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One of the guiding questions of this study is whether a change took place in the representation of the Greek land with the emergence of the Greek nation state. This chapter looks at the strategies that politicize Greek nature and make it relevant to a German context after the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Greece was declared different from other national movements, and, according to the Romantic correspondence with nature, it was not the Greeks but Greek nature that liberated itself, enhancing its special position. The same imagery allowed for reflection on the German poetic voice and its standpoint in a politically conservative climate. One of the most prominent textual strategies is the use and notion of folk song. The main textual body is the popular poetry of Wilhelm Müller, supplemented with material from political pamphlets and geographical accounts.

Chapter 1 examines American reactions to the 1821 Greek War of Independence and the Cretan Insurrection of 1866-1869. Prompted by American philhellenes, politicians, religious organizations, and activists argued vehemently for American intervention to help their “Christian brothers” in Greece and Crete. In their push for intervention, Americans cited the need for humanitarian intervention and based their arguments on developing concepts of international law to counter arguments against non-entanglement, as spelled out in the Monroe Doctrine and advanced most forcefully by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Undeterred by such policies, the American philhellenic movement, led by men such as Edward Everett, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Daniel Webster, helped galvanize the American public to aid the Greeks.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the themes of nations, nationalism and political violence. After establishing definitions, it provides an overview of Balkan national movements from the late Enlightenment to the Eastern Crisis of 1875–78. The Serbian uprisings, Greek War of Independence, and the Balkan revolutionary tradition are discussed.

Although Greek ties with Russia are very old, this chapter sketches Russia’s concern with the movement for Greek independence from the 1770s until the assassination of President Kapodistrias in 1831 and its aftermath. It establishes a foundation for an understanding of Russia’s relationship to the Greek kingdom and provides the historical context for the avenues of political and religious intervention once the state gained sovereignty. The chapter summarizes the main events leading to the formation of the Greek nation-state, with particular emphasis on the period from the Battle of Navarino in 1827 to 1833. The reports of Russian ministers, officers, agents, and consuls in areas within and near the zones of contact between Greek rebels and Ottoman forces provide unique vantage points from which to illuminate tsarist personnel choices and policy formation in the decades of nation-state engineering to follow.

This chapter probes the process of nation-state building in Greece based on Russian archival materials during the transition period from anarchy to absolutism (1833–5). It elucidates prevailing attitudes among Russian officials toward the establishment of a state apparatus in Greece, including the formation of political factions and the key symbols and ceremonies that promoted the growth of nationalism. The focus is on the methods pursued by St Petersburg to implement Official Nationality in Greece and the reactions of the Russian elite to the reform program of the Regency of King Othon. The chapter argues that Russian patronage and intervention helped engineer crucial aspects of the new imagined community that took shape. Ideologically, the Tsar and his ministers sought to promote a robust monarchy completely free from foreign influence. Yet, in its relations with the King and the Regency, Russia was more than a passive observer.

This chapter introduces the debates surrounding the formation of the movement for Greek independence and the emergence of Greek national identity. It reviews Russian foreign policy in the Ottoman Empire and the Near East during the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55), comments on the nature of nineteenth-century Balkan independence movements, and situates the study in relation to the historiography. It also explores Russia’s involvement in the Orthodox East in the decades surrounding the Greek War of Independence (1821–30), with emphasis on the religious motivation behind Russian foreign policy. Finally, it reviews the archival sources of the study, outlines the structure of the book, and briefly summarizes the contents of each chapter.

Since the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, Moscow’s rulers increasingly made implicit and explicit irredentist claims on their Byzantine inheritance—“the Christian East.” The leadership of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was ethnically Greek or Hellenized in the Eastern Roman tradition. The Islamic theocratic structure further muted ethnic distinctions among all its subjects. The Age of Enlightenment politicized the concept of ethnicity and helped inspire the secession of Serbia and Greece from the Ottoman Empire in the early 1800s. Russia, England, and France reluctantly supported the Greek War of Independence. After the Napoleonic wars, the Great Powers sought to restore European stability and generally discouraged separatism in the realm of the Sultans. They sponsored the Gulhane Edict to improve the status of Ottoman Christians. This was the beginning of the Bulgarian national movement but Russian diplomats ignored it in spite of the emergence of ethnocentric Slavophiles at home.

This chapter considers the flourishing of operas on Turkish themes in Restoration France, including Rossini’s Turkish operas in Paris—especially as Rossini became director of the Théâtre-Italien in the 1820s. His most important contribution to Turkishness in Paris was his refashioning of Maometto Secondo as Le Siège de Corinthe for the Paris Opéra in 1826, and this was powerfully shaped by the ongoing Greek War of Independence and the potency of French Philhellenism. The Venetians of Maometto Secondo were now made into Greeks, at war with the Ottomans, and the opera was thus made relevant to contemporary Greece. Public response to Rossinian orchestration suggested that what was once considered “Janissary” percussion was now being generally absorbed into the percussion section of the modern orchestra. In 1824 Beethoven allowed for the brief nostalgic appearance of a Janissary band playing a Turkish march in the score of the Ninth Symphony.

As the Ottoman law of captivity expanded to include other sovereign states at the close of the eighteenth century, the rules also left out many of the Porte’s enemies. This chapter argues that rebels, pirates, and certain types of slaves trafficked into the Ottoman Empire remained unprotected by either the prisoner-of-war system, the Law of Release, or both. Ottoman subjects, or those who could claim no major empire’s subjecthood, had far fewer protections than those who were Russian, Austrian, Iranian, British, or French subjects. This distinction became systematic as the Ottoman state dealt with corsairs, and then rebellious Serbian and Greek populations. Throughout, slaves sold into the empire (such as Circassians and Africans) and some of those forcibly abducted (such as Georgians) also remained outside the prisoner-of-war system and the Law of Release.