"Was geht die griechische Regierung ein Streit zwischen zwei albanischen Staatsbürgern an?“"
Albanien: Spannungen nach "ethnischem Mord" an Griechen « DiePresse.com
Findest du es nicht abartig das es keine spannungen gibt wenn albaner dort gekillt werden?
Laut der EU Studie ist der griechische Rassimus am stärksten gewachsen.
Von minderheiten braucht man da nicht reden.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History[/FONT] [/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif] Lecture 14: Greek nationalism, the "Megale Idea" and Venizelism to 1923[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [/FONT]
Previous lecture /
Complete list of lectures /
Next lecture [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] As noted in Lecture 13, some themes and trends in Balkan history are easier to understand if we abandon preconceptions drawn from general European history, including preconceptions about periodization. This is true in Greek as well as Serbian history, and very apparent when we gauge the proper place of World War I in Greek historical chronology. 1914 and 1918 are not the most useful or critical dates for an understanding of Greek nationalism, because the forces at work began well before the start of the Great War and continued after its conclusion. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Broadly, we can say that nationalism in foreign relations began for Greece with the Revolution of 1821. Narrowly, we can say that the European War of 1914-1918 was only one episode in a series of wars for national territorial expansion, than began with the First Balkan War of 1912 and ended with the war against Kemal Ataturk's revived Turkish republic in 1923. And this decade-long contest was merely one link in a chain of events that is still being forged in places like Cyprus and in Greek relations with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Origins of the Megale Idea[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Greek nationalism has the "Megale Idea," the counterpart of Serbia's "Nacertanije." Literally translated as the "great idea" or "grand idea," the Megale Idea implies the goal of reestablishing a Greek state as a homeland for all the Greeks of the Mediterranean and Balkan world. Such a Greece would be territorially larger than the Greek state of today, but would be smaller than the Greek world of classical times, which extended west to the coast of Sicily, northeast into the Black Sea, and south to Egypt. Alexander the Great -- a figure of classical Greek history and legend exploited by competing modern-day politicians -- spread the influence of Hellenism even wider, into Africa and Asia. The Eastern half of the Roman Empire became solidly Greek as Byzantium, and sustained Greek culture in the Balkans and Asia Minor. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] One of the unsettled aspects of the Megale Idea and the goals of Greek nationalism has been uncertainty about what is properly considered Greek, and why. In the nineteenth century, religious affiliation with the Greek Orthodox church was often confused with ethnic affiliation: the Bulgarians, for example, worked for many years to secure a separate Bulgarian Exarchate Church for this reason. Extreme Greek territorial claims resulted when the geography of classical Greece was applied to modern maps. The result has been conflict with Albania over Epirus, with Serbia and Bulgaria over Macedonia, and with Turkey over Istanbul (Constantinople), the western coast of Anatolia and islands from the Aegean to Cyprus. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] While the fall of Constantinople in 1453 put an end to Greek political power in the Balkans, the Ottoman millet system ensured that Greek influence would remain strong through the agency of the Orthodox Church. As indicated in Lecture 6, the power of the Patriarch and his hierarchy opened important doors for Greeks, and this helped to keep alive visions of a revived Greek state among the Greeks of the Ottoman empire. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Intellectual currents outside the Ottoman Empire also contributed to a consciousness of things Greek. Some educated Greeks fled to Italy after the fall of Constantinople: their writings promoted interest in antiquity during the Renaissance. Western European interest in ancient Greece led to Phil-Hellenism. The British ruling class, in particular, gained an interest in Greece from their education in the classics, and this led to British support for the Greek revolution in the 1820s. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Rhigas Pheraios published a manifesto in 1797, one year before his arrest and execution for anti-Turkish plotting. His work offers insight into Greek thought about a revived Greece, on the eve of the modern revolutionary era. Rhigas envisaged a large country occupying both the Balkans and Anatolia, sheltering all the ethnic groups found there but ruled according to Greek ideas. Rhigas was advanced enough in his thinking to abandon religion as a criterion for national identity but he was not farsighted enough to see the ways in which modern ethnic nationalism, with its emphasis on shared language and culture, would make such an idea impossible. He influenced the planners of the Revolution of 1821: we can see echoes of his thinking in the plans for a three-fold uprising, to take place in Istanbul and the Romanian provinces, as well as in the Greek Peloponessus. And we have seen how this idea broke down in the face of incipient Romanian nationalism, so that the uprising in Romania failed because Romanians resented their Greek Phanariot hospodars. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Megale Idea after 1830[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] After the achievement of Greek independence in 1830, the Megale Idea played a major role in Greek politics. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Greek people remained outside the borders of the limited Greece permitted by the Great Powers, who had no intention that a large Greek state should replace the Ottoman Empire. King Othon became "King of Greece" and not "King of the Greeks" for exactly that reason: the latter title would have implied interests outside the new border. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The Megale Idea continued to be an intellectual as well as a political concept. The work of the historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos shows how ideas underlay politics. Paparrigopoulos was born in 1815 in Istanbul. As a child his family fled to Odessa after the 1821 uprising failed in the Turkish capital. In the new Greece, he became an influential professor writing history in the service of nationalism and "the fatherland." His work shows to what degree the Greek state relied not only on present-day needs but historical roots to justify and identify itself. In 1843 Paparrigopoulos refuted a German paper claiming that the present Greek population was descended from Slavs and Albanians who had repopulated Greece in the 500s CE. His work was self-consciously political: he spoke at political rallies and offered his expertise at the Congress of Berlin to ensure that the borders drawn in 1878 reflected Greek positions about the ethnic identity of the Macedonian population. Paparrigopoulos tied modern Greece to its classical and medieval roots, a position which implied valid claims to all the lands of the Byzantine Empire. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Greeks and their leaders uniformly wanted to liberate the "unredeemed" Greeks abroad, but differed about when and how to do so. In the 1880s, Kharilaos Trikoupis (seven times prime minister between 1875 and 1895) stood for reform and modernizing the domestic economy before taking international risks. His rival, Theodoros Deliyannis (five times prime minister between 1885 and 1905) took the opposite tack, and his career shows the risks at work. When the small Bulgarian principality expanded into Eastern Roumelia in 1885, Deliyannis mobilized the Greek army in an effort to secure more territory for Greece as well: but the Great Powers reacted with a blockade that damaged Greece's economy. Deliyannis went to war with Turkey in 1897 over the island of Crete, leading to twin humiliations: the Ottomans soundly defeated Greece in battle and a state bankruptcy led to Great Power control of the Greek national budget. But despite these setbacks, pursuit of the Megale Idea remained a viable basis for a political career. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Olympic Games[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] It is slightly unfair to dwell always on the negative aspects of nationalism. While national pride has caused some of the worst of wars, it can also lead to positive results. One of the most interesting has been the revival of the Olympic Games in a modern form, which took place for the first time in Athens in 1896. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The impetus for our modern international Olympics came from Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman who hoped that athletic programs on the British model would help revive France after the defeat by Germany in 1870. Interest in the Olympic concept was not new. Groups of Phil-Hellenes in England held "Olympic Games" off and on since the 1600s: Shakespeare referred to the ancient Olympic Games in 'Henry VI.' The King of Greece contributed one of the trophies for a long-running series of English games held in Shropshire from the 1840s to the 1880s. King Othon sponsored Olympic Games outside Athens in 1859, an event that took place again in 1870, 1875 and 1888. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] None of these festivals involved competition between athletes from different countries but the notion of an international event, held in modern Greece but harking back to classical times, had obvious appeal for Greeks trying to attract attention in the world community. The Games carried the clear message that ancient and modern Greece were one and the same, and supported Greek hopes that the glories of the former would attract international support for the ambitions of the latter. Greeks therefore welcomed de Coubertin's idea. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] When de Coubertin began serious planning in 1894, a Greek named Demetrios Bikelas organized the International Olympic Committee. Consistent with their contrasting politics, Deliyannis endorsed the idea, while Trikoupis rejected it as a waste of money. However, the idea had the support of both the Greek population and King George. The king agreed to host the Games at Athens in 1896, and private funds were found to pay for them. To further the identification between ancient feats and modern sports, sponsors invented a new 40-kilometer "Marathon" race based on legends about the Athenian victory at Marathon in 490 BCE. Again in line with nationalist undercurrents, the games opened on the Greek independence day: April 6, 1896. Greek pride received a boost when a Greek won the first marathon race. Even though a Greek proposal to make Athens the permanent site of the quadrennial games was rejected, the Olympics became an unusual and peaceful way to secure credibility for Greece, based on its national history. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Crete and Macedonia[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] After the high good times of 1896, the lost war of 1897 was a reminder that economic backwardness, military weakness and political corruption still prevented Greece from achieving the goals of the Megale Idea. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The country was unable to achieve union ("enosis") with Crete despite repeated uprisings on the island. In Macedonia, Greeks were surprised by the pro-Bulgarian uprising of 1903 and had to create a rival guerilla force in haste. When Paul Melas, son of a prominent Athens family and a commissioned officer in the Greek army, was killed while serving secretly and illegally in Macedonia, the revelation caused a scandal: the Great Powers condemned Greek interference inside Turkey, but the Greek population condemned the government for not doing more to secure Macedonia for Greece. Although Greek guerillas gradually secured the southern half of Macedonia by defeating pro-Bulgarian units, nothing came of their victories because the 1908 Young Turk revolution restored Ottoman rule, apparently in a form that was stronger than ever. 1909 saw another uprising on the island of Crete, and once again Greece was too weak to risk "enosis" by war. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Goudhi coup[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] No one was more aware of political corruption and military weakness, or more susceptible to patriotic embarassment, than the officers in the Greek army. In July 1909, 1300 junior officers organized themselves as the "Military League" and drew up a petition asking for financial and tax reforms, to be used to pay for expansion and improvement of the military. King George installed a ministry that promised reform, but within a few days the new prime minister (the unremarkable Mavromichalis) went back on his pledge and installed the usual cronies in key posts. The officers' protest seemed to have become an excuse for the usual factional politics. Mavromichalis then began court martial proceedings against the Military League's leaders and refused to meet with a delegation of officers. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] In response, the Athens garrison marched to the suburb of Goudhi, then threatened to occupy the capital to enforce demands for reforms and amnesty. The small craft guilds of the city came out in favor of the League, which was also calling for lower taxes. Another reform ministry took power but this time the Military League placed the government on notice: unless specified laws were passed, the League would assume power as a military dictatorship. The measures were promptly passed. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] As in Serbia in 1903, a dangerous precedent had been set: the civilian government now functioned at the mercy of junior officers in the army. In the next months, the Military League forced some civilian officials and ambassadors out of office, repressed a mutiny by naval personnel who wanted a share of the power seized by the army, and forced the legislature to pass a list of economic bills, many of which were unworkable (lower taxes, for example, could not be reconciled with demands to spend more on the military). [/FONT]
