KAPODISTRIAS AND THE "GALATIS CASE"

The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, 2020

This article seeks to examine the construction of the notion of Europe not from a West-East perspective but from a more complex geographical and conceptual vantage point, including the north and the south in relation to the West and East and, more specifically, from the point of view of the greek orthodox and russian worlds in the postnapoleonic era. Following the political, religious and intellectual activity of two expatriates and close friends, alexander sturdza and konstantinos oikonomos, it explores how the idea of Europe was visited and how these two intellectuals and politicians negotiated and renegotiated to what extent their respective communities (russian and greek) were part of Europe, with religion as the central axis and the notions of the orthodox world and orthodox East in the arsenal of both. The first decades of the nineteenth century brought russia and the greeks to the forefront of the European scene. First, russia, in the wake of its military campaigns against napoleon's empire (1812-1814), at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) found itself in a leading position in European politics and as the pacesetter in the elaboration of the idea of a united Europe. a little later, the greek struggle for independence, the first protracted successful national struggle in Europe, raised the principle of nationalities (as national self-determination was called in the nineteenth century) for the first time as one to be reckoned with in Europe. as i argue, in the early nineteenth century the rise of russian power provided fertile ground to challenge the idea of the secondary character of Eastern orthodoxy in comparison to the latin West and of the Eastern peripheral character of both russia and greece, and to elaborate the idea of the cultural and political equality of West and East. "What is Europe?" is a recurring question in the study of European history, one that needs to be taken not as an essentialist category for analysis but as an open concept to be studied in its historicity. 1 Questions such as, for example, "What are Europe's real or imagined eastern borders?" and "Who qualifies as European?" are intricately interrelated with people's vision about their community's place in the real European, and especially in the symbolic, European geography. no

1999

Three major historical questions are briefly discussed in this study: a) How far may the anti-Westernism of the Greek Orthodox Church conduce to the cultural isolationism of the Orthodox world (at least the Greek sector); b) how far did the initiatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as also of its individual functionaries, be described as ecumenical, or at least panBalkan, at a political level; and c) how far, geographically and ethnologically speaking, did the Great Church influence the processes of ethnogenesis in the Orthodox communities under its jurisdiction. The author arrives to the following conclusions: a) Although chronic aversion to the Occident was a fundamental aspect of the Church’s ideology, it did not engender thoroughgoing cultural isolationism in a considerable part of the Orthodox population, even in the early years of Ottoman rule, b) Politically the Oecumenical Patriarchate was the head of the Greeks (“ κeφαλή του Γένους των Ρωμαίων”). Yet its general r...

International Journal of Social Science and Human Research, 2021

The present study aims to discuss the connection between the Modern Greek Enlightenment and the Greek Revolution. It reveals the decisive effect of this intellectual movement upon the Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire supporting that the Greek Enlightenment contributed to the awakening of the Greeks who eventually revolted against the Ottomans establishing a new independent national state. Additionally this paper reveals the position of the Orthodox Church and its reaction towards the Enlightenment and moreover highlights certain actions taken by the Church against the Enlightenment thinkers. Finally, an attempt is made and to the reasons that led the Church to adopt this position against the Enlightenment movement and the Greek Revolution. This paper derives from an in-depth study of the bibliography relevant to the aforementioned issues.

Diaspora neo-greca nell’Italia centro-meridionale della prima età moderna (sec. XV-XVIII). Atti del convegno Venezia, 27-29 giugno 2023, 2025

Η ανεμπόδιστη διέλευση από τα Στενά των Δαρδανελίων για τα πλοία που είχαν υψώσει τη ρωσική σημαία (1774) και η ενσωμάτωση της Κριμαίας (1783) άνοιξαν νέες προοπτικές για το τσαρικό στέμμα. Μία από αυτές ήταν η συγκρότηση ενός προξενικού δικτύου στην Ιταλική Χερσόνησο. Η Ρωσική Αυτοκρατορία, αποβλέποντας στην ανάπτυξη του ρωσικού εξαγωγικού εμπορίου, τη δικτύωση με τις ευρωπαϊκές αγορές καθώς και την πληροφόρηση για πολιτικά θέματα, προχώρησε στην ίδρυση δέκα προξενείων κοντά σε εμπορικά λιμάνια των Ιταλικών κρατών. Μετά το 1783 επτά από αυτά τα προξενεία λειτούργησαν για δέκα συνεχόμενα έτη, στελεχωμένα από αξιωματούχους ελληνικής καταγωγής, μέλη των κατά τόπους ελληνικών κοινοτήτων. Η επιλογή αυτών των στελεχών ήταν άμεσα συνδε- δεμένη με τις υπηρεσίες που είχαν προσφέρει στο παρελθόν στη Ρωσική Αυτοκρατορία οι ίδιοι ή συγγενικά τους πρόσωπα, χάρη στη γνώση του εμπορίου και στη διασύνδεσή τους με γνωστούς εμπορικούς οίκους μέσω του οικογενειακού και επαγγελματικού τους περιβάλλοντος. Η μελέτη αυτή προβάλλει τη δυναμική παρουσία του ελληνικού στοιχείου στις κρατικές υπηρεσίες της ρωσικής εξωτερικής πολιτικής κατά τις τελευταίες δύο δεκαετίες του 18ου αιώνα. Με γνώμονα τον ταχύ ρυθμό ανάπτυξης του ρωσικού προξενικού δικτύου στα ιταλικά κράτη, διερευνώνται οι λειτουργίες που αυτό έπρεπε να επιτελέσει ως προς το εμπόριο και τις πολιτικές εξελίξεις στην Ανατολική Μεσόγειο. Τέλος, μελετάται η διάρκεια της ακμής του ρωσικού προξενικού δικτύου στην Ιταλική Χερσόνησο και η πορεία που αυτό ακολούθησε.

This article offers a comparative approach to two antagonistic national ideas, the Greek and the Bulgarian. It highlights one of their converging aspects, which was adopted by members of the Greek Orthodox and the Bulgarian communities after the Crimean War (1853-1856). Espousing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire and the perpetuation of the status quo in the Balkans, they opposed the political principle of Balkan nationalism, as well as the concomitant irredentist aspirations of the Greek nation-state and the revolutionary plans of the proponents of Bulgarian political emancipation. Moreover, each side employed similar arguments, albeit in the context of a different national perspective: the Bulgarians considered this option to be the best way to safeguard their Bulgarianness against the assimilatory efforts of the Greeks, while the Greeks believed it was the only possible option that would protect their ethnic identity against the threat of Pan-Slavism. In this way, the former instigated by Stoian Chomakov condemned the armed uprising in Crete in 1866 and declared obedience to the Sultan, whereas the latter sharply deprecated the unification of the Bulgarian Principality with the Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia in 1885, in a series of articles published in the newspaper Neologos. The advocates of non-aggressive nationalism combined with pro-Ottoman manifestations belonged to the political and economical elite of their respective communities and were closely affiliated with the Ottoman state. In other words, they related their social status and economic prosperity to the fate of the Empire. The paper aims to draw the profile and compare the views of the Bulgarian and Greek Ottomans, focusing on the cases of the Bulgarian national leader Stoian Chomakov on the one hand and the Greek newspaper Neologos on the other.