Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913


Book Description

This volume traces the rich social, cultural, economic and political history of the Greeks during National Period up till the military coup of 1909.




Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768


Book Description

This volume considers the period of Ottoman rule in Greek history in light of changing scholarship about this era and makes it accessible for the first time to a wider audience.




Greece


Book Description

We know ancient Greece, the civilization that shares the same name and gave us much that defines Western culture today. Yet, as financial crises have convulsed Greece repeatedly since 2010, worldwide coverage has revealed just how poorly we grasp the modern nation. This book sets out to understand the modern Greeks on their own terms. How did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas. Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation? A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.




The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories


Book Description

Translated into English for the first time, The Archeologist is a landmark of Greek national literature, and an important document in the history of archeology and classicism. Published for the bicentennial year of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. A Penguin Classic The year 2021 marks the bicentennial of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. This historical milestone provides the impetus for a new period of intensified reflection on the past, present, and future of Greece, especially in light of recent financial and humanitarian challenges the country has found itself facing: the debt crisis that began in the last days of 2009 and the migration crisis five years later. These crises had already stirred renewed and often animated debate about Greek national identity, especially in relation to Europe, and the legacy of classical antiquity remains central to how that relationship is imagined. Where does Greece fit into the modern world and what role, if any, should its celebrated and idealized antiquity play in the country's national identity? More than a century ago, Karkavitsas's The Archeologist (1904) helped to articulate and frame these kinds of questions. The work is an allegory of Greek nationalism that is stylized as a folktale about Aristodemus and Dimitrakis Eumorphopoulos, two brothers and descendants of the illustrious Eumorphopoulos line. For centuries, the family had been persecuted by the Khan family, but when the Khan dynasty starts to topple, the Eumorphopoulos family resolves to regain their ancestral lands and restore their line's ancient glory. Yet the two brothers disagree about the best path forward into the future. Aristodemus insists, to the point of mania, that they must look only to the ancient past—to the family's ancient language, texts, religion, and monuments; Dimitrakis, on the other hand, exuberantly embraces the present. The Archeologist, however, attempts to map and dramatize the tensions that were violently brewing in the Balkans at the turn of the twentieth century and which, within a decade of the work's publication, would contribute to the outbreak of World War I. Also included in this edition are a selection of "sea tales," which Karkavitsas heard from sailors during his extensive time aboard ships in the Mediterranean. Considered as indigenous to Greek literature, the four sea stories represent some of the best known of the Tales from the Prow. "The Gorgon," one of Karkavitsas's shortest sea stories, is also one of the most famous.







Proselytes of a New Nation


Book Description

"The purpose of this book is to explore the conversion of Muslims to Eastern Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence and the life of the converts during the Greek War of Independence and the first three decades of the post-independence years (1821-1862). The book looks at the neophytes' relations with the Greek and the Ottoman states, as well as the ways in which the neophytes merged into Greek society. Since Greek national identity is inextricably linked to Greek Orthodoxy, the book discusses the extent to which conversion assisted the neophytes' integration into Greek society. The book aims to delve into the little-researched field of religious conversions in the Balkans in modern times, with emphasis on the conversion of Muslims to Christianity. The Greek case is not the only case in the modern Balkans where Muslims convert to Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. Pomaks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, were subjected to forcible conversion during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and in the 1940s, whereas in the Cold War era, the Bulgarian communist authorities initiated programs aimed at religious and ethnic assimilation of Pomaks and Turkish-speaking Muslims. Conversions of Muslims to Christian Orthodoxy also occurred in Serbia, Romania and elsewhere in the Balkans. Yet, while Balkan historiography has focused on the Islamization of Christians in the region during the Ottoman period, it has paid little attention to the inverse process of Christianization of Muslims in the age of nationalism"--




Modern Greece


Book Description

Modern Greece is an updated and enhanced edition of a classic survey of Greek history since the beginning of the 19th century. Giving equal weighting to social, political and diplomatic aspects, it offers detailed coverage of the formation of the Greek nation state, the global Greek diaspora, the country's relationships with Europe and the United States and a range of other topics, including women, rural areas, nationalism and the Civil War, woven together in a nuanced and highly readable narrative. Fresh material and new pedagogical features have been added throughout, most notably: - new chapters on 19th-century nationalism and 'Boom to Bust in the Age of Globalization, 1989-2013'; - greater discussion of the late Ottoman context, Greeks outside of Greece and the international background to the Greek state formation; - revisions to take account of recent scholarship, Greekscholarship ; - new timelines, maps, illustrations, charts, figures and primary source boxes; - an updated further reading section and bibliography. Modern Greece is a crucial text for anyone looking to understand the complex history of this now troubled nation and its place in the Balkans, Europe and the modern globalized world.




Products, Users, and Popular Luxury in Early Modern Greece


Book Description

This book analyses aspects of the material culture of early modern Greece from an object-based perspective, using surviving artefacts from that period as primary sources. A printed book, a wine jug, an ecclesiastical embroidery, and a pocket watch are used as entry points to examine the consumer practices of the emerging Greek bourgeoisie under Ottoman rule in the long eighteenth century. The acquisition and usage of novel products – especially imported ones – by Greeks was connected to personal expression, identity building, and self-determination in the context of the Enlightenment. The enjoyment of innovative artefacts opened new horizons to them and facilitated their individual and collective empowerment. The originality of the book lies in its eclectic and interdisciplinary approach towards early modern Greek material culture, an under-researched topic. The study is embedded within contemporary discourses on transnational trade, the materiality of everyday life, pleasurable consumption, and the negotiation of identities. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of early modern and modern Greek history, Ottoman history, European history, material culture, history of technology, museum studies, and cultural heritage studies, as well as museum professionals, collectors, and the wider educated public.




New Perspectives on the Greek War of Independence


Book Description

This book marks the 200-year anniversary of uprisings in the Ottoman Balkans between February and March 1821, which became known in the West as the beginnings of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832), and led to the formation of the modern Greek state. It explores the war and its impact on societies involved by delving into the myths that surround it, the realities that have often been ignored or suppressed, and its lasting legacies on national identities and histories. It also explores memory and commemoration in Greece, in other countries impacted, and the Greek diaspora. This book offers a fresh perspective on this pivotal event in Greek, Ottoman, Balkan, Mediterranean, European, and world histories. It presents new research and reflections to connect the war to wider history and to understand its importance across the last 200 years.




The Greeks


Book Description

A sweeping history of the Greeks, from the Bronze Age to today More than two thousand years ago, the Greek city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, laid the foundation for much of modern science, the arts, politics, and law. But the influence of the Greeks did not end with the rise and fall of this classical civilization. As historian Roderick Beaton illustrates, over three millennia Greek speakers produced a series of civilizations that were rooted in southeastern Europe but again and again ranged widely across the globe. In The Greeks, Beaton traces this history from the Bronze Age Mycenaeans who built powerful fortresses at home and strong trade routes abroad, to the dramatic Eurasian conquests of Alexander the Great, to the pious Byzantines who sought to export Christianity worldwide, to today’s Greek diaspora, which flourishes on five continents. The product of decades of research, this is the story of the Greeks and their global impact told as never before.