User:Ashmedai 119/Sandbox/Greek War of Independence

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Background

Ottoman rule

Main articles: Ottoman Greece, Ottoman Greeks, and Millet-i Rum

The Ottoman Empire being essentialy a theocratic state organised its subjects on a basis of discriminations based on religion. Orthodox Christians were Shortly after Ottoman conquest, extensive powers were given to the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople over all Orthodox Christians, who formed the Rum millet, on matters of taxation, . Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians were a subject people. So,

They were hardly connected with ancient Greece, mostly identifying themselves as Romaioi (i.e. Romans)

Wars, revolts etc

By 1453 almost the whole of the Greek peninsula was under Ottoman rule. Despotate of Morea, Frankish states and were soon to fall in Ottoman hands. Venetian managed to lasted longer, Crete being the last major to be in 1669. Since then, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Greek peninsula with the exception of the Ionian Islands

Turkish–Venetian Wars.

There were numerous failed revolts throughout the history of the Ottoman empire.

Throughout the 17th century there was great resistance to the Ottomans in Morea and elsewhere, as evidenced by revolts led by Dionysius the Philosopher in 1600 and 1611 in Epirus.

Ottoman rule over Morea was interrupted by the Morean War, as the peninsula came under Venetian rule for 30 years. Between the 1680s and the Ottoman reconquest in 1715 during the Turkish–Venetian War, the province would remain in turmoil from then on and throughout the 18th century, as the bands of the klephts multiplied.

A great uprising was the Russian-sponsored Orlov Revolt of the 1770s, which was crushed by the Ottomans after having limited success. Albanian merceneries who had significantly contributed to the suppress of the uprising ravaged many regions in mainland Greece

However, the Maniots continually resisted Turkish rule, enjoying virtual autonomy and defeating several Turkish incursions into their region, the most famous of which was the invasion of 1770.

During the second Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792), the Greek community of Trieste financed a small fleet under Lambros Katsonis, which was a nuisance for the Turkish navy; during the war klephts and armatoloi rose once again.

Mountainous and rather poor areas, that were remote, mountainousAgrafa mountains, Souli,and the Mani Peninsula.

Maladministration, the devsirme, increasingly heavy taxation, and the sundry caprices of the conqueror would force many . The routes they chiefly took were: first, to the predominantly Greek territories, which were either still free or Frankish-controlled (that is to say, the Venetian fortresses in Morea, as well as in the Aegean and Ionian Islands) or else to Italy and the West generally; second, to remote mountain districts in the interior.

Phanariotes etc

At the same time, a number of Greeks enjoyed a privileged position in the Ottoman state as members of the Ottoman bureaucracy. Greeks controlled the affairs of the Orthodox Church through the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Constantinople, as the higher clergy of the Orthodox Church was mostly of Greek origin. Thus, as a result of the Ottoman millet system, the predominantly Greek hierarchy of the Church enjoyed control over the Empire's Orthodox subjects. From the 18th century and onwards, Phanariote (Ottoman-appointed Greek administrators from the Phanar district of Constantinople) played an increasingly influential role in the governance of the Empire.

Klephts and armatoloi

See also: Klepht and Armatoloi

Armatolos. Water Colour by Carl Haag.

In times of central authority's military incapacity, the Balkan countryside was infested with groups of bandits that stroke against Muslims and Christians alike, called klephts (κλέφτες) in Greek, the equivanent of Hajduks. Leading a life of defiance of Ottoman rule, klefts were highly admired and held a significant place in the popular mythology. Responding to klephts' attacks, the Ottomans recruited the ablest amongst these groups, contracting Christian militias, known as armatoloi (αρματολοί), to secure endangered areas, especially mountain passes. Their area of jurisdiction was called armatolik, the oldest known having been established in Agrafa during the reign of Murad II.

Boundaries between klephts and armatoloi were not clear, as the latter would often turn into klephts to extort more benefits from the authorities, and, consequently, another klepht group would be appointed to their armatolik so that they confront their predecessors.

Nevertheless, klephts and armatoloi formed a provincial elite, though not a social class whose members would muster under a common goal. As the armatolos position gradually turned to be a hereditary one, some captains took care of their armatoliki as their personal property. A great deal of power was placed in their hands and they integrated in the network of clientelist relationships that formed the Ottoman administration. Some managed to establish an exclusive control in their armatolik, forcing the Porte to repeatedly, unsuccesfully though, try to eliminate them. By the time of the War of Independence powerful armatoloi could be traced in Rumeli, modern Thessaly, Epirus and southern Macedonia.

In Morea, there weren't any armatoloi. Wealthy landowners and primates hired the kapoi serving as personal bodyguards and rural police.

Rigas Feraios, the apostle of the Greek Revolution.

Greek national movement

See also: Diafotismos

Due to economic developments taking place both within and outside the Ottoman empire, the 18th century witnessed the ascence of two merchant groups to prosperity: Albanian sailors of several Aegean islands, like Hydra and Andros, became affluent maritime merchants and Rumeli muleteers of Slav, Greek and predominantly Vlach origins turned from muleteers and peddlers to independent merchants and bankers after the treaty of Passarowitz. As commerce expanded in the Balkans, Greek became the area's 'lingua franca' and continental merchants homogenized through a process of assimilation to the Greek 'high culture' by the end of the century.

generated the wealth necessary to found schools and libraries and pay for young Greeks to study at the universities of Western Europe. It was there that they came into contact with the radical ideas of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

As revolutionary nationalism grew across Europe—including Greece (due, in large part, to the influence of the French Revolution—the Ottoman Empire's power declined and Greek nationalism began to assert itself, with the Greek cause beginning to draw support not only from the large Greek merchant diaspora in both Western Europe and Russia but also from Western European philhellenes.

Educated members of the large Greek diaspora, such as Adamantios Korais, a merchant at his youth that turned to philology, and Anthimos Gazis, tried to transmit these ideas back to the Greeks, with the double aim of raising their educational level and simultaneously strengthening their national identity. This was achieved through the dissemination of books, pamphlets and other writings in Greek, in a process that has been described as the modern Greek Enlightenment (Greek: Διαφωτισμός).

"The French Revolution and Napoleon opened people's eyes."

Kolokotronis' Memoirs.

The most influential of the Greek writers and intellectuals was Rigas Feraios, a Vlach merchant from Thessaly, based in Bucharest. Deeply influenced by the French Revolution, he the creation of a multilingual, multicultural and multireligious "Hellenic Republic". He anonymoysly published a series of revolutionary tracts and proposed republican Constitutions for the state he envisaged. After forming as to Arrested by Austrian officials in Trieste in 1797, he was handed over to Ottoman officials and transported to Belgrade along with his co-conspirators that executed them. Feraios' death ultimately fanned the flames of Greek nationalism; his nationalist poem, the Thourios (war-song), was translated into a number of Western European and later Balkan languages, and served as a rallying cry for Greeks against Ottoman rule:

English

For how long, o brave young men, shall we live in fastnesses,

Alone like lions, on the ridges in the mountains?

Shall we dwell in caves, looking out on branches,

Fleeing from the world on account of bitter serfdom?

Abandoning brothers, sisters, parents, homeland

Friends, children, and all of our kin?

[...]

Better an hour of free life,

than forty years of slavery and prison.

tbmoved@Outburst of the Revolution

Many armatoloi had joined the Filiki Etairia. When the revolution erupted they took up arms alongside the revolutionaries, namely, amongst them, Androutsos, Karaiskakis and Athanasios Diakos, pursuing a patron-client reasoning. Thus, klephts and armatoloi, being the only availiable major military formation on the side of the Greeks, played so crucial a role in the Greek revolution that Yannis Makriyannis considered them the "yeast of liberty".

They fought as Christians against Muslim unbelievers

Sources

• Batalas, Achilles (2003). "Send a Thief to Catch a Thief: State-bui;ding and the Employment of Irregular Military Formations in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Greece". In Diane E. Davis, Anthony W. Pereira (ed.). Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Politics and State Formation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81277-1.
• Clogg, Richard (2002). A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00479-9.
• Hobsbawm, Eric (1992). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43961-2.
• Iordachi, Constantin (2006). "The Ottoman Empire: Syncretic Nationalism and Citizenship in the Balkans". In Timothy Baycroft, Mark Hewitson (ed.). What is a Nation?: Europe 1789-1914. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-199-29575-1.
• Jusdanis, Gregory (2001). The Necessary Nation. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08902-7.
• Karasakidou, Anastasia N. (1997). Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-42494-4.
• Koliopoulos, John S. (1987). Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece, 1821-1912. Clarendon. ISBN 0-198-88653-5.
• Stoianovich, Traian (1960). "The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant". The Journal of Economic History. 20 (2). Cambridge University Press: 234–313. doi:10.1017/S0022050700110447.
• Topping, Peter (June 1961). "Greek Historical Writing on the Period 1453-1914". The Journal of Modern History. 33 (2): 157–173. doi:10.1086/238781.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Vacalopoulos, Apostolos (1976). The Greek Nation, 1453-1669. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-813-50810-X.

Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy, and Society in the Nineteenth Century Των Dimitri Gondicas, Charles Philip Issawi Εκδόθηκε από Darwin Press, 1999 ISBN 0878500960,

(orthodox rum millet)

Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters Since the Enlightenment Των Dēmētrēs Tziovas Συνεισφέρων Dēmētrēs Tziovas Εκδόθηκε από Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003 ISBN 0754609987, p.47.