If English speakers—or French speakers, or Spanish speakers, or really most any speaker of any language other than Greek…or Turkish—think about the Greek Revolution at all, then that’s amazing. If they do not, then they continue to ignore one of the most consequential collection of events in the 19th century, a series of imperial overlaps, social convulsions, massacres, sieges, expulsions, and sometimes battles that not only resulted in an independent Greece, but also changed forever the culture of the eastern Mediterranean, and birthed nationalism as a successful way of not only theorizing but of being.
As you’ll discover, the Greek Revolution wasn’t just about Greek independence—it redefined identity, nationalism, the map of the eastern Mediterranean, and what a Greek actually was. In this episode Yanni Kotsonis and I discuss his new book The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism. We’ll touch on the overlapping empires, cultural upheavals, and violent transformations that forged modern Greece and helped invent modern nationalism. This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in 19th-century revolutions, comparative nationalism, and the deeper origins of the modern world.
My guest Yanni Kotsonis is Professor of History at New York University, where he was founding director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. Raised in Athens, he was educated in Montreal, Copenhagen, London, and Moscow.
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