The Greek War of Independence is undoubtedly one of the important events that marked the nineteenth century. Aside from Greek national pride and beyond the framework of national historiography constructed to make sense of the nevertheless crucial events we today unanimously call the Greek War of Independence, its significance lies in three factors of global impact. The first and foremost is that the war against the Ottoman administration revealed the weakened character of the once glorious Ottoman Empire and, even more so, harmed it significantly. After the uprisings in the provinces of Rumelia and the Morea, the Ottoman map changed. The prosperous western provinces of the empire claimed independence, which, besides the territorial loss, clearly suggested that the last vast empire of Eurasia could not carry on as it had in the previous century. As the West European diplomatic language of the time testifies, the Greek War of Independence led the Ottoman Empire to become “the sick man of Europe.” What is more, the Greek revolt inspired other Balkan people to question the legitimacy and to challenge the authority of the Ottoman state altogether. In a sense, it shaped the different nationalisms of the Balkan Peninsula, initiating, one way or another, the period which, after many struggles and conflicts, shaped Southeastern Europe.
The second factor that makes the Greek Revolution a unique event is related to Western Europe and more specifically to the role “Greece” played in defining “western civilization” and “western ethics,” alongside the help the war received from its West European allies. The Greek War of Independence reinvented “Greece,” the stepping-stone of “western civilization,” a stereotype that Romanticism enriched and strengthened. Greek independence became inevitable, while Greek valor was an example that traveled as far as the Americas. The “rebirth of Greece” transmitted ideals and ideas around the globe. In its own terms, this brought about the dependency of the newly born state on its European counterparts. The West European powers safeguarded Greece, establishing, at the same time, their presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The last and perhaps most important factor is the concept of self-determination. Although often neglected or taken as self-evident, this concept is of extreme importance. Α careful look at the events of the Greek Revolution testifies to that. Self-determination affected all aspects of the revolts that emerged around the same time in the same geographical region and which we conceive of today under the general framework of the Greek War of Independence.
Today, we tend to understand the Greek Revolution as one single event within certain boundaries. We attribute to it, and rightly so, a very specific beginning and a conclusive end, with one part acting in a certain way, while the other part acted differently. The sources suggest, however, that such a schematic presentation does not do justice to what really happened. The Greek War of Independence was a particularly complicated series of events of multiple dynamics, all of which, intentionally or not, proclaimed self-determination, the various connotations notwithstanding, as the ultimate reason against any source of power. Self-determination is thus the concept that intermediated the entry of “Greece” into modernity: a province of the Ottoman Empire becomes an independent state; or, more accurately in the case of Greece, a state regains its independence, with reference, of course, to Antiquity.
The complexity of the Greek Revolution, the key concepts that emerged and which the Greek Enlightenment polished, the various dynamics, and the place of the Greek War of Independence in the international framework are issues that have been sufficiently addressed by modern scholarship. Disentangling the study of the Greek War of Independence from traditional perceptions that invariably attempted to promote the heroic nature of the Greek participants alongside the evil Ottomans, modern scholars have revised the narrative. For one, they have abandoned ideological conceptualizations and have returned to sources to make sense of the events and their aftermath. Instead of marginalized presentations, recent scholarship approaches the Greek War of Independence within multiple frameworks and from various angles, always in accordance with current trends and theoretical milieus. Even national historiography has shifted the discussion of the Greek Revolution into more polymorphic and complicated approaches.
We still lack, however, one of the most important components regarding the study of the Greek War of Independence: that of the Ottoman view. One cannot but wonder, what did the Ottomans think about the Greek War of Independence? In fact, what did they call it? Did they react instantly? And then, how did they record the massive events of 1821 onwards? These are all questions this book aims to address. Including more than 600 unpublished documents directly from the imperial cabinet, a task that has never been undertaken before, this publication sheds light on the Ottoman view of the Greek Revolution. Meticulously commented upon and carefully indexed and analyzed, this set of documents, which covers today’s Greece, but not only, brings to scholars fresh information and insight.
It must be said from the outset that this book does not challenge our overall perception of the Greek War of Independence. Yet that was not our initial concern. To make such a statement would mean to fall into the same fallacy that scholars of previous years have fallen into, that is, to ignore and under- or overestimate the value of the sources. On the contrary, our concern was to return to the principles of history, a long-lasting engagement of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation. To put it differently, our aim was to examine carefully an insufficiently studied set of documents and to understand to what extent sources that have been rarely employed in modern scholarship enrich and/or change our view of the past. The Ottoman documents presented here highlight aspects of the Greek War of Independence that have never been thoroughly addressed or investigated.
In short, with this edition we introduce to the greater public an archival source that we hope will constitute a source of inspiration for further research and new findings. Instead of a totemic event, we at the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation intended to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence by returning back to it.
Panagiotis C. Laskaridis
President of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation