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Anastasia Balezdrova

On 25 March Greece celebrates the beginning of the armed struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. It began in 1821 and ended four years later with the signing of the Constantinople Peace Treaty that established the independent Kingdom of Greece.

Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Thessaloniki Iakovos Michailidis talks with GRReporter about the events, the historical context and the role that the Great Powers played in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and about the establishment of nation states in the Balkans. He was also one of the historical consultants of the documentary series "1821" that presents the history of the Greek War of Independence, the key battles as well as the internal conflicts between the main players in it.

Mr. Michailidis, to what extent was the liberation of Greece the work of Greeks and their internal uprisings, and to what extent was it due to the help of the Great Powers? Which one outweighed the other?

I would say that both factors played a role in it. In order to answer this question correctly one must take into account the objective facts. The first is that there were uprisings in Greece throughout the period of the Ottoman rule. None of them, however, can be compared to the war of liberation in 1821, which was actually a political movement aimed at the formation of a modern, independent Greek state on the example of the already established Western European countries.

The ideological background of the Greek uprising was the work of the movement of European Renaissance. Its participants were the result of the activity of the Filiki Eteria after 1814. Therefore, the uprising in question was the best-organized revolt on the Greek territory and it had a very clear political orientation. However, the European countries were particularly negative. The sacred union was actually an alliance of the major powers at the time and it was opposed to any revolutionary movement. Therefore, it was negative towards the Greek revolution.

Only the internationalization of the Greek independence movement after the first two years of the revolution had practically forced the major powers led by Great Britain and subsequently by Russia to reconsider their originally negative position and to help create an independent Greek state. Therefore, this was the result of the inner desire of the Greeks which, at that time, was stronger and more organized than at any other time in the past, thus driving the major powers to change their initial reservations about it.

Why were the major powers negative towards the riots?

Since the late 18th and early 19th century, Europe was the scene of large-scale wars. I mean the Napoleonic Wars that Napoleon had started throughout Europe after the French Revolution. The democratic and radical ideas of Napoleon and the French revolutionaries were a threat to the established status quo, especially to the most authoritarian monarchies in Europe like the Habsburg Empire and Russia. Therefore, they opposed Napoleon. They feared that the spread of revolutionary ideas in any region of Europe could threaten their existence and this was the basis of their negative attitude towards any revolutionary or radical idea.

How would you explain the fact that Greece was liberated almost 60 years before Bulgaria?

The national emancipation of the Bulgarian people and nation was late in comparison with that in Greece, mainly due to the actions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul and the specific conditions at the time of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans.

The national emancipation of the Bulgarian people and nation came late in comparison with that in Greece, mainly due to the actions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul and the specific conditions at the time of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans. At that time, the population was divided according to religion. The Ottoman Empire categorized its citizens as Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. All Christians, hence Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs and others, were subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. However, it was the bearer of the Greek culture and spirit. The Bulgarians had to be separated from this influence and the process took time before its completion in the middle of the 19th century. The first step was the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, followed by Bulgaria’s struggle for liberation during 1875 - 1878 and Bulgaria’s independence in 1908.

Who drove the struggles for Greece’s liberation? What was the role of the bourgeois class?