedented yoke of tyranny, having shaken it off with
great sacrifice, declares through its legal defenders gathered in a National Assembly
in front of God and men, its political existence and independence.
Epidavros, January 1822 and First Year of Independence
Discussion
Joanna Innes asked if the word ‘democracy’ was used in the Greek press. Anna said yes,
though democracy and republic weren’t distinguished. It was used in the context of
discussion in Greece about whether government should take a monarchical or republican
form.
Paschalis Kitromilides added that it was used in the title of Rhigas’ constitutional proposal,
Hellenika Demokratika, clearly there meaning an institutional form. [English translation of
article 1 of the projected constitution: THE GREEK DEMOCRACY is one despite the fact
that it includes in its bosom diverse nations and religions. The Greek democracy does not
regard the differences of the religion with a hostile eye. It is undivided, despite the fact that
rivers and seas divide its provinces, because all are one [?] indissoluble body.] It was also
used during constitutional discussions in the 1820s.
Innes asked whether democracy was contrasted with aristocracy.
Paschalis said that Korais used this antonym in the 1820s; he argued against both
monarchical and aristocratic forms.
Konstantina said that though people writing in the Greek language might have to make a
single word stand for both, others were writing in Italian, and could distinguish. Thus,
Capodistrias could distinguish republic and democracy, and speak pejoratively of democracy.
Stella Ghervas remarked that it was important to distinguish between moderate and radical
Enlightenments. The further one goes from Western centres, the more one finds mystical or
Christian (Orthodox) ideas. Yuri M. Lotman [a Russian literary scholar] stated that the
Enlightenment movement continued in the Eastern Europe until the 1840s, long after it died
out in the West. Romanian historian Alexandru Dutu shows that this was the case in the
Danubian principalities.
She wanted to ask a question to Anna about the Greek war of independence. It seems to her
that the fundamental question about the Greek affair was legitimacy: was it a lawful war
waged by the Greek “people” against the Ottoman Sultan, or was it a Jacobin, illegal
rebellion started by “individuals”?
Anna thought the main argument was that it was a revolt for liberty, against an unjust ruler –
which could comprehend both ways of thinking.
13
Maurizio Isabella suggested that the 1820s saw a critique of the French revolution; even
revolutionaries found it difficult to defend in its entirety. One could make a revolution
without feeling that this was a matter of re-enacting the French revolution. The Greek
revolution was supported across the political spectrum in Europe. He wondered if it was also
possible within Greece to distinguish a conservative strand of support.
Anna said yes, she thought this became clear later, when they were looking for European
support.
Marinos noted that it was ultimately Greek peasants who had to put the independence
movement into practice. What were their ideas?
Anna said she had cited limited figures for press circulation in order to suggest that these
ideas did not circulate very widely.
Yanna thought there was something to be said about popular intellectuals, those who acted
eg as secretaries to chieftains; they were the mediators between discourses. There seem to
have circulated notions about sacrifice, wounded bodies, suffering; she thought these were
common themes across the Mediterranean and in Latin America. [See on these themes Eleni
Andriakaina, “The Promise of the 1821 Revolution and the Suffering Body. Some thoughts
on Modernisation and Anti-intellectualism”, Synthesis 5, fall 2013, p. 51, at
http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/current-issue/hellenism-unbound/eleni-andriakaina-_.html]
Andrew Arsan asked what Rhigas had in mind when he wrote about free peoples ‘black and
white’? He also wanted to know more about how a composite state might have worked.
Nassia Yakovaki said that we knew little about how Rhigas’ constitutional were circulated at
his times before late C19.
Paschalis added that all original copies of Rhigas’ constitution have disappeared. The text
was recovered through the discovery of two ms. copies in late C19-early C20. Memory of his
proposals was lost during the war of independence, though his song, Thourios, was
circulated. It was recorded by the folk-song collector Claude Fauriel. The phrase ‘black and
white’ comes from the song. The pamphlet, recovered later, doesn’t give citizens a role in the
political process; it was based on the Jacobin constitution of 1793.
Antonis Anastasopoulos wanted to put the two last papers together and ask why the
‘Ottomans’ were not receptive to these ideas while the Greeks were? Later in C19 the
discourses Marinos describes would be cited by Turkish intellectuals to show that Turkey
was a western nation, but the ideas they foregrounded were still not ideas of democracy.
Joanna Innes added that she would like to know more about the ideology of such Ottoman
rebel figures as Pasvanoglu and Ali Pasha of Ioannina: they were prepared to play European
off against Ottomans, but it wasn’t clear that they espoused a European world-view.
Antonis said there was a source problem: we knew little about their thinking except as that
was reported by western observers. They don’t seem to have been trying to overthrow the
sultan.
Marinos noted that in Istanbul, attempts to overthrow sultans were often successful.
Ioannis Tassopoulos wondered if it was so easy to separate peasants from intellectuals,
given the way that communities were structured.
Stella Ghervas observed that, at the time, the divide was education. Most of the ordinary
people’s education came through the word of the priest, and there was a problem of illiteracy
in the clergy itself. Thus the issue was: how should the government go about general
education and the creation of schools?
14
She wanted also to know more about how Greek intellectuals argued that the sultan was not a
legitimate ruler.
Mark Philp noted that in the French case it seemed clear that scholarship on the French
enlightenment didn’t help understanding of motivating ideas in urban sections, or how the
Estates General fell apart – even if enlightenment ideas were among the intellectual resources
on which people drew. No doubt in the Greek case there were links between enlightenment
ideas and revolution, but these needed to be more precisely specified.
Anna responded in relation to the illegitimacy of the sultan. He was seen as illegitimate both
because he was despotic and because he was Muslim. She did not think peasants in Kalamata
had ideas in common with intellectuals in Paris.
Nassia Yakovaki (University of Athens) Ideas of the public sphere in the early national
press [the following represents a slightly abbreviated version of her written paper]
She said that it was both a welcome invitation and a challenge for those working in the field
of Modern Greek history of late C18 or of the first and turbulent decades of C19 to reflect on
the use and presence of Democracy, of Δημοκρατία, in the written and printed sources of that
period. In the present context, the period was placed in “the Age of Revolutions in a global
context’, whereas it has for too long been looked upon as the period of the Modern Greek
Enlightenment.
The word that is of course present in texts in Modern Greek during the period of the rise of
the printed Greek book, addressed to a specifically modern Greek readership -- also a period
in which the turn towards ancient Greek was on the rise. Yet, she thought that its presence
has not been investigated. The task was complicated by its Ancient Greek origin, making the
dictionaries of the period a very uncertain tool. Many words not only had a very long history,
but had some of their influence through strong textual traditions, both ecclesiastical and
classical.
There is a second challenge at work: because the Greeks had a rather stunning participation in
the Age of Revolutions, not only with the revolutionary risings of the 1821, but more
interestingly with the activation of this distinctive and innovative democratic institutions of
the National Assemblies, a local encounter with the democratic challenge.
She would offer only a limited contribution, in the exploratory spirit of the workshop,
presenting some aspects of here work in progress on the nascent Greek public sphere in the
first decades of C19, before the outbreak of the Revolution. She didn’t intend to make heavy
theoretical weather of the debated concept of the ‘public sphere’, but to employ it as a useful
shorthand. She would ask two questions. First, how does the dynamic of a Greek public
sphere, developing during the Napoleonic Wars and through the first years of the Restoration
era, connect with a hypothetical process of re-imagining “democracy” among the Greeks?
And in what way was this social dynamic related to the outbreak of 1821 and the course
taken by the Revolution? She would proceed by considering a small corpus of selected
quotations, hoping in this way to open up a discussion based on the vocabulary of that period.
15
What is happening unto us today is unlike the ordinary and everyday works of men,
but rather it is born of such a mother as is the C19, and springs forth from that same
spring wherefrom flowed the change in America, in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples (and
now, they say, in Savoy as well), with only this difference: that with us the change is
still a moral one in preparation of the political. Whosoever dare obstruct this spring
shall be drowned by it.
Adamantios Korais, early March 1821: from the last known private letter he wrote before the
news of Ypsilantis’ revolt in the Principalities (the crossing of Prouthos) reached him in
Paris. His terminology raises several questions: most interestingly perhaps concerning what
he calls the “spring”: the idea of a common spring from which all the revolutions of the
1820s sprang: is there a sense in which this “spring” relates to ‘democracy’? Given his
opposition to all kind of revolutionary plans or activities which he judged to be immature
“προ του πρέποντος καιρού», one is left to wonder: what did the ‘peaceful moral Greek
works’ have in common with revolutions elsewhere?
Korais was of interest to her especially as a ‘public opinion maker’, a role invented by him as
early as 1804.
If the [fatherland] is in need of wealthy individuals”, he wrote to Zois Kaplanis, who
supported the schools in Jannina, “it has also need of dragomans. One such dragoman
I am myself, such is my trade, such is my duty; I have no other way, no other means to
be of use”. […] “a dragoman through speech and the press”, whose duty is to “thank,
stimulate and check.”
So Korais invented for himself a new role: he presents himself as a Δραγομάνος της
πατρίδος, Dragoman of the fatherland, in contrast of course to the Sultan’s Dragoman. Here
is a creative attempt to transfer into an Ottoman context and for the needs of the Greeks, new
public and institutional roles which had already been undertaken elsewhere in Europe or
America. An idea derived from Phanariots in Ottoman service becomes the basis for
imagining an alternative role for a Greek, a new public role.
Not as such perhaps a democratic project, yet what Korais had in mind was to support and
cultivate a new type of public communication among his compatriots. Paramount among
them was an innovative publishing activity: his Greek Library, the series of Greeks authors
he copiously edited, from 1805 up to 1827, prefaced by serial and lengthy prolegomena in
modern Greek, addressed plainly “To the Greeks”, sometimes taking the form of an editorial,
in other cases that of a serialised epistolary novel.
Korais aimed to transform the way writers and readers connected, validating a free open and
rational exchange between equals. As he explained privately to a friend and collaborator in
1804:
“I, my friend, seized as a precious find the opportunity afforded by your name” in
order to use it in public so as to show: “how an address is made from a free man to a
free man”.
His intervention was also shaped by his belief that the printing press was a ‘weapon’ and that
there was now scope for a Greek critical public to emerge. In his epistolary novel of the
1810s, his hero -- a semi-literate naïve cleric in Chios transformed into an ardent letter-writer,
lover of the printing press and author to be -- writes:
Assume one thousand copies of the printed book in one thousand people’s hands.
Now, count the families of many of these, and their friends, to whom they lend the
book, or read aloud what the book says. Do you really think that all of these thousands
16
of readers and listeners would reap no more benefit than the deaf? No my child, do
not hold in such low esteem our selfsame rational and kindred animals!
It is interesting to note in this connection the warm response of a young reviewer in a Greek
literary journal, who argued – in public again - for egalitarian manners:
Each honest man must receive with pleasure any good counsel without consideration
of where it comes from; it should suffice that it be useful. External appearances
should not cause apprehension among the friends of truth and of the good. When one
offers counsel to further the common good, one must not consider the other, to whom
one speaks, but as one’s same; for we all to a greater or lesser degree have need of
counsel.
This concept of “omoios, omoiotita” -- sameness, semblable -- which is difficult to translate
into English is not so different from the idea of equality.
So we enter the world of modern Greek literary journals, the public forum par excellence,
that was developing in the 1810s. It is to the most long-lived and most successful literary
journal, Loghios Ermis, 1811-1821 (Hermes the Scholar), that we should now turn. Here we
find in 1816 from another, young again (and anonymous) contributor an intriguing warning:
The public is not taken so easily by words any more, but examines things and
evaluates them. There exist today, by the grace of God, plenty of educated people of
our own nation [among our compatriots], who will not let it be deceived for long.
Here the notion of a critical public as an abstraction may be identified in its full development.
If Korais managed to succeed as a ‘public opinion maker’ or the literary journals to take root
at that time, it was because a newborn public sphere was in the making, amid the Christian
Ottoman, or ex-Ottoman and by then Habsburg or Russian subjects, who had started to call
themselves Greeks, or more broadly those who could access (by eye or ear) the modern
spoken language in print. This newborn public sphere was established by public written
communication; mainly through the medium of the printing press, and through books, for
different tastes, headed by the literary journals, but backed by a pre-existing, expanding and
intensifying correspondence network of a semi-public nature. Printed and handwritten items
alike were facilitated in their movements by the expansion of commercial networks and
amelioration of postal services, all over urban Europe, in and beyond the Ottoman Empire:
from Paris to Moscow, or Odessa or even further to Taganrog, from Lemessos and Chios to
Vienna and Gotingen, from Smyrna, Zante and Corfu to Livorno, Marseilles or London, from
Hydra and Athens to Venice, Trieste and Brasov, from Yannena and Kozani to Pest,
Bucharest or Jas, Adrianople and of course Constantinople. As a result, a critical public, a
public debating in spoken Greek on a whole range of issues in public and in the open, was at
work by the 1810s. The creation of the forum of the Greek public, “το κοινόν των Ελλήνων”
deserves notice alongside the particular content aired there.
As early as 1813, while appealing for support from their subscribers, the new editor of the
Loghios Ermis acknowledged what the journal had already achieved, as follows:
Ιts grandest and most worthy [outcome], my dear compatriots, is to have attracted the
attention of Greek souls; Loghios Hermes has awakened in all Greece the spirit of
discussion and of the debate for what is good; all the learned today discuss amongst
each other about literature, the arts and sciences […] This emulation and the spirit of
discussion we should not allow to die out, but rather let us strive to stir them up into a
great flame; a hearth more apt for this holy fire, to this day, we have none other than
Logios Hermes; therefore let each patriot offer as much tinder as he can.”
17
In this passionate praise of the “spirit of discussion” (το πνεύμα της συζητήσεως) one
should rather note the re-launching of an almost abandoned Greek word: the humble, trivial
but nowadays essential “συζήτησις” (discussion), now synonymous with the prestigious and
classical word, the word dialogue (διάλογος), which had not then come into use in this
context. The testimony of the literary journals of the 1810s shows “συζήτησις” taking on a
new significance at that point, linked to the new social value ascribed to the public exchange
of opinions and ideas.
Equally interesting is that this word is connected at least once in Logios Hermis with our
workshop’s word:
Discussions [Αι συζητήσεις] are a constituent part of Philology, and as it is the case in
the Democracies, similarly to Philology, discussions and disputes are a sign of their
existence, whereas absolute silence is a sign of their extinction and death.
It was also stated elsewhere in the journal that:
The democracy of the learned [the men of letters] admits every man, whatever his
class, situation and walk of life may be, and the decent critic will judge the learning
and what such a man’s learning engenders as a writer, when he presents himself
before the Public, regardless of his particular family or private relations and
circumstances.
“Democracy” provided a basis for the newborn public sphere. Its presence sheds light upon
the trajectory that led from a literary to a political public sphere.
Before the coming of the national assemblies, before the Constitutions or a political free press
were born, in other words before the inauguration of the novel institutional provisions which
would render the term “συζήτηση” (discussion) central to the political change brought
forward by the Revolution, the technology of public dialogue as exercised in the literary
journals of the 1810’s had generated this crucial concept and gterm. « Η συζήτηση» may
therefore be considered as a conceptual legacy, formed for the Greeks during the Ottoman
years, within the dynamic of a publicity in transformation. Indeed, is it possible to
conceptualize “democracy”, in C19 at least, without reference to public discussion, or
debate?
Discussion:
In response to a question by Maurizio Isabella, Nassia noted that there were plenty of
instances in which ‘opinion’ was used in relation to individual views; indeed this word
(γνώμη) and freedom of opinion had a very strong presence in the those contexts.
Joanna Innes asked if in the discourse opinion was seen as ambiguous – potentially fickle,
manipulable? She noted that Mark Knights, in his Representation and Misrepresentation in
late Stuart England showed how discussion of the developing political public sphere in late
C17-early C18 England was full of soul-searching and argument about these problems. She
wondered if concern was expressed about demagogues?
Nassia said that another common word was έριδα, dispute, but potentially relating to
personalised conflicts, libel or calumny. She has no firm view as to how the two related. She
thinks the literary journals tried to transcend personal disputes, perhaps in the same way that
the Spectator and Tatler did.
18
Several questions were collected:
Lycourgos Sophoulis wanted to hark back to a theme raised by Stella Ghervas’ earlier about
the relationship between elite and popular opinion. He wanted to know who the target
audience were – who was ‘the public’? Was this a republic of letters, for the learned only? Or
was it, like the constitutions, partly aimed at European opinion?
Konstantina Zanou suggested that participants in this Greek public sphere might be
participating in other public spheres too, thus also Italian or Russian.
Andrew Arsan suggested that there might be several different levels of admission.
Nassia explained that literary journals published in Vienna were subject to severe censorship.
Their rhetoric has to be read with this in mind. It is clear that many people were excluded,
including women. She was less interested in the limits than in the fact that a new kind of
space was being created, and along with it a new vocabulary in modern Greek (the
vocabulary of public debate), which in her opinion deserved scholarly attention and careful
reconstitution.
Paschalis supported her, saying that those who studied ideas often had to cope with this kind
of sado-masochistic criticism, about the limits of the audience.
In relation to references to ‘democracy’, he said it was surely the standard notion of a
‘republic of letters’ that Korais had in mind.
Stella Ghervas asked when the first printing press was established in Athens.
Nassia said in 1824 – but only in retrospect did the establishment of a press in Athens seem a
particularly significant moment. The Greek-speaking public sphere in this Ottoman context
didn’t correspond to the later Greek state.
Ivi Mavromoustakou (University of Crete) Reception of the idea of ‘constitution’ by
Greek jurists [this summary draws on her published paper in Thetis 2013]
She planned to talk about the models and the values which formed the basis for building a
constitutional and centralized State in Greece, and their adaptation to Greek circumstances.
More specifically at how the concepts of the constitution and of ways in which power is
organised were interpreted by the delegates to the two constituent assemblies of 1843 and
1863-4, which gave rise to constitutions of 1844 and 1864. These constitutions echoed
standard liberal themes: they vested sovereignty in the people, but said they should govern
via representatives. But representative power coexisted with extensive royal prerogative. The
law did not govern. In both constitutional assemblies, similar opinions were expressed.
Themes which had appeared in the constitutions of the early 1820s – separation of powers,
declarations of rights – disappeared thereafter.
The 1844 constitution took up the liberal theme of restraining the power of the monarch: it
aimed to give a share of it to hitherto excluded elites. The aim was not to overthrow
monarchy. The constitution in this context had the nature of a pact, founded on mutual
concessions. Models of constitutional monarchy were provided by the French constitution of
1830 and Belgian constitution of 1831. It provided for quasi-universal suffrage. Crown
influence over elections stimulated an anti-monarchical current, running strongly by late
1850s.
The Ottonian monarchy was abolished 1862, a new constitutional monarchy established
1864, influenced again by Belgium 1831 and by Denmark 1849, now with universal suffrage.
19
This time practice did not stand in such tension with the constitution’s promises. Dedilomeni
– provision for direct expressions of parliamentary confidence – one component, though they
had no juridical force. Might say the obstacles to the functioning of constitutional monarchy
were ultimately overcome.
Reference point American and European constitutional theory and developing practice.
French thought seems dominant, but British practice more influential. In Greek juridical
debate an active part played by those who sought the values and normative foundations of the
state in local institutions. There were a series of studies on the commune koinotita later C19.
During the decade of absolutist government after 1830, ‘constitution’ functioned only as the
subject of a demand, eg in the press. Advocates of constitution saw as a matter of conforming
to European norms, joining civilised states; some said Greece needed more time to mature,
but by 1843 general agreement on need. Demands for constitution in the press weren’t
usually specific on points of institutional design: clear though that ideal tempered
constitutional monarchy. Debate on various points, but three necessary elements of security
identified: of government against governed; of governed against government, and of people
between themselves. Representative system seen as the essence of constitutional government:
its absence seen to have opened the way to absolute power of monarch. King shouldn’t be
responsible because ministers should be. Problems also seen to have arisen from the fact that
monarchical power was not constrained as such; powers of some organs very vainly defined;
and because of the personalities of those who filled them, eg the Chancellor. Constitution also
intended to signify end of domination by foreigners, esp Bavarians and ‘phanariots’. Failure
of king to grant constitution lamented, but monarchy as such not attacked; its virtues as form
of rule still praised, seen as an expression of the ‘neutrality’ of the power of the state.
Monarchy seen as potentially unifying; constitution could aid in this. Individual liberty and
rights, freedom of conscience etc not seen as secure under absolutism. Importance of liberty
of press esp. emphasised. Monarchy and constitution also expected to defend orthodox
religion.
Minutes of constitutional assemblies show us what was on the deputies’ minds. Deputies
informed by western education or contact; not inhibited by lack of juridical expertise, insofar
as could draw on ideas about western practice. Some invoked western practice to legitimate
their own arguments: might think examples drawn from European history would convince
other delegates. Was observed that object during revolution had been to become a European
state. Many references to era and texts of war of independence, to Rhigas and Korais. Also
said law must conform to manners and customs, or would fail. Yet general theme must learn
from European experience. Exemplary nation of the English especially invoked; her
constitution all the fruit of experience. Sometimes suggested that imitation might not be
appropriate; should reflect on local circumstances. In second assembly was said that on the
one hand it wouldn’t do to follow others blindly, but on the other nor should Greeks rest
stationary and indifferent to European progress.
References were mainly to the US, Britain, France and Belgium; rarely to others. Belgium
was associated with equality; Britain with civilisation. French history was referred to
telegraphically, by key dates. Second assembly often referred to France 1848. Not much
theoretical discussion of individual rights, but lively debates on theme of freedom of press,
replete with references to French practice. Belgium constitution praised for prohibiting
censorship. Napoleon criticised as a centraliser. The French revolution was sometimes
invoked just as a past historical episode; sometimes to negative effect, thus against a single
chamber; associated with assertion of democratic principles, fortunately brief. When rights of
20
association and assembly debated in second assembly, argued wasn’t these but the social
situation in France that brought such bad effects. It was argued however that they favoured
the dominance of capitals, as Paris in French case.
[The paper as published includes a final section on the views of Greek jurists from 1850
onwards].
Discussion:
Joanna Innes noted that the people didn’t seem to figure prominently in discussion.
Ivi said that was the case. Emphasis was above all on the representative system as the
medium through which the sovereignty of the people should be expressed. In the 1860s there
was also an anti-parliamentarist current; it was argued that the constitution should be revised
to give more power to the king, coupled with a senate and universal suffrage – checks on the
power of parliament from various directions.
Ioannis Tassopoulos said in relation to parliamentary votes of confidence that even the
courts did invoke this idea. He found it perplexing that Greek national upheavals didn’t have
more effect on constitutional thinking, which instead was dominated by German influences.
Ivi said that French influence also shaped thinking about the nation. Heterochthons were
included in this vision. The state as such was not much discussed – German ideas only
influenced thinking at the end of C19.
Several questions were collected:
Michalis Sotiropoulos thought there was more criticism of the British model than she had
conveyed, though English liberty was praised. The indivisibility of sovereignty in British
thinking attracted criticism, following De Lolme. He also had a question: he wanted to know
what kinds of charge were brought against the monarch in the 1860s
Gianluca Fruci was very struck that universal suffrage was introduced so early, and
wondered what prompted that.
Stella Ghervas said that she appreciated the clarity of the presentation. She asked about the
argument used for changing from a “republican” to a “monarchic” regime in Greece: was it
the same as the one used for adopting monarchy in Belgium, after the revolution against the
Netherlands (1831), i.e. that after an insurrection and social disorders, a King would appear
more legitimate and bring more stability?
Ivi said that she had read widely both in the press and in reports of debates at the
constitutional assemblies and had not found criticism directed against the king personally but
rather against his advisors.
On the shift from republic to monarchy: French experience was cited – fear of ‘un état
démocratique’. Instead they wanted a liberal state.
21
Day 2 Practice
Antonis Hadjikyriacou (Princeton): Community and Representation in pre-Tanzimat
Cyprus
In 1707, the archbishop, some of his clerical and lay associates, and the janissary commander
of Cyprus were exiled to Rhodes. They were found guilty of oppression and exploitative
taxation. By claiming to have been “representatives of the non-Muslims”, they managed to
collect a significant amount of money through over-taxation, to the extent of causing a tide of
peasant emigration. What interested him here was the use and abuse of two words: reʿāyā
vekīli, “representative of the non-Muslims”, a title frequently encountered in Ottoman
bureaucratic parlance on Cyprus from the 1770s onwards, encapsulating the fiscal,
administrative, and political functions of the leadership of communal organisation. It is odd
that it crops up seven decades earlier.
He had chosen to translate reʿāyā vekīli as “representative of the non-Muslims”. Both reʿāyā
and vekīl have multiple layers of meaning, and to choose a single word in translation means
that some of these meanings are put aside – momentarily. He found ‘representative of the
non-Muslims’ the most apt in this setting, but also it opened up the concepts of community
and representation: who is being represented, how, and for what purpose. He planned to
examine these issues from a political, administrative and fiscal standpoint with reference to
C18 Cyprus, when ‘democracy’ as such had little relevance.
A new corpus of studies on communities throughout the Ottoman Empire has shed light on
the mechanics of collective representation and communal organisation. At the centre of these
discussions is the legal principle of the Hanefi school of Islamic jurisprudence whereby
corporate entities are not recognised: legal arrangements have to take place between
individuals, i.e. private legal entities. In this light, an office holder is not an impersonal entity
with a corporate identity functioning within set boundaries, but a person who happens to have
certain fluid and negotiable jurisdiction. Traditional scholarship restricted to the study of
social interactions as reflected in legal texts took the absence of institutional arrangements for
granted: it was assumed that institutions were formally unable to develop, and that this
accounted for the Ottoman Empire’s inability to match early modern European institutional
development. Yet, legal principle and actual practice did not necessarily coincide. In practice,
the evolution of structures of representation took place in the grey zone that lies between
formally recognised and actually functioning modes of communal organisation. This process
entailed experimentation, stretching of the meanings of titles, and arbitrary declarations.
Examining these issues reveals much about what it meant to imagine oneself as the head of a
collectivity, but also about the complex ways in which collectivities were constructed.
Throughout the Ottoman Empire, structures of communal representation were in place by
C17; not by chance, this was also when the maḳṭūʿ system of collective, as opposed to
individual, taxation proliferated, requiring local knowledge, cooperation and organisation. Ali
Yaycıoğlu has consolidated the transformations of C18 into three overlapping processes:
localisation, privatisation, and communalisation of authority. The latter is esp. relevant here.
One of the points of convergence between the two competing nationalist historiographies of
Cyprus is the effective equation of non-Muslim communal organisation with the Orthodox
Church of the island. Ottomanist historiography depicts an unchanging millet system for nonMuslims under the ‘natural leadership’ of the higher clergy; the Greek narrative represents a
Church monopolising the political, economic and cultural realm; both reproduce the idea that
22
the Church was an omnipotent institution, at the centre of all aspects of life. The operative
term here is institution, raising the issue of how to conceptualise the logic of representation,
devolution of power, endowment of authority, and the administrative arrangements that
emerged through the negotiation between centre and province, with due attention to the
process of emergence. Some sort of institutional continuity was necessary to perform various
state functions – taxation, fiscal functions, collective responsibility, or the administration of
justice. Yet, communal organization followed no consistent pattern. While agents might
project an image of corporate identity, and to a large extent functioned in such a way, the
reality vis-à-vis the Ottoman state was different. These processes were situated somewhere
between the de facto and the de jure.
Conventional wisdom has it that communal representation in Cyprus took form in the 1660s,
based on a comment by Kyprianos, a contemporary historian and cleric. Usually factually
accurate, Kyprianos emphasises the fiscal over the political and gives 1754 as the decisive
turning point, when the bishops were “recognised as ḳocabaşıs or custodians and
representatives of the reʿāyās” (επιστάται και επίτροποι). However, the earliest arrangement
that was akin to such a legal status occurred in 1830, as a prelude to the Tanẓīmāt reforms.
Even the late C18 office of ‘representative of the non-Muslims’ was not exclusive to clerics.
Ottoman documentation does not back up Kyprianos’ assertion that this title was inaugurated
in 1754. The Ottomans described a “new order” (nizam-i cedid – not the same as Selim III’s
reform programme), a series of changes designed to remedy administrative and fiscal
problems of the island, and surely would have mentioned the inauguration of the title if this
was part of it. The term appears incidentally in a taxation register from that year, with no
elaboration. It appears next in 1760, then again in 1768 in a petition by the prelates to
insinuate, but not assert, that a certain kind of authority attached to the ‘representative of the
non-Muslims’ was questioned, but this is left rather vague. From the 1770s use becomes
consistent. Given the lack of documentation confirming official recognition of wide-ranging
administrative and representative authority, available evidence points to a gradual process
that did not entail a de jure recognition at one specific point in time, but rather the
normalisation of a de facto situation.
By the final third of the seventeenth century certain informal structures of communal
responsibility were already established. It is most notably visible in tax-collection. Marios
Hadjianastasis highlights two sharia court register entries from 1677 illustrating this point.
Twice, delegations of non-Muslims presented themselves to the court, offering to undertake
tax-collection and deliver the amounts to the appointed collectors. Importantly, these were
private arrangements between the delegations and the collectors, which the court merely
approved. One specific phrase underlines the complex nature of the arrangement: “archbishop
Kigalas, appointed by the non-Muslims of the island of Cyprus as guarantor of their
communal affairs”.21 Thus, the archbishop was not considered by the Ottoman state as the
natural leader of the non-Muslims by virtue of any primordial millet system, but the guarantor
of communal affairs, appointed by the people, on that occasion. While the specific reference
to communal affairs (cemʿī ʿumūr) clearly implies that a de facto communal administration of
sorts was in place, the passage makes no reference to any legal status that the Ottoman state
recognised. This should be no surprise, for in this case the court was not interested in the
internal organisation of the non-Muslims. What the court was interested in, was the
assumption of responsibility by an individual, the kefīl, who would guarantee the payment of
taxes. Any authority that Kigalas had was not granted by Istanbul, but the people who
appointed him (naṣb) as their guarantor (kefīl), and the court simply consented.
23
The connotations of the term guarantor (kefīl) are in some ways in contrast to the ones of
representative (vekīl), which is prevalent in post-1770s documentation. The latter term
suggests an official recognition, and a certain degree of authority; it is taken to denote the
leadership of the community more clearly and explicitly: representative of the non-Muslims.
However, the meanings of the terms guarantor (kefīl) and representative (vekīl) are neither
fixed nor absolute; it may even be possible to argue that they could be used interchangeably,
depending on the context. Representative covered a broad range of levels of representation:
the collectivities involved might be a small village outside Veroia, a neighbourhood in Antep,
or an entire province, as with the office of Mora vekīli. Both terms had another legal usage
too, in the context of the sharia court, slightly different to the connotations in relation to
communal representation. He was concerned only with the latter. It is possible to broadly
delineate certain ‘official’ semantic boundaries, whereby the former term used in earlier
periods concerned fiscal functions with lending connotations. The usage of guarantor is
limited to the function of someone guaranteeing the collection of taxation. On the other hand,
representative may imply broader administrative and representative jurisdictions. Yet, these
boundaries were blurred. Both terms originate from the legal nomenclature of the court,
gradually develop fiscal qualities, and eventually are projected as political-administrative
titles.
The introduction of the idea of representation as part of political and administrative parlance
was not limited to the Ottoman realms. At the very same time, during later C18, Karim Khan
Zand in Iran refused to assume the title of şahinşah (king of kings). Instead, he opted for that
of wakil-e raʿāyā, whereby popular representation was a central tenet of his legitimacy. One
is tempted to speculate as to the possibility of a Eurasian shift in political thought and ideas
of government during this conjuncture.
As far as Cyprus is concerned, evidence is more lucid on the projections of leadership and
authority over the community. What is the meaning of the episode from 1707, where the
archbishop and the janissary commander claimed to have been “representatives of the nonMuslims” when such an office did not exist? Clearly, the claim was arbitrary, and the
individuals concerned projected a specific institutional identity that they did not possess as
far as the Ottoman state was concerned, in order to justify the collection of taxes at more than
twice the prescribed rate. While the claim may be revealing of a certain consciousness by
those using the title, the fact of the matter was that it was used as a means for exploitative
taxation under a veneer of officialdom.
It should not be assumed that towards the end of C18 an institutional identity had been
consolidated and officially recognised by the Ottoman state to create an office with clearly
defined jurisdiction. Even though the title representative of the non-Muslims was consistently
used, the concept was still ill-defined. Any corporate nature that its use in Ottoman
documentation may convey was not part of a teleological process, but the result of a case-tocase basis evaluation. An incident from 1788-89 is particularly enlightening in that respect.
Upon the death of a governor a dispute arose regarding the collection of non-Muslim taxes.
The dragoman of Cyprus (Kıbrıs tercümanı) Hadjiyorgakis sent a petition asserting that “in
accordance to the ancient tradition of the country since the imperial conquest, [the collection
of the taxes of the non-Muslims] has been entrusted to […] the dragoman and representative
of the non-Muslims”. He then described this process, whereby a bond was issued in the name
of the dragoman, who made the payment on behalf of the taxpayers, and then undertook the
right of collection. The community requested that the payment be made in interest-incurring
instalments; basically taking the form of a debt to the dragoman. Interestingly, the
24
community was described in a non-institutional manner as “the people, the rich traders, and
the merchants”. In the meantime, Emin Efendi, the deceased governor’s deputy, had an
imperial command issued delegating the right of collection to himself. Since, according to the
petition, this was in contravention to ancient practice, the dragoman requested the
cancellation of this order and the (re-)affirmation of his right of collection. According to the
petition, the right of collection of non-Muslim taxes had always been delegated to the
dragoman since the conquest. This is an exaggeration, as appeals to ab antiquo rights in such
documentation usually are. While we know that since C17 dragomans had had the right to
tax-collection, this was certainly neither an exclusive right, nor an institutionalised practice,
for archbishops or other lay functionaries were also awarded this function.
There are multiple layers of complexity in this incident. First, the echoes of guarantor (kefīl)
are abundantly clear. Secondly, the position of Hadjiyorgakis as the tax-collector by virtue of
his position as ‘representative of the non-Muslims’ was contested: there was no legal
guarantee to the right of collection, which seems to have been awarded more on a case-tocase basis rather than a fully consistent fashion. Custom, to which Hadjiyorgakis appealed,
could provide legal grounds for at least a quasi-institutional position. Yet, this is more about
the projection of an institutional identity than its reality. Just as the Church was accustomed
to making such projections, so was Hadjiyorgakis. For despite his argument that the right of
collection belonged to the dragoman since the conquest, this was a false claim.
The way this affair was treated by the Ottoman bureaucracy is also revealing. While
Hadjiyorgakis’ request was granted, the choice of words shows how acutely aware the
Ottomans were of subtle issues of institutional identity. Istanbul’s response neither refuted
nor confirmed the dragoman’s claim of having the right of collection since the conquest:
“according to custom, the dragoman and representative of the non-Muslims Hadjiyorgakis”
undertook the debt for the taxes, and has the right of collection. A strict interpretation is that
the lack of reference to the conquest means that the claim was not confirmed, and this was a
practice specifically associated with Hadjiyorgakis. On the other hand, the ambiguous usage
of the term “custom” is loose enough to allow for another interpretation confirming
Hadjiyorgakis’ claim, since ‘custom’ is temporally vague. The circle is thus squared, and all
sides can project the image they would like on the basis of what we could define as
constructive ambiguity.
The creation and manipulation of such ambiguities were common strategies in projecting an
institutional identity that claimed an undisputed and historically rooted leadership and
authority over the community. Such patterns recur in Cypriot history. The development of
structures of representation did not follow a consistent and coherent model, according to
which a single institution, whether the Church or the dragoman, was endowed with authority
by the Ottoman state as of old. While such agents were confident in projecting an image of
corporate identity, and to a large extent functioned in such a way, the reality vis-à-vis the
Ottoman state was different. Local representative structures kept a foot within each of the
realms of de facto and de jure, manipulated this ambiguity, adapted themselves to changing
conditions, and strove for further imperial authority. At stake is our understanding of the way
institutional identity was constructed, projected and contested within the context of the
struggle for legitimacy characterised by relations of power.
Discussion:
25
Mark Philp noted that Laurence Rosen in Justice and Anthropology argued that in lots of
Kadi court cases, the role of the judge is not to find questions of right, but to make an
allocation that serves to re-establish the order of the community. So that the kind of legal
decisions being discussed may be indicative more widely of a certain type of judicial action,
that is concerned with management of the communities and its expectations, rather than with
established rights.
Antonis said the key phrase was constructive ambiguity. Institutions in the Ottoman empire
capitalise on unceratainty so as to maximise flexibility – the institutional and non-institutional
are not binary opposites and mutually exclusive.
Several questions were collected:
Joanna Innes thought that it would be worth playing down the contrast between West and
East to see how far this took us. She thought loose institutionalisation could be found in the
west too. From C16, the English state through statute law specified chains of command over
various functions that ran down into parishes, but the examples of constables and vestries
show that the reality was more complex. Constables had certain responsibilities by statute,
but their anchorage in the system was shifting and locally determined: they began as manorial
officials but tended to be transformed into parish officials, but parliamentary returns in 1844
show that even by that time the process was not complete. Parish vestries existed from an
indeterminate date, their composition and selection being determined by local custom, but
were rarely mentioned in statute law, and only given well defined statutory roles in early
C19. If in terms of local office-holding, the trend was towards more nationally consistent
patterns of institutionalisation, in terms of the way people related to parliament, the opposite
trend can be observed. Until later C18, the expectation was that people would petition
parliament on the basis of some clear authority to speak: operating through jurisdictional
units, or on the basis of interest. But then and through C19 people began to band together in
all sorts of self-defined groups to express their shared opinions.
Maurizio Isabella: what does the dragoman do?
Peter Hill wanted to know more about what wakil/vekil meant in other contexts.
Andrew Arsan wondered why historical sociologists, rather than historians of political
thought, had dominated the history of the Ottoman state. Also wanted to know about the
effect of Ariel Salzmann’s work.
Perikles Vallianos asked what was left of the idea of the Millet system. He saw echoes of
issues raised by Marinos Sariyannis’ paper about natural justice vs religious authority as
competing systems of legitimation. Also, when the state exiled officials on what basis did
they do so – was it a question of legitimacy?
Antonis H said that the UK case sounded familiar; showing that an east/west contrast doesn’t
help. Indeed there were broader European patterns. A dragoman did whatever the Ottoman
state needed him to do – formally he was a translator/interpreter – but this the least important
aspect of his role; he became a de facto governor of Cyprus, and a major economic agent; it’s
a process of taking an older office and adapting it to new demands. The name of dragoman
though formally abolished continued to be used into the 1830s informally; there wass an icon
of a dragoman in a Cypriot church, not so described, but people identified him by this defunct
title just by his attire.
26
Vekil had many meanings, including guardian, but in specific judicial contexts. It connoted
acting on behalf of someone else. It can be translated otherwise, but he thought representative
the most accurate, in that it included different functions, and reflected the relationship with
guarantor in judicial nomenclature.
Historical sociologists have been locked into modernisation as a thesis, and tend to look for
the emergence of new concepts, though they are not always there; often existing concepts are
reworked in response to new needs – as is the case with representation [or democracy!]. Ariel
Salzmann is an exception; she avoids the rigid weberianism of Barkey.
What’s left of the millet: it only crystallised in C19, at the time of the war of Greek
independence – not an accident. Before there was communal organisation, but it functioned
neither in unified, homogenous ways, nor according to a ‘millet system’.
As to legitimacy: pre C19 most authority structures were de facto. Dysfunctionality and
illegitimacy were seen as linked, through the idea of the circle of justice. Injustice was seen to
cause practical problems. There were also problems generated when local structures of power
couldn’t reproduce themselves materially – as when conditions became so bad that people
fled; peasant flight alerted the Ottoman state to things collapsing.
Paschalis Kitromilides asked whether the text which mentioned the guarantor was a text
emanating from Ottoman rulers or local subjects? Antonis said that the text stated that the
people had appointed the guarantor; he was not appointed by the Sultan.
Paschalis asked if loyalty did not figure? The appointment documents called berats
mentioned guaranteeing loyalty.
Antonis said that berats did figure in stories about the Greek church’s representative role.
The earliest is supposed to have been granted to Gennadios in 1453, but it was apparently
burnt in a fire. A later patriarch asked to have one on what he said were the same lines as
Gennadios.
Paschalis said he thought there were berats from Cyprus in which this guarantee was
included.
Antonis said the earliest surviving for Cyprus was from the C18. Asking someone to give a
guarantee implicitly recognised their authority, but didn’t imply that they had total authority.
He said that insofar as loyalty played any role initially, it was taken for granted; but it became
more fraught after the Greek war.
Konstantina Zanou asked if revolts usually signified the end of a cycle of sustainability?
Was this the case in 1821.
Antonis said indeed so 1690s/1764/1804: those were the big cycles. Also get peasant flight
from Cyprus in early C18 and C19, when peasants left for Anatolia. The centre told officials
toget them back, promising tax breaks. He hasn’t studied the 1820s, but suspects the same
pattern operated.
Antonis Anastasopoulos asked whether C17 marked the first such cycle of criss. Also who
‘the people’ were in the context of representation.
Antonis H said since authorisation was fictional, that question didn’t really have an answer.
He said it was possible that crisis was only documented from C17, but there was increasing
bureaucratisation during that period, hence more information about phenomena that may well
have existed previously.
27
Stella Ghervas said her understanding was that the millet system cut Christians off from
access to Ottoman courts. Could this have led to the equation of religious with political
authority?
Antonis said that access of the Christians to the Ottoman courts is well documented. All
kinds of officials were expected to guarantee peace, so religious and political authority were
not equated, even if sometimes they overlapped.
Ioannis Tassopoulos: Constitutionalism and legal thought
He had revised his presentation in the light of the previous day’s discussion. He would focus
on five ways in which democracy figured in constitutional and legal thought:
-
as a normative idea , underpinned by a natural law tradition, or by a republican
tradition connecting it to the idea of a common good;
as a form of government, with or without a king
as rule by popular sovereignty, as against rule by divine right
at the level of the social order, and connected to rights to property
a conception that is peculiarly linked to the legal profession: democracy as an
institutional form, involving a commitment to legalism; pragmatism and sociology
We need to look for interconnections
Crucial context is provided by the fact that Greece was a divided society, frequently rent by
civil war, and with confrontation as an everyday aspect of politics. Historiography since the
national schism of1915 has tended to underplay this.
He would distinguish two basic strands in Greek constitutional thought: the political
liberalism of A Korais; and the Jacobinism of Rhigas Velestinlis, and ask how they
developed through time.
The field in which they compete is the constitution, which provided (contested) rules of the
game. What was accepted (after 1844) was that there should general elections. From 1844
there was close to universal male suffrage under a constitutional monarchy. A further
breakthrough came in 1864, when universal manhood suffrage was guaranteed by the
constitution. The fact that thenceforth governments could lose power as a result of elections
shows the level to which they were accepted. Though an interesting word was coined,
‘ectopy’: being out of place, or deviation. This was seen to prevail when legitimacy on the
basis of elections broke down. The various coup d’etats are examples of ectopy. Greek
political history in C20 was marked by various coups, but compared to Italy and Germany it
showed greater stability [but they didn’t have coups in C19 either]. From 1844/64 to 1915
(when there was a schism over participation in WWI), there was 50-70 years when elections
determined who governed – a longer period than that from 1975 to now.
The ascendancy of democratic ideals in a country which started from scratch is striking –
though perhaps the late start helps explain the pattern. All basic criteria were satisfied:
universal suffrage and popular sovereignty; unicameralism; principle of parliamentary
confidence; appointment of the PM on the basis of the electoral balance of power; guarantee
of basic political liberties – no prior administrative restraint; the idea of a fixed constitution;
recognition of judicial review.
Constitutional lawyers were major political actors; they played a central role in 1864 –
indeed, it is difficult to separate law and politics. But they had varying perspectives. In the
28
liberal view, power relations can be grounded on a basis of political equality; it is sufficient
for rights to be equal before the law. According to the Jacobin view, hierarchical power had
been reasserted; there was an invidious distinction between rulers and ruled; pressure from
the governed on governors was necessary to maintain an element of popular control.
The liberal view can be illustrated from a Korais letter of 1822: it would be better to be ruled
by a Sultan-despot than the Christian Turk; at least the Sultan is not a hypocrite. A slightly
later letter expresses a vision of society based on equality: said Greeks had graduated from a
school of unlawfulness – but the lessons of tyranny remained engraved in our souls. He
invoked the values of common sense, prudence etc. In 1864 Saripoulos in the National
Assembly expressed this view: the nation is sovereign so should be free to express itself via
elections; journalists must also be left free. Their writings express the views of some section
of society. If these rules were breached, then the people had a right to rebel.
The Jacobin perspective by contrast stressed political voluntarism. Elections results were to
be interpreted as an expression of the single will of the people.
Discussion:
Eduardo Posada Carbo asked how suffrage rules differed 1844/64, if both were basically
universal?
Ioannis said that in 1844, only those adult males those without moveable property, and
domestic servants and apprentices were excluded.
Michalis said that the object was to exclude those who were themselves dependent.
Antonis Anastasopoulos: on the rules of the game: wanted to know if he was suggesting that
the Greeks had an idea of fixed rules to the political process?
Ioannis said the chief rhetorical contrast was with the absolute rule of the sultan. The idea of
the ‘rule of law’ was important in that context. Reason was opposed to will
Socrates Petmezas invited him to comment on the issue of fairness in elections. He
suggested that elections were not fair till 1875 (with the sole exception of the 1866 elections).
There were important elections at the municipal level, but he didn’t know enough about how
these worked. He thought that mayors were important figures.
Ioannis cited a study by George Sotirelis which enquired into the working of electoral
ascendancy. He concluded that by 1875 they had become much fairer, though this didn’t
happen overnight. Even in 2001, the government changed the electoral rules just before the
election.
Several questions were collected:
Gianluca Fruci was very struck by how early universal suffrage came in, and wondered
what expression captured the term?
Michalis Sotiropoulos: It is important to emphasise the importance of local elections prior to
1864; during the crisis of the monarchy, MPs were replaced by mayors. [He has since
elaborated: The incident of the 'mayors' was one of the most characteristic ways with
which King Otho tried after 1860 to bypass the Parliament. In 1860 the then administration,
which was favourable to the crown, lost parliamentary support and was forced to resign. The
29
king immediately dissolved the Parliament and called for elections. In the rigged elections
that followed the administration that had previously resigned won and significant opposition
figures were not elected. The Parliament was thus packed with 'mayors' – unpopular local
officials close to the crown – to such an extent that it was called 'the Parliament of the
mayors'. In addition the King replaced eighteen senators with others who did not meet the
formal requirements, waging at the same time a war against the anti-governmental press.(see
George Finlay (1861), History of the Greek revolution and of the reign of King Otho, pp.
251-253, see also for the mayors pp. 178-179. There are several editions of Finlay I am using
the English edition of 1971.]
He said that he thought that Greek historiography was too preoccupied with the theme of
division, and in that context difference from western Europe; he thought that Alivizatos had
set the tone in this regard.
He also queried the notion of distinct liberal and Jacobin traditions, saying that in the
constitutional texts, he saw no clear evidence of influence from either Korais or Rhigas.
Although there was certainly self-conscious interest in liberal traditions, people did not turn
to Korais to flesh these out.
Stella Ghervas suggested that the most basic question people faced was whether or not ‘the
people’ were really capable of governing themselves.
Mark Philp asked if there was no conservative tradition in constitutional thinking.
Dimitris Christopoulos said that he thought division was an important theme, but didn’t
understand Ioannis’ identification of the two poles. He thought that indeed there was no space
for conservatism. He thought that polarisation needed to be conceptualised in a mobile way:
different binaries operated at different points.
Konstantina Zanou agreed with Michalis in questioning the concept of polarisation. The
point was not that it did not exist, but that it was a normal feature of political life.
Ioannis replied to the series of questions. He said that the thought what the traditions had in
common was a full and rich notion of popular sovereignty. This was always direct
sovereignty. There was some discussion as to whether there should be a property
qualification, but this did not pass. He cited what he thought was an important contribution
by Gianfranco Poggi, The Modern State, in which it was argued that the ‘rules of the game’
served the traditional elites as much as the modernisers.
He thought that Korais played an emblematic rather than substantive role – until C20 when
he ceased to be invoked. He had inhabited a very different world, in which questions did not
arise in the same institutional and technical context. But also, his ideal of political unity no
longer worked in C20 – where, to the extent that it existed at all, the reference point was now
Byzantium, and the vehicle the ‘megali idea’.
Polarisation was compatible with democracy.
Pascalis Kitromilides: Religion and the Church
He hadn’t prepared a written paper.
30
He identified 6 main themes:
1. The Ottoman background: this determined the social role of the Church in the
societies of the former empire (as Antonis Hadjikyriacou had explained). In the
absence of a Christian ruler, the church did take on the task of meeting social needs:
education; survival of a national linguistic and historical tradition – this was
especially addressed by monasteries, which multiplied in the countryside in the post
Byzantine period. He thought only Polish and Irish cases were comparable.
2. Role of the Church in the age of revolutions: an interesting topic, usually linked with
the formation of national churches. In the 1820s when the Church in the Peloponnese
and the Ionian Islands (where the Church was actively involved in the Revolutionary
process) transformed itself into a national Church. Ties with Constantinople were
weakened and in some cases broken. Members of the Church became martyrs of the
faith and of the nation, such as 5/8 bishops who responded to the summons of the
Pasha of Tripoli: effectively a new form of ‘ethno-martyrdom.’
3. Ideological framework for the emergence of distinct national churches. Korais in his
Prolegomena to Aristotle’s Politics in 1821 sketched an ideological framework.
Korais thought Greece needed educating for freedom, and for that it needed a free and
independent church. In his detailed outline in this text, he prescribed 8 articles which
would establish autocephaly. This policy was not initially endorsed by anyone, not
even Capodistrias, who wanted to maintain ties to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
4. Etablishment of a national church. The issue was addressed only after the arrival of
King Otto in 1832. The first attempt to establish an autocephalous church came under
the Bavarian regency. The church became part of the administrative system of the
state, as it remains.
5. Canonical problems. This attempt ignored canon law – though it would have been
possible to proceed under it, as had been done in the case of the medieval Serbian and
Bulgarian churches and of Russia in 1588. The church in Constantinople therefore
denounced what was done as heretical. The Church of Greece was run by the bishops
in the synod; they didn’t want to alienate Constantinople, though did want to support
the state. A stalemate set in – the Bishops did not consecrate a single new bishop
under the schism, resulting in a danger that the hierarchy in Greece would expire in
the 1840s. Eventually they fulfilled the formalities required by canon law, through
application to Constantinople. The same process would be repeated in the case of
other Ottoman-breakaway states and their Churches.
6. The fate of religion itself. The chief evidence here was supplied by literary sources
detailing the lives of the people, for example by Alexander Papadiamandis. At the
grass roots, traditional forms of worship continued uninterrupted – as indeed it has
happened in all Orthodox societies into C20.
Discussion. Several questions were collected:
Mark Philp asked if secularisation was then just an elite process?
Joanna Innes asked to what extent the position of the church was a concern in constitutional
discussions around 1843-4?
31
Konstantina Zanou asked if Constantine Oikonomos initially saw religion as compatible
with enlightenment, but then changed his mind – or did he think that they remain compatible?
Pericles Vallianos asked whether Korais was really entirely secular?
Eleni Calligas said in 1864, when union with the Ionian islands was under discussion, the
ecclesiastical question certainly came up: the question was whether the Ionian church should
become part of the Greek church; the same question arose when Greek territory was later
extended in other directions. She wondered if, when the megali idea came to be pursued more
vigorously, that was associated with any changes in conceptions of autocephaly?
Marios Hatzopoulos wondered why Otto and his ministers didn’t address the issue of the
position of the church earlier, given the problems it caused.
Socrates Petmezas asked if the specific programme, relating to the reform of the Holy Syno
and Monasteries, as set out in Hellenike Nomarchia, was applied?
Paschalis answered. Korais was entirely secular in his concerns and was not religious in any
traditional sense.
The ecclesiastical question was not raised when the constitution was being debated – it just
wasn’t seen as comparable in importance to other pressing issues.
He did not see religion and Enlightenment as mutually exclusive, but there were gradations of
compatibility; these things are never clear cut. Everyone in the enlightenment movement was
Christian, though they might be anti-clerical, like Korais, or the author of Hellenic
Nomarchy, who charged the church with corruption and collaboration with tyranny.
Oikonomos took refuge in Russia; he conducted a mass for Gregorius V in Odessa, and
returned to Greece a religious conservative.
In the Ionian islands, under the British protectorate there were plans for a separate
ecclesiastical administration– but this was resisted by the local hierarchy, including by the
man proposed to be the head of the new church. The Ionian islands were brought under the
Greek church; similarly in Thessaly, when this was united with Greece by the Congress of
Berlin. In other cases, the issue remained unsettled until after WW1. Crete eg had an
autonomous church; it was administered by Greece, but spiritual leadership lay elsewhere.
Cyrpus had been made autocephalous back in C5.
Socrates Petmezas: The Land Question
The land question was an issue in the Ottoman heartlands, from the Balkans to western
Anatolia, from late C18 through late C19 He would talk about this period in Greece, and also
about how similar issues were tackled in Serbia and the Ottoman heartlands.
The era of reforms is traditionally dated from the accession of Selim III 1789 to the Ottoman
constitution of 1876. This was an era of cutthroat military competition and associated
reforms. It followed a period of properity – an Indian Summer until the 1770s. The crisis of
the 1770s was caused by war with Russia. The reform strategy was absolutist, involving a
reaction against the preceding period, characterised by Ariel Salzmann as an era of
decentralisation. In that period, local magnates were able to bargain contributions off against
political power. This order of things was associated with the transformation of the ‘classical’
32
timar system – the allocation of lands ex officio to a military elite – in favour of an expansion
of tax-farming in relation to agricultural land, and of the so-called çiftlik system. Chris Bayly
has shown that similar processes took place in all Muslim ‘gunpowder’ empires: this was a
different modernising process from that pursued by absolutist European powers, but not selfevidently a worse one, and in fact, though some absolutist states such as Sweden lost great
power status, the Ottomans survived. In the longer run, nonetheless, the Ottomans found it
hard to deal with the power amassed by successful European states: during C18, the gap
became apparent.
Selim III 1789-1806 engaged in a vigorous attempt to reform the state – but failed because
he was opposed by traditional elites and populace. Significant reform had to wait for the reign
of Mahmut II, esp. from the 1820s, when he destroyed the independent power of Ali Pasha,
and later that of the beys of Albania and Bosnia, while failing in Greece and Serbia, which
however set up different kinds of states. A new challenge arose 1831-40 when Egypt invaded
through Syria. In helping to resolve this dispute, European powers gained more leverage and
more commercial rights. In the Ottoman world, centralisation and exposure to globalising
economic competition came together.
New globalising forces were associated with the further extension of çiftlik landholding,
whose growth was the most critical change during C17-19. In the classical timar system,
changing land use was in theory prohibited, except in relation to the cultivation of waste.
Peasants were guaranteed usufruct so long as they cultivated continuously and paid taxes,
which were assigned to the support of centrally appointed officeholders. Privately owned land
(mülk) was not unknown, but it was mostly the untaxed landholding of the dynastic family
and state élite and it was usually at the base of extensive pious endowments (evkâf). These
were inalienable and tax-exempt properties , sometimes but not always assigned to pious and
charitable works. Taxpaying subjects (reaya) could also hold mülk properties, mostly in the
form of small vineyards, tree orchards, gardens and buildings (houses, shops and mills). The
cultivators in lands held by pious endowments or high dignitaries paid personal taxes to the
treasury and rent to the landowners. Small scale subsistence family farms paying taxes and
rents in kind dominated the classical ottoman land tenure system (leaving aside the pastoral
populations and the extreme cases of relatively rare large-scale commercial farms).
As cavalry, supported by the timar system, became less important, and revenues were
increasingly needed to support riflemen, some land units were parcelled out in fiscal units
(mukata) and assigned to tax farmers. In C18, lifelong tax farms became common. Powerful
men at the centre and local potentates were able to capture much of the social surplus.
The most novel event was the development of large landholdings, çiftlik, by such powerful
men, or merchants and city dwellers – often the same men who held tax farms. The
cultivators were sharecroppers, who might have their own homes and gardens, or be entirely
landless. They paid both taxes to the state and a share of their crop to the estate holder. Their
size varied. The terms on which the land was held also varied: the estate holder might have
the status of owners, or be tax farmers, or timar holders. The sharecroppers might be
effectively bound to the soil – as in Thessaly or Bosnia – or be free to leave. Crops might be
consumed locally or go to distant markets. Over time, the fiscal and financial burden on
sharecroppers tended to expand: always a large part of what they produced went to the
provincial elite, whose chief concern was to control labour.
Çiftlik agriculture was established principally in the lowlands in symbiosis with seminomadic animal husbandry. Sharecroppers could prosper: the landlord was supposed to offer
33
them credit and assistance when necessary. Other inhabitants of large estates were landless
laborers (aylikçi), shepherds and various small shopkeepers and artisans living in villages.
The estate superintendent (subaşi) sometimes held a relatively independent position imposing
labor services on the sharecroppers and acting as usurer for his own profit. The distribution of
surplus between the State treasury, the tax-farming/sub-farming network, the (mostly
Muslim) landlords, their (self-serving) superintendents and other auxiliary personnel (various
groups of militia men and local grocers/usurers) and of course the various strata of labouring
rural population (mostly Christian in the Balkans) provided a focus for conflict. The çiftlik
land tenure system expanded to cover a major part of the lowlands in the ottoman heartlands
(see map of McGowan, Economic life in Ottoman Europe, C16-18).
Overtime, the sharecroppers tended to put more time into eg animal husbandry or forestry,
not subject to ground rent; landlords found it more profitable to rent winter pastures to seminomadic herdsmen than force cereal production. There were incentives to end security of
tenure and introduce shorter leases. Untangling the competing claims of lords and peasants
over land would be a major issue through C19. In Greece and Serbia, early revolts put a
sudden end to mainly Muslim çiftlik tenures. These conflicts were not the most serious
challenges facing the sultan at that time, who had problems on multiple fronts. Greek
independence was unexpectedly achieved by the intervention of foreign powers: the
‘untoward event’.
It is noteworthy that during constitutional discussions little was said about the land question
in the round. Greek historiography takes it to have been clear that peasants would in effect
gain land from dispossessed Muslims, notwithstanding the ambitions of tax-farmer koçabaşi
and chieftains, who probably gained only a small part. Most either passed into hands of
peasant cultivators or became part of the National Estate (ethnika ktemata – a Greek
translation of the French biens nationaux); the latter were finally sold to peasant holders
cheaply in 1871. In a few regions where Ottoman armies remained powerful, Muslim
landowners were able to sell their estates, so that large çiftlik estates were sustained (in
Attica, Locris and Boeotia and Northern Euboea).
In 1821, in the charters of the three provincial assemblies (Morea, East and West Continental
Greece) refer to (and presumably reflect discussion about) public lands, held by the state or in
the form of pious endowments (including monastery lands), and Muslim property. Three
points were clear from the start:



all taxes and ground rents from these were allocated to the Greek public treasury, by
right of conquest. These lands could not be sold by local authorities.
Tax burdens were diminished, but still retained pre-modern features, eg being paid in
kind to Greek tax-farmers, who remained a scourge. Ground rents were reduced and
homogenised. Personal services were declared null, and slavery was abolished.
Local officials were directed to establish whether particular peasants owed just taxes,
or taxes and ground rent. Few peasants had any notarised deeds. The tax collector
therefore became the decider of title: whether a piece of land was private property, or
part of the national estate. The Venetians had undertaken a similar process of
rationalisation when they conquered the Peloponnese in 1718, but they had sought to
reproduce an aristocratic landowning class, which the Greeks after 1821 did not (the
effect was that the rural population welcomed the Ottomans back 1715).
The effect of the war was therefore to secure peasant farms and reduce taxes; it was
sometimes to enlarge pre-modern usufruct rights to something more like modern ownership.
34
There were no popular demands for land registration: that came only in 1856; it did not
reflect an intention of contesting the property of the peasant.
There were however sometimes tensions over land, as in Apr. 1823 at the second National
Convention when there was a move to sell national estates. The compromise reached was that
only perishable features, requiring maintenance, might be sold off. Further attempts to sell of
lands to pay debt, or to use as collateral for loans, largely failed.
Sometimes lands were promised to young men to lure them into military service during the
war, but only after the end of the war was this formally addressed. Kapodistrias wanted to
establish a body of landowning peasants in order to provide an independent property basis for
the electorate he proposed in a letter to the consultative legislative body of the Senate in
February 1830 that suffrage should be dependent on property. He saw land distribution and
the expansion of education as more important than the constitution.
The project was taken over by the Bavarian absolutist government. They tried to sell off
national lands, while putting a limit to the amount that it was possible to purchase. However,
peasants who already controlled the land they cultivated didn’t want to pay a premium to
acquire full title.
Two policies linked to giving peasants a hold on the land were:


the distribution of land grants as pensions to retired chieftains from the war
creation of a new system of local administration, offering the local propertied class
(merchants, civil servants and notables) the right to vote for the municipal council.
This would (s-)elect three of its members as candidates for mayorship, and the royal
government or the prefect would choose the mayor. Thus the local élite gained a
cloistered space as its arena for political in-fighting and domination. Military
conscription, primary education, tax collection (in effect a peculiar system of leasingout tax-assessment) fell into their domain
In 1833, most monastic land was seized, diminishing the power of the Church. National
estates and church lands were amalgamated, making the move impossible to reverse. There
seems to have been squatting and illegal appropriation of these lands, not documented in the
case of former Muslim properties.
There was little conflict over land until the annexation of Thessaly with its çiftliks. Rural
conflict was more likely to be anti-fiscal. Though perishable national estate was purchased,
most of the land was left to the cultivators. In March 1843, in the law extending the duration
of the Law on the distribution of National Estates to retired military chieftains, the absolutist
government made clear that no one could claim National Estates without the agreement of
their cultivator. Holdings on National Estates were secure, and could indeed be inherited, sold
or mortgaged. The only drawback was that they were liable not only to the usual taxes but a
further 10% tithe in kind. In some places, peasants established commercial currant vineyards
on national lands, changing the landscape. When in 1837 the government tried to extirpate
what it thought were illegal plantations, it met active peasant resistance. It conceded, and
these came to be called ‘national-private plantations’.
Further change came only in the confused but revolutionary and democratic 1860s, at the best
of young politicians (Alexander Koumoundouros and Sotirios Sotiropoulos). The 1871 law
on land distribution left open the possibility that, if they could obtain consent, those with
35
money could buy up land suitable for commercial development. The cultivator was first in
line. National-private plantations were to be sold at the same price as uncultivated land.
Peasants were not eager to pay for arable land, however. çiftlik land was not affected, and
there seems to have been no sharecropper pressure for change.
Recent research has shown that the traditional picture of the continuing triumph of the
peasant should be modified to capture variation by region. Where there was land suitable for
speculative plantations, it was usually bought up. Large landholdings were created in the W
and NW Peloponnese littoral. Still the scarcity of labor and democratic politics gave
bargaining power to landless cultivators. In plantation regions, a contract would be negotiated
through which half of the newly planted estate had to be transmitted to the peasant, the land
owner keeping the other planted half – so the peasants regained half the land affected. The
chronic currant crisis of the early 20th century finally put an end to larger currant plantations.
The Serbian revolt has similarities to the Greek, in that it was largely fought by peasants with
some intellectual leadership. His impression was that land passed securely into the hands of
the peasantry. Urban, commercial and political developments were more timid and less rapid
that in the Greek case, leaving Serbia in the condition of a ‘peasant kingdom’.
In the Ottoman case, the timar system was abolished, a new tax system was imposed
(although tithe and tax-farming were preserved) and the majority of charitable pious
endowments were put under the supervision of central government. In parallel with
developments in Greece, the economic power of the conservative ulema was undermined and
governmental revenues soared.
In 1858, there was a general land law, about which there has been much historical debate,
chiefly over whether or not it brought real change (also paralleling historiographical debate in
Greece). Some emphasise the survival of older çiftliks; some the ban on creating new ones.
The historian Huri İslamoğlu-İnan emphasises that the state set out to tax everybody. The
effect was to promote property registration, starting with public property. In 1876 the
registration of absolute properties (mülk) began, effectively abrogating all tax exemptions that
had survived until then. This was a major change. Islamoğlu explains that once the major
decisions were respected, the central administration was ready to accommodate local interests
and incorporate regional customary realities in special provincial regulations. çiftlik
landholders were, in contrast to the Greek case, co-religionists with policy makers, and their
interests were taken seriously. In Thessaly, there was a move to confirm formal bondage of
peasants, though this was not finally published.
Differences between the Ottoman empire and Greece had much to do with the differing
relations between established local elites and (old or new) state power. In Greece and Serbia,
the mobilisation of peasant populations for national wars also created expectations of reward.
Discussion:
Michalis Sotiropoulos noted that national lands were used to guarantee foreign loans, esp.
by the Bavarians. He wondered if that was why it was policy to retain the lands. Or did the
Bavarians just not want to mix with such a potentially difficult issue? In the 1850s, he
thought it was de facto an issue, because everyone was thinking about it, in the context of
36
financial and economic squeezes. There was pressure to make it easier for land to operate as a
commodity through registration.
Socrates said that he didn’t want to get into the matter of the loan guarantees. He didn’t think
the protective powers were really too concerned about the debt: they just used it as a way of
gaining leverage over Greece.
Joanna Innes had been interested in what he had said about Kapodistrias and the link
between property ownership and voting. She wondered if that was still something people
were thinking about in the 1840s. She also wondered if there were domestic issues about
borrowing on the strength of land, and resulting creditor/debtor relationships.
Socrates said that Kapodistrias was a rigorist: he thought citizens needed to have land in
order to have the right to vote, though he also aimed to make the legislature no more than a
consultative body. Under the Regency, the primary concern was to establish a strong
municipal system, in which 10-15% of the population would be able to vote to choose a
shortlist of 3 candidates for mayor, from among whom the government would choose one.
This system continued until the 1870s, when MPs started to become more important than
mayors. A PhD shortly to be defended (by Stavroula Verrarou) offers an account of
municipalities in the Peloponnese. In 1844, it was from the ranks of these provincial elites
that the first parliamentarians of the national assembly were drawn. People were not bothered
by the co-existence of two different voting systems. At this period, the government always
won parliamentary elections – though we don’t know the election results in detail.
Several questions were collected:
Mark Philp asked how non-Christian peasants were dealt with: did they get the right to vote?
Stella Ghervas added, what about remaining Turkish landowners?
Ioannis Tassopoulos asked whether issues about land distribution were caught up with
populism, clientilism etc.
Maurizio Isabella asked about the relationship between the landowning system and the war
of independence.
Socrates said that Muslims were excluded form ownership and political participation. In
1687 when the Venetians occupied the Morea, the Muslims left, or had to convert. After the
Greek revolution, non-Christians who wanted to keep their land needed to convert. The
property of Muslims was confiscated and turned into national estates – and similarly those
who sided with the Ottomans lost out. There were some small Catholic communities whose
property was respected. Jews didn’t in general hold land, but those surviving the war were
given full rights of citizenship. Only Muslims converted to Christianity were able to remain
in independent Greece.
Peasants took up arms in the hope of gaining land, so the war did involve a land question, but
not explicitly so. It was understood that Christians would take over Muslim land.
On populism and clientelism: he thought that issue was constructed in the 1950s and 60s, in
relation to the use of clientilist models, which were projected backwards. Maybe that is how
things worked, but since we don’t know how people voted that’s just speculation.
Round Table: Andrew Arsan, Peter Hill, Gianluca Fruci, Caitlin Gale
Andrew Arsan: said that he had found the workshop very stimulating. His expertise was in
the Lebanon. He had been struck by both parallels and contrasts. In the Lebanon too there
was a historiographical legacy of debates about failed modernisation.
37
One hypothesis to test was that democracy was born out of crisis. In the Lebanon, civil strife
in 1860 led to the enactment of a règlement organique: the hope was in this way to reinvent
the body politic. Issues of popular representation and sovereignty were bound up in this; also
questions about landholding and the place of the church. The consultative assembly
established by the règlement was seen to express the will of the people, though in fact it did
so only very indirectly. The same notions were at play though in other contexts: tax rolls,
court rooms.
In relation to the notion of a national church: from the 1830s and 40s, Maronite clerics began
to present themselves as forming a national church, despite the religious mix present in the
Lebanon. This however was a very ad hoc development, with no historical roots. C18 it had
not been supposed that only Muslims could represent Muslims, non-Muslims non-Muslims,
but this came to be argued C19.
In relation to the land question, he thought that the way practice was or was not imbricated in
language presented an interesting issue in terms of the social history of political thought.
It was an interesting question how Greece and the Lebanon should be conceived in relation to
eachother and to Europe. And was the best framework for considering them together Ottoman
or Mediterranean? Both had long histories of broader, mercantile contacts with southern
Europe.
Peter Hill said that he was interested in diasporas as points of contact between people, and in
the relationship between the nahda, the Arab ‘awakening’ and the Greek ‘enlightenment’,
and also in the relationship between these intellectual and cultural developments and political
change. As he understand it, the intellectual movement took place largely outside what
became Greece, and to a large extent among diaspora Greeks. There were obvious parallels
with Arab groups in Europe, interacting with each other and with Europe – especially
Christian Arabs. Originally Beirut was the place in which such developments made their
chief impact within the Arab world; later Egypt.
Diasporic networks included both merchants and Christian missionaries: these didn’t have a
big role in the state. Muslim Arabs however did have a role in the state: they might travel to
Europe to get ideas about reforms they could promote at home. Democracy perhaps had less
appeal to those already involved in state projects. And for minority-group members, the state
didn’t seem to be a promising means to access power.
He wondered if before 1820 Greeks thought access to power lay through the Ottoman state,
or were there other routes?
Gianluca Fruci: said that in Italy as in Greece, democracy was a fluid word and perhaps
banal. As in Greece, it was often used with reference to the ancient world. There were as
many enemies of democracy in Europe as among the Ottomans. To achieve more specific
meaning, the noun needed to be associated with an adjective: pure, representative, liberal,
social, Christian etc. Today, a particular version has triumphed, and the word seems to have a
precise meaning, but then it was less clear.
In relation to suffrage, he was struck as he had said, but how early the Greeks opted for
universal suffrage. In Italy universal suffrage was an idea and occasional practice from the
Napoleonic plebiscites onwards. Basing municipal suffrage on limited suffrage was also a
common European story. And electoral corruption could be found everywhere!
38
Caitlin Gale explained that she was primarily a military historian working on North Africa,
and specialising in a slightly earlier period. Both the Napoleonic Wars and their ending
brought turmoil to the Ottoman world: a new regime rose in Egypt; there was civil war in
Morocco, and a revival of corsairing. Moreover, Malta and Minorca changed hands: all in all,
the Mediterranean changed greatly 1800-30. She was struck by Greek/North African parallels
in terms of this being a time of ferment, even if history took different directions. It wasn’t
inevitable that Algeria should have ended up as a French colony. During the 1820s, links
between North Africa and the Ottoman centre were relatively attenuated, and there wasn’t
huge interest in the Greek war of independence, though previously there had been quite a lot
of contact between Algeria and Greece.
Discussion:
Konstantina Zanou wondered why European powers didn’t make Greece a colony?
Caitlin said she’d been thinking rather of the reverse counterfactual: that Algeria might have
obtained independence. During the war the Mediterranean had been a British sea. Disruption
ensued when others were allowed back in.
Joanna Innes suggested that there were connections between what was happening in
different parts of the Mediterranean c. 1830: Britain’s preoccupation with Greece helped to
give France her chance in Algeria.
Antonis Anastaspoulos thought there were geo-political difficulties about colonising
Greece: couldn’t be done by occupying a major port and then penetrating its hinterland.
Maurizio Isabella said nonetheless the possibility was discussed.
Stella Ghervas wondered about the periodisation of the project: it covered a very long
period, and the end was very different from the start.
Also she wondered how Greece was best characterised before independence: what
terminology should we use?
In relation to democracy, the main question for her was still, who is the demos? The
community of Greeks? But who were they? These seemed to her central but still very open
questions.
Joanna Innes said in relation to the periodisation of the project that indeed, it covered a
period of significant change: that was the point.
She thought the question ‘Who are the people’ tended to arise for contemporaries at a second
stage. First they fought to establish the sovereignty of the people; then they had to work out
who the people were.
Konstantina agreed: when they appealed to the people, who were they addressing? They
themselves didn’t really know.