#20 Greece - Forging a Nation through Revolution and Civil War

It wasn't just a war of independence, it was a civil war, a bloodbath, and the blueprint for modern nationalism all rolled into one.

The Greek Revolution of the 1820s reshaped Europe, but the real story is darker and more complicated than the heroic tales suggest.

We chat with Dr. Michalis Sotiropoulos, historian of modern Europe, author of Liberalism after the Revolution.

We ask: was there even a "Greece" to liberate after 400 years of Ottoman rule, or was the nation invented through political imagination from Western Philhellenes?

We get into the ugly stuff: the first atrocities, with Jews and Turks slaughtered in the Peloponnese, and the brutal civil wars between Greek factions that nearly destroyed the revolution before it succeeded. The ironic twist? Those very civil wars ultimately forged a shared sense of identity.

Then came the diplomatic betrayal: a Bavarian King imposed by the Great Powers, not the republic many of the rebels fought for.

Two centuries on, this essential Greek history is only understood by few but celebrated by many. Listen to Putschcast to get the full Greek picture.

Check out Putschcast as video on our new Youtube channel. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and share with your friends and foes. 

Send us an email to putschcast@gmail.com and visit our website.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to PutschCast. Before I do anything else, I'm supposed to tell you to please subscribe. Yes, and uh you can watch us now in case you're listening to us for a while. We're now available as a video version. Just look putcast up on YouTube. On YouTube, you can simply hit subscribe and most importantly, tell all your friends and foes about it. As always, um, I'm not alone. I've got my co-host Christos in the studio. Hey Christos, good evening. Good evening. Um Christos, um I'm proud to share that tonight I'm the person with the shortest surname. And the good reason for that is I've got two Greeks on the call. So, Christos, what is your full name and what brings you here today?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

My name is Um Christos Papadovulos. I was born in Greece, but as you can hear from my accent, um I'm not raised in Greece. I grew up in Germany and now the last 20 years here in Australia.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So you've got three cultural connections, and I think that's really valuable for the podcast tonight. And that's what we always do on podcasts. We try to have an expert on the call, but also someone who just knows about the culture and can tell us um about a perspective that we may not be aware of as people living in the English-speaking world. Now, we're talking about Greece. I've already mentioned that, Christos. Greece is the topic today, and you might be thinking, oh God, there's so much to talk about. We are narrowing it down. I don't think we will be, but the topic is very specific. Most people who think of Greece, ancient Greece, right? Troy, um, 300, all the stuff you know from Hollywood as well, um, that people are familiar with. And then most people think Greece, maybe the last 20, 30 years, they think, you know, financial crisis, riots, and a wonderful, beautiful holiday destination. That's probably the cliche, I'd say.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah, but this is uh actually uh only small parts of it. I mean, the ancient Greek um history is is it's huge, which bought a lot of uh um inventions, new ideas, uh medicine, mathematics, uh philosophy, and all these things. And then we make a big jump from the ancient Greek now, the last let's say 20-30 years, which is actually uh not the glory part uh of of the Greek uh history. But in between, there is a lot happening all the years, yeah. Uh apart from um where it was a little bit dark under the uh uh 400 years of the Man occupation. But this is uh a part now that we are most likely to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah, and and we picked this date that most of you probably are not familiar with, and it's a specific year, it's the year 1821, because it's seen by many as the starting point of the Greece that we know today. So the modern Greek state traces its roots back to specific events around that time. Uh, broader context, obviously, Napoleon is just done. Um it's not the era of revolutions yet. So if you think about 1948, was the big year for revolutions in the 1830s. We had a big year for revolutions. But the year 1821 is not that well known, but it's crucial, crucial for Greek history. And again, we're lucky. We don't need to explain any of that, Christoph, because we've got an expert on the call. Yeah. And I'm very, very excited to have him join now on Putcast. His name is, and again, I'm trying my best with pronunciation, Dr. Michalis Sodiuropoulos. And he's coming to us live from Athens, I believe. Hello.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yes, that's true. Hello, hello to you two, and many thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I'm excited to have you here. And I just um you know talked about Christos, and usually at the start of putcasts, we always um explain what our connection is to the topic. Uh, we've done previous episodes on Mexico, never been there, unfortunately. We did one on Haiti, which is how this one came about, because Nikolai Vanegas is a friend of you or another uh academic you work with closely, and we talked about the Haitian Revolution. But um today I have been to Greece. I've been to Greece three times. I out myself as a Grecophile. Um I love the country, love the history. Biggest issue with me is I don't know enough about it. So I'm very excited about this episode. Um, Michalis, but before we talk about your biography in a minute, you don't usually live in Greece though, do you?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

No, no, I'm actually in between, in between Scotland and Greece, because I work at the University of Endidra in Scotland the last two years. So now I'm getting used to this uh, you know, going from Greece and from Scotland to Greece and from Greece to Scotland. Uh but you know the funny part is that Endidra, uh the nickname of Endidra is the Athens of the North. It came from the Scottish themselves when they tried to replicate uh like ancient Greek buildings uh and use the neoclassical uh architectural style to rebuild Endidra in the late 18th century and uh the early United century. So, you know, it's it's funny because I moved from Athens and went to the Athens of the North.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I believe it's not the only European city where that was attempted. I think Munich in Bavaria is very much like that. I think we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, first of all, again, most people wouldn't have heard about 1821 connecting it to Greek history. Why should people know about it?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Well, A, because it was one of the revolutions that took place in a very peculiar and actually very interesting revolutionary wave. More or less the third revolutionary wave, if we take the French Revolution, the American Revolution as being revolutions as being the first revolutionary wave, then we go to the second, which is the 1810s and the Latin American Revolutions, including, of course, the Haitian one. And then the third one is the wave that takes place in Southern Europe in Southern Europe, roughly speaking, uh, and includes the case, the cases of Spain, Portugal, the Italian peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula, that means the Greek Revolutions, it's part of a very wider moment in the history of the revolution. The second reason is more Greek, if you want, because it was uh the founding moment of the modern Greek state. So it's it's one of the rare uh moments that we have in European history at the time that there is a revolution, and out of this revolution came a new state. Uh so it you know some provinces seceded from the Ottoman Empire, and uh uh we had the foundation, the creation of a new state, which in itself, you know, if you think about the times, was like a big moment, a watershed in European history, uh, not least because it was the first time that the Ottoman Empire lost territory. And then you had like a new state being born, new European state being born at the far end uh of uh the European continent. So that in itself is of course uh important.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Speaking of the Ottoman Empire, so that was interesting to learn that this was the beginning of the end, really, because it just went downhill from there for the next hundred years for the Ottomans. And for everyone who wants to know more, please check out our episode on the fall, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. We just released that a few weeks ago with Professor Adrian Jones. He's an expert on the Ottoman Empire, the late period. However, 100 years earlier today. Christos, back to you. Now, as I said, if it wasn't for Butchka, I probably wouldn't really have heard about the Greek revolution of 1821. And yes, it went on for quite a few more years. And um, there's other names for it too. Some people call it the Greek um, you know, independence war. And so it's the same historic event with different names, but in uh in your upbringing, and being aware that you didn't grow up in Greece, but you grew up in the Greek community, you know, um you speak the language in your childhood and today. How important is this event still in Greek culture?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

It's very important. Um there are two significant dates in the Greek uh festive calendar, and uh one is the 28th of October, where Metaxas, back then the um the Prime Minister, um, said no to the um ambassador from Italy when they wanted to come to Greece. Other one is the uh 25th of March, which uh is the um yeah, the beginning of the revolution, even though the date is not exact that, because it was not a start of uh a revolution exactly on that date. But um it was later established uh by uh Otto, the German uh king that was established. Yeah. Um back then it was uh determined that the 25th of March um is the start of the revolution.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

So it confirming it's a public holiday in Greece.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Absolutely. Okay, it's a public holiday, it's um it is celebrated with uh parades, yeah, military parades, school parades um through all the country. Even every village uh has their own parade. Yeah. So and as a kid you grow up with that.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So yeah, Michalis, is can you confirm that? So you live in Athens a fair bit. So is that public holiday a big deal, and therefore that's an excuse to talk about the topic and it's in living memory?

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Good memories of your childhood are the days that you don't go to school or you don't have to go to school. And it's a moment when people discuss the event itself, you know, reassess, revisit it. Uh not always in the most productive way, if I can say that. We will talk about that more probably later. Uh but it is a day of celebration. And and like the uh exactly like Christus said, uh it's interesting that in Greece we celebrate the resistance days in both cases. It's resist it's the resistance against the Ottomans in the first case, against the Germans and Italians in the second. And I'm saying that because it's not always the case. Uh in other countries, in many other countries, um they celebrate actually the end of the war. In Greece, we celebrate the beginnings of the war, which is interesting. Uh some people have criticized that. To be honest, I think you know, celebrating resistance, it's not a bad idea.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And I think it's important for people, uh, well, listeners in particular, um, to understand who who grew up in countries that were never occupied, right? There's a few countries out there that just have never gone through this. But for countries who were living under oppression under rule of a foreign nation, it's a it's an important, and I think of the Polish people, for example, who similar to the Greeks were occupied centuries, right? And it was such a big moment when the when the Polish nation first came together again. Um, America is a bit different because it was a colony, but there's other countries that that lived under occupation. So is is is freedom and national sovereignty more important to Greek people than people from other countries?

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Well, yes, uh, probably. Not just because we have to take into account, because you mentioned also the Polish case, uh, that exactly as you said, that there were usually greater powers controlling uh or ruling over some of the territories that actually made uh the Greek state. Um, but also that Greece, like also many other countries, not uh the Polish case, is a fairly small state. And all these uh fairly small states, and you can think of many uh of course in the European continent, especially, but also in the Middle East and elsewhere, you know, they always had to negotiate their existence with the great powers or with the powers that be, it's time. So for these states, for these countries which are small and which always had to deal with someone bigger than them, you know, the issue of national sovereignty, the issue of nationalism, of national identity becomes much more important and it makes sense. And as you said, you know, I live in the UK, the UK was never conquered. It was I mean, there was a danger of being conquered, but it actually wasn't. So that in itself creates a very different mindset, uh, both for the state, but also for the people who live in it, you know, when the danger is not there. In the Greek case, uh, but also in many, I mean, think of the Balkans, um Central Europe, uh, that was not the case. And even today, I mean, you know, we are facing wars in the Middle East, in the Black Sea, and uh in many cases you have states which have which have to fight against bigger power. So this is the fate of all these small states.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, and you just mentioned small state a few times. So um confirming for our listeners that Greece wasn't what we think of it today. So in the year 1820, the Ottoman Empire was vast, you know, it was um going all the way from what now is Bosnia-Herzegovina down to past Medina on the Arabian Peninsula, northern Africa, and of course Turkey, Syria, and and the whole really what we now call the Middle East almost. That gives us the geography, the years 1821. What happened there? That all came together in that year. What was the context?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

If someone wants to understand the context of the Greek Revolution, A, you know, we have to go backwards in time to think of the geopolitical context, but also to take into account this wider Ottoman context. And I will come back to that. So the geopolitical context was defined by the coming of three empires in the region. And when I say the region, I mean the Eastern Mediterranean at large, not just the Greek peninsula. Uh the first empire that came to the region and kind of changed the balance was that the power that I usually call the omnipresent power in all things Mediterranean at the time, and that was the Russian Empire. This is part of uh Peter the Great's plan, mainly Catherine the Great's plan. And Catherine the Great's plan was actually for the Russian Empire to get a foothold uh in the Eastern Mediterranean. So Catherine did two things. One was actually to send a fleet, a Russian fleet, to circumnavigate the European continent and enter the Mediterranean through Gibraltar. That kind of failed, even though some ships eventually landed to the Eastern Mediterranean. The other thing that Catherine did was to invite the Greeks. Uh so for many Greeks, and I'm sure Christos can verify that, uh Odessa and Mariupoli, Mariupoli in Greek, is uh were considered kind of a Greek city.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

And everyone knows Mariupol from that horrible battle that just happened there a few years ago with the Russians, right? In Greek.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

So it's the city of Mariupol.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Oh wow, I never thought about it. Thank you.

unknown 14:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

No, actually it was a big it was a big blow also for the Greeks, the destruction of Mariupol, because the presence of Greeks there was very visible. Uh monuments, I mean it was it was one of, you know, uh one of those cities uh in which Greeks migrated uh uh uh massively uh two centuries ago. So that was part of uh Catherine the Great's plan. Uh so the effect of that was you know the the involvement of Russia and the Russian Empire into uh Greek affairs and Greek Ottoman affairs. Second, coming, the coming of the French. And the crucial moment here is the fall of the Venetian Empire, the Venetian Republic, and the Venetian Republic and the Venetian territories were taken over by the French. Part of these territories were the Ionian Islands. Most people know them today as famous tourist destinations: Kofu, Kerkira, Azante, Zakinthos, Chefalonia, Kefalonia, Ithaca, Ithaca, Ulysses. So these islands were part of Venice, but then they became part of the French state. Actually, they became a departement, 1787.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Just before under Napoleon, really, then.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Exactly, exactly, exactly. The islands become part of the Greek state, so the French come actually literally come. The third power that comes into the region, of course, is the British, the British Empire. Napoleonic Wars, so there are many, many wars uh between the French, the Russians, and the British at the time. The Ionian Islands became a battleground between all these empires. Just to give you the show the complexity of the issue, the Ionian Islands being France at the beginning, they turned out to become British uh eventually. In 1815, they actually became a British protectorate for like 50 years until 1864, when they were offered by Britain to Greece. So now they're uh part of the Greek state because Britain decided to leave the islands to Greece. Uh so as you can imagine, we have like a very weird and difficult situation, very complex situation on the ground, right at the time when the Greek Revolution actually erupts. Now the fourth player in all this is of course the Ottoman Empire, uh, which was in a kind of a crisis because of the coming of all these empires into the region, and also because of what that meant for the Greeks, was that many local magnates, uh, and a famous one was Ali Passar, household name uh for Greeks. Ali Passar was actually created a state within the state. Uh and he was controlling a region that roughly corresponds to a big part of what is today uh the Greek state.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

So is that what we nowadays call a warlord? Was he basically a warlord running his own little cow on his own terrain? Yeah. Not a legitimate cabin or anything, he was just like a rebel leader, and he was uh successful enough to just carve out his own neck of the woods.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Exactly, exactly. So she was appointed by the Ottomans. He was an Ottoman subject. Actually, Ali Pasar was Albanian, but she was a Greek speaker. Uh so she she was appointed by the Ottomans, but then he started becoming too powerful. Not just Ali Pasar, many others around the Ottoman Empire in that uh in the same period. Mehmed Ali of Egypt, the founder of Egypt, was another one. So what the Ottoman state decides to do at some point is to go against all those all these local magnates, those warlords. And this is important for the Greeks because many Greek warlords who were later going to be very much involved in the Greek revolution were actually collaborating with Aliposa. So, you know, when the central state goes against Alipasa, these people are left without a job, if you can we can call it that, but also without a power base, without um a sense of community that Alipasa had actually created because it had created like an independent kind of semi-independent uh territorial uh administrative unit. And also there's a danger of being um massacred by the central state. So for them it's you know it's a crucial decision of life or death uh in 1821. The decision of people to actually do something which at the time was a crazy thing to do. Going against the Ottoman Empire and having a revolution against the Empire was not the most reasonable decision that someone could take at the time, as you can imagine.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

David versus Goliath, right? This gigantic empire and a couple of uh warlords who happen to speak Greek. It was interesting that you then said he wasn't even actually Greek, he was uh Albanian. Um Christos, um, you're following or any new information so far?

SPEAKER_01 19:50

No, I'm following the few things that Michali mentioned that um uh are new to me. However, um what is very interesting, what I realized is it is this revolution, it's not um a established state, so it's a lot of movement at uh at that time. Michalis mentioned uh the English, the French, the Russians, Ottoman Empire, um local warlords. Um so it's um it's a lot of of movement at that time. And um then have you have the little group or little Greeks, then they are stand up. And as as far as I understand, and please uh correct me, Michael, the revolution was not started only on one point. There were different points that they started. The revolution started from from many many areas.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah, and uh that is for me, that's that's news as well. I had no idea about the presence of the foreign powers at the time. Ottoman Empire was obvious because it was um was the reigning power and and it was their territory at the time. Can I ask you why they were all there? So you said the Russians were interested. I get that because that's what Vladimir Putin was just trying to do in Syria very recently, to have a foothold base in uh on the Mediterranean. If you're in control of the Dardanelles, you control the Russian Navy basically in the Black Sea. But um, France and and Britain, what what was their interest? Did Greece have a booming economy, or what was the main interest there?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Definitely no. So Greece was not a booming economy, but what is crucial geopolitically uh in the area were always, and that is also the case today, where the trade routes, the Aegean and the Black Sea are very crucial in this for this trade. Later on in the 18th and 19th century, and even today, what was crucial was of course the grain that was coming from what is today Ukraine, the biggest grain producer in Europe. So that trade from the Black Sea was going through the Aegean. And the other factor which was important that who was controlling this trade at the time, actually the Greeks. So the Greek maritime fleet, uh especially in the late 18th and early 19th century, was very, very important. So the Greeks knew to how to navigate the waters, they were controlling the trade. So that this part of the Mediterranean was very crucial for the European powers exactly because of uh trade. This is the moment when the British land in Sicily, they take control of Sicily for like 15 years, I don't remember how many years exactly. They take control of Malta, they take control later on of Cyprus, uh, they take control of the Ionian Islands. So this is the moment, the Mediterranean moment in the history of the British Empire, and the effect was great on the Greeks.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

And you mentioned that before, Christos. Um, we're talking 400 years of occupation. Now, if I think of any other nations, any other people, there wouldn't be really much left of an ethnic cultural identity after 400 years of occupation. Can you too please discuss how that happened?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I I speak uh generally, uh, and uh Michalis can then uh go more in the detail. Uh I can speak a little bit about me, even on the short period of time. Um I think part of what you are is uh where you're coming from. I come from a family in northern Greece, where then um lived in today Bulgaria, and then in 1922, when the borders were drawn, uh they moved into the Greek part. Back then in the Ottoman Empire, where um even though they were Greek identity, they would identify them as a Greek. Yeah, they may speak another language, uh Slavic, uh Turkish, uh or whatever. But uh I think a very strong point is was the the faith, religion, which uh holds them all together. Um and uh my family then, because they were identifying themselves as the Greeks, they moved on because they didn't want to be in in Bulgaria. Yeah, so and I think this is how they survived over a generation. If we are calculating a generation about 30 years, yeah, it's about 13 generations around this number, yeah. And surviving 13 generations with the identity, you have to be very, very strong.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, Michalis, I'm I'm thinking of the Egyptians, for example, right? An ancient people much older than the Greeks, absolute distinct, unique culture, you know, uh ahead of the game, but after centuries and centuries of Arabic occupation, so to speak, yeah. I know Egyptians get very offended if you call them Arabs, but there isn't that much left of the Egyptian culture that we know from antiquity. Um, what what is your view on that? How the Greeks um made it through as a people, through those centuries of occupation? And does it have to do with a fairly lenient, relaxed occupation policy by the Ottoman Empire?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Well, yes, uh, first of all, I'm not sure whether I would call it Lenin. The Ottoman Empire has a very, very interesting history in general because the governing techniques were changing. Uh and this is of course goes for all empires, and I will come back to that. But I think I have to agree with uh Christos. I think religion here plays a huge role, uh, not least because it was one of the religions which were recognized and tolerated by the Ottomans, which is very crucial, and not only that, but uh gradually the patriarchate in Constantinople or Istanbul, um uh Turkish capital today was recognized as the leader institution of the Greeks or the Greek Orthodox, and this is a very you know a very contested term because by that the Ottomans meant uh the the Christians of the empire, not necessarily the Greek-speaking Christians, because they could be Armenians, they could be, you know, uh Georgians, Albanians, uh Egyptians.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Clarifying, only because you spoke Greek didn't mean you were Greek at the time.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

I mean, if you were a Christian, you would belong to the so-called millet. This is the way in which the Ottoman Empire was actually dividing the population.

SPEAKER_04 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

But gradually, uh in the 18th centuries, especially, um there was, if I can we can call it that, a kind of nationalization of uh the denomination of the faith. So gradually many Greeks, many Orthodox people came to identify, especially the Greek-speaking uh Christians with the Greek nation. Two things are important. One faith, and the other is language. Uh the Greek language, you know, the register of the Greek language now, of course, is very different than the ancient Greek register or the uh medieval register, but still it's the same language. So that the the language itself brings with with it and within it a culture. And I think these are the two ways through which the Greeks kind of preserved a separate identity or at least a sense of Greekness. It doesn't mean that they viewed themselves as part of the same nation necessarily and always. But at some point, and for many people at the time, you know, they they saw themselves as part of a wider community. From the 18th century onwards, that community started becoming, or at least having a bigger sense of itself as a separate national community. To go back to something that Christos knows much better than me. Even today, when Greeks go somewhere, they sometimes probably will define themselves by the local place where they come from or the where the family comes from. You know, people from Tripoli or from Arcadia, from Arcadia, people from the islands, from Android. They would say, you know, I'm from Andros, I'm from Crete. That's this strong local identity. That was even more pronounced back then. So it's but it's still the case today, but at the same time, we would say, you know, we're Greeks.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

I can absolutely confirm what Michali said. Um I live in the third biggest Greek city, uh, actually the biggest outside Greece now, but yeah. We were um fourth, fifth generation the Greeks live there. And um you still you see uh the people identify themselves as Greeks. And not only as Greeks, I'm Spartan, I'm from Kalamata. I'm from so it's it's very interesting. They were born here, grew up here, their parents were born here. Yeah. Maybe grandfather came here or grand-grandfather came here, and they still identify I'm from Kalamata or I'm from from uh Pyrigos or whatever they came from. Um so it's it's just I think it's also um how you identify yourself, even though they are fully Aussies or Australians, yeah, yeah, but identification is still I'm Greek and I'm coming from there.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

I think my theory is that it has to do with those 400 years of occupation. That and as we call it in in German, there's a word called uh lokal patriotismus, yeah. So local local patriotism, which is literally down to the village, like I'm patriotic, above my little community. And and that probably has helped because I want our listeners to understand again that Greece, at the time we're talking about over 200 years ago, was not the Greece of today. There was Greeks living everywhere, right? Like you said, where we now think of Ukraine all the way down to uh Egypt, etc. Like it was still the remnants of Alexander the Great almost, wasn't it? Like the the way the population was spread. And there was many, many cities and towns in what is now Turkey as well. So it's not Greek as as we or Greece as we understand it today. Now, Christoph, before you put the theory out that there wasn't a single spark that caused this revolution, this uprising. Um is that true, Michalis? And how did it actually happen? What happened in 1821 that violence erupted?

SPEAKER_02 30:13

So the whole event actually started in what is today part of Moldova and Romania. Kind of autonomous regions within the Ottoman Empire that were ruled by the Fanalus, which was a Greek-speaking aristocratic elite, Christian elite. So these territories were, you know, kind of strongholds of uh Greek-speaking Orthodox populations, just like further north in Odessa. The plan was designed by a secret society that was formed in Odessa in 1814, the so-called Friendly Society, uh.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

There's a name. Friendly society got together.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the Society of Friends. A very interesting society because you know they had a code. Uh it's in order to understand and to read the text uh from that society you need to break the code. So, of course, now uh we know the code. Uh it was a conspiracy. They tried to recruit people from all over the Balkans and um Southern Russia, and they were led by a Russian officer, Greek of in Russian service, Alexander Sibcilandis. So the plan was to start the revolution from the Danovian principalities and then actually go uh southwards uh towards the Balkan peninsula because they had actually recruited many people there, and then they would turn to Constantinople. Now the Danovian Principalities report failed completely for reasons that we don't have to go uh through now because you know it has to do with the local context, but then in like a few days after the revolution erupted in the Peloponnesia, and that is the first crucial moment for the revolution. Why? Because it was a heavily Christian province, uh, so it was kind of easy uh to get involved, to convince the population to get involved, to be involved in the revolution itself. Uh so this is what started it. And the second crucial moment for me uh was the participation of the islands. So the islands, those naval islands that I mentioned before, they kind of you know they were not very certain at the beginning, especially the the local leaders and the elites of the islands, so they did not join immediately. But then there was a push from the populations, uh especially Nidra, which was like the you know the strongest island, uh there was a push and uh from the population itself to actually participate uh in the revolution. So that kind of changed the initial fate of the revolution, uh if I can call it that, because immediately you had a naval power that could protect the Telbanese and go against the Ottomans because the Ottomans the only way to send troops past was either by land or by the sea. And by the sea they could not do it exactly because the seas uh was uh the sea was controlled by the Greeks. And the crucial moment is Christmas will know the city, maybe some of your listeners will not know the city, but it was Tripoli or Tripolica at the time, which is actually the let's call it the capital of the Peloponnese. Many people from the Peloponnese, not from Tripoli, will hate me for saying that, but it was kind of the center of the Peloponnese at the time, very crucial town, because it was also where the Ottoman authorities resided. Uh, and there was a siege in the city, and it was taken over by the Greeks after uh a bit and lock fight, actually the massacre of the local massive population and the Jews uh by the Greeks. That is probably the first very dark moment, but that was a crucial moment because then you know the the revolution itself actually kind of established itself in the Peloponnes.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yeah, so that was um uh the fall of Tripoliza 1821 in September.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

And blood on the flag of independence. I've got a quote from I'm not sure if you know him, but uh William Sinclair, it's another historian, apparently. Yeah, yeah. Who um who knows the topic quite well. And he said um the orgy of genocide exhausted itself in the Peloponnese only when there were no Mer Turks to kill. Yeah. So my enthusiasm for the Greek independence movement uh has shifted slightly. How did that happen? And it it reminds me of the the Bosnian or the Yugoslav War, where people lived side by side for generations. All of a sudden they turn on each other and start butchering each other and killing each other just because one is Muslim and one is one is Christian. And again, I want to say this is um this is uh a long time before any of uh or any atrocities that just happened in the rest of Europe, which obviously the late 19th century, 20th century is full of that, um, that violence based on on sectarian lines. Um what was the reason for that? I mean, except for hatred. Do you know? Why why was there so much brutality?

SPEAKER_02 35:28

You know, i uh that was an event that shocked the Philelines, uh, people like Thomas Gorton, who was um in the region at the time, many, many other Philippines who were um present because usually they they used to associate these feelings and these atrocities with Ottom. Some suddenly they saw they saw the Greeks, the Christians actually perpetrate this.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

The Greek guy. And then the eyes of the Europeans.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Exactly, exactly, the good guys. Uh I don't think uh if we don't get into the you know the the emotions of the simply people and also the warlords who were there, yeah uh there is this moment when, and that was very crucial uh for the massacre. So they the warlords or at least the leaders of the troops, and that when when we say troops, these were irregular troops. This is not an army.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

This is not a militia that were probably ransacking and some of them.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

So the warlords were trying to control uh these troops, and at some point they lost them, they lost control of these troops. Um the troops believed that there was uh an agreement for the some of the lords to take uh the loot for themselves. So so there are some some some kind of misunderstanding. But the crucial thing is that what what happened within the city uh was was was it exactly I mean I wouldn't call it a genocide, uh because that's uh this is a term that is anachronistic, probably to use for the time. Uh but it was kind of ethnic cleansing. Yeah and of course the Greeks then had to navigate through the consequences of that event because it sent it sent shock waves uh to Europe. Uh again, I don't have an explanation. I think it's going to be very difficult to have an explanation uh of if we don't understand the feelings and the emotions of the people in the city at the time.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Because it wasn't it wasn't just Muslims, right? Jews got caught up in this as well. And just as much. Um, Christos, we talked about at the very start of the podcast how important this event is and it's celebrated as a national holiday. Does that dark side of it ever get discussed in in Greek culture these days? Or is it often forgotten?

SPEAKER_01 37:49

No, um you don't hear it uh this dark side. Um but I would like to to add something on it. Not uh specific to uh Tripolitza, but generally on the behavior of um of of people, humankind. Normally if you if you live in uh with different cultures in the small space, it is shown that it's always one superior culture, one is um in the middle, and one is suppressed.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

The bottom.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

The bottom. Uh and even though uh it seems that the Ottoman Empire was pretty um liberal, uh how they dealt with other cultures, there were uh a lot of suppression. Yeah. And um I think at some stage uh you can push people to a certain degree and they build up this anger. And then when they see the opportunity, when someone starts, Filiqi eteria, uh Michalis mentioned, uh, who proposed uh a revolution or getting up against the suppressor, yeah, then all this anger that collected over the years, centuries or whatever, they they they spill out. And we saw this in many, many uh revolutions that um that and I assume something similar happened also in Tripolitza.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. But there's always this moment where you know there there's one thing not liking your neighbor, there's a different story to kill your neighbor, um, you know, over I over the family Silver. Or but I think what what Christoph's just mentioned, maybe for some people it was payback time over, you know, decades, generations of oppression, and maybe second-class citizens. But also, um, as William Sinclair says, uh, I like the word orgy, and that's just what happens in situations like this. It just becomes its own beast, right? So it's just three days and orgy of violence that turns into a massacre. And it wasn't the only one, I think. So let's quickly just talk about the foreign powers, because they were there at the start, they encouraged it, but you said that didn't do the Greeks any favor, that sort of event, because that got into the newspapers in all the major cities in Europe. So did the the the support for Greeks then wane, or how did they move on from that? Because obviously they they relied on, I assume, funding and any sort of support from the English and the French in particular.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

At the time, that was the way that they explained uh what happened in Tripoli and in also in other places, was that theory of degeneration. So the theory behind it for many Western Europeans was that the Greeks, because they were under Ottoman rule for so many uh centuries, they had degenerated, they had lost, you know, that uh essence that was coming from ancient Greeks. So that theory was saying that they degenerated because of the Ottomans, because of being under uh Orient and despotic rule, but now they have to be regenerated. So how were they going to be regenerated by the help, uh with the help from the Europeans, the Western Europeans? Because the Western Europeans at the time were actually saying that they were the ones who were carrying the torch of ancient Greeks, of classical civilization. Crater of democracy was Greece, but now it had moved to Western Europe. I mentioned at the beginning, the Endibras, the Afghanist of the North. But exactly as you said, there were many places in Western Europe at the time that were um seeing themselves as the carriers of that classical civilization. New architectural buildings, neoclassical style, ways of dressing, reading, uh going back to the classics and so on and so forth. So for them, the Greeks had generated and they had to be helped also, and also to repay the debt that the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, had actually to repay the debt of uh to the modern Greeks because of what the ancient Greeks had done for Western civilization. So what I'm saying is that they kind of gave an explanation, a theory behind it, behind these atrocities. Uh and actually you can see that also in many of the paintings, uh, if you if someone sees the Lacroix, for example, many of the figures of the Greeks kind of resemble the Ottomans, but not they're not exactly like the Ottomans, like the Muslims, uh, in terms of color, in terms of their physical characteristics. So the idea was that they would become like the Europeans because they were essentially Europeans, but they had degenerated, but they had they would have to come to be educated back to civilization. So the support in that way actually became even stronger uh in the years after from 1822 onwards. Um the support came in two ways mainly. Uh with volunteers who went actually to Greece to fight. Lord Byron is of course the most the most famous uh of all.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

We know Lord Byron very well in in Australia. He was the the herald of of the whole thing in back in the UK, wasn't he? Like he really helped to bolster the cause uh of of the Greek independence movement.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Especially by dying. That's that's the tragedy.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Tell us more. What happened to Lord Byron?

SPEAKER_02 43:19

I mean uh first of all, Lord Byron, you know, he was a big friend of this part of the world. Uh he he had visited uh the Ottoman Empire and the Greek, some of what became the Greek territories. When it came to the Greek Revolution, he was kind of reluctant to join it at the beginning. He kind of thought of he was in Italy, he kind of thought of joining the Spanish uh uh insurrection, the Spanish Revolution. But his case was very important because he he offered the revolution like a dimension that he didn't have before. Because he was one of the celebrities of this time, right? So you have to think that Bayer was very, very f was very, very popular at the time, even before. Before she came to Greece. Then she comes to Greece, he gets involved in the Greek revolutionary affairs. He also brings money with him. And then he dies. You know, sadly, she died of ifus, I think.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Oh, I I thought he's gonna die on the battlefield with a sword in his hand, so he just died of the ship.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

She never fought. He was the man of the battle.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

What sort of a hero is he? Well, I guess with the Well, not all heroes have a sword or a gun. Or a quill in his case.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

So okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

That's that's tragic, but before that he really uh helped to get more support from uh from the UK, for example.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Yeah, and also that because he died and he died in Greece, he died for the Greek cause. That, you know, that that offered again a visibility to the Greek cause that it did not have before. You know, it's it's it's a you know it's the tragedy of like many revolutions, but the death of Lord Byron kind of made the revolution, the Greek revolution, even a more European liberal affair than it was. And also the crucial moment, and by where Byron was involved, was the formation of the so-called Loden Greek Committee. That committee which was made also of many, many important people, including Jeremy Bentham, you know, liberal MPs, very, very important people also for the stock market and the sovereign market, the debt market. Uh so they were the ones who actually managed to uh get a loan for the Greeks, for the Greek government. And that was a crucial moment in the history of the Greek Revolution because suddenly the support from uh from European powers and European states took a new form. So because it was a moment when governments also were involved in thinking about an independent Greek state, or at least some kind of autonomy, maybe within the Ottoman Empire, maybe without, but at least the debate, the discussion opened up for them.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

I I agree with Michalis. Uh I think you can't start the revolution without uh support, and especially of the of the powers of at that time.

SPEAKER_04 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Um we had lobbyists to support Lord Byron. Yeah, perfect. Uh Capovistrias, uh uh Ypsilantis, were actually in in in the European, back then European uh diplomacy had a saying, yeah, and had a saying in in Moscow or London or Paris. So and they are lobbying for this as well. Of course, the the the big powers had their own interests as well. Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. They don't do it uh just because they love the Greeks. Uh they see the the advantages for them. Yeah. But also you need to have people who are driving this thing in the background.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

I really like and I never thought of the parallels to the American War of Independence. So um, first of all, there's a motivation on the economic side. So you you mentioned trade routes before and shipping routes in America. You know, we had the Boston Tea Party. Then there's an actual moment of the declar, an actual moment of a declaration of independence, which happened in um I think uh January 22, something like this. So just a few months in. And then there was a first parliament as well, right? So they went straight on to out of the caves, basically. This is an extreme, but straight back to the the origin where this all came from, because the first proper parliament was in in Athens initially, and this is again how probably the Europeans were supporting it. It's like back to the values of the antiquity, right? But then there was a period, and you just mentioned it as well for a few years, again, similar to America, which is called, like it's a war within the war. It's called the Greek Civil War. In you know, the the whole period that we're talking about today takes eight, nine years, roughly. So just the term civil war, does that tell me that all the Greeks weren't really united? That there were infighting as well, Michalis?

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Well, yes, exactly as you said. So to start from the beginning, so there is a declaration of independence in 22. This is this follows the convocation of the first National Assembly, uh, which also publishes the first constitution, the first revolutionary constitution, so what that establishes a government, uh an army, and so on and so forth. Uh, this is an extremely important moment because that was both the declaration but also the National Assembly, because that was the way in which the Greek Revolution presented itself to the world. Because you say that now we have we have an established territory, we have an established government, so we're going independent. So it's very important not just to declare that, but also to do it. And the crucial thing here is that the Greeks knew that. There were many Greeks around the Greek Revolution, not exactly participating in the Greek Revolution, who were pushing the Greeks on the ground to actually do a constitutional assembly and declare their independence. And the name of Johannes Kapodistrias is very important here. Kapodistrias was actually working for the Russians. He was in the Russian diplomatic service. She was one of the two, at some point, uh, foreign ministers of Russia. So Kapodistrias, he was very much advising the Greeks on the ground. And Kapodistrias, and I say that because again, the Russian factor is very important. So Kapodistrias had an idea of what a revolution should do in order to be successful. And for Kapodistrias, the revolution in order to be successful would have to satisfy some criteria of statehood. And that was, you know, to have a stable government, even if if it was representative, you know, and democratic, it didn't matter. To have a nation, so the language of nationalism was very crucial for Kapodistrias and for the Russians. But to have a declaration of independence, to have a uh constitution and to uh set up a government, but also to organize and set up a proper army.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

The Russians had none of that. The Russians didn't have a constant parliament. Yeah. You know, it was in the at its best in Russia at the time still. So that's funny.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Yes, but at the time, at the time, especially after the Congress of Vienna, you know, in Europe, Russia was seen as the liberal power. It had actually uh gave uh a constitution, of course, controlled by the Russians to Poland before. But at least for many people, uh you know, the Russians were helping, or at least they could provide the advice, if you if you wish, and that was what Kapodicius was doing. Now this happens in 1822, but and that goes back to your argument about you know whether there was a united front. At the same time, that constitution actually recognized something that had taken place in the first year of the revolution in 1821, which was the setup, the setting up of different local organizations. So you had actually three regional organizations uh in eastern and western mainland Greece and one in the Peloponnese, and then in the constitution itself, these were recognized as local governments, a kind of federal union in the process that made the actual running of affairs very, very difficult. Because, you know, that was a new state, at least that was a revolutionary new state in the making, and then you have a central state that has to negotiate with this local organization. So there is a big discussion during the first years of the revolution what to do about these local organizations. The Second National Assembly decides to do away with them, and then immediately after, in 1824 and 25, we have two consecutive uh civil wars. And these civil wars, to me, and this is a very cynical argument, are the wars that made the revolution national and in some sense successful. Because you had all these local divisions, and you know, revolutions are usually messy affairs. So you had many who wanted to go by themselves, or at least the Peloponnesians, for example, wanted to have like a sort of autonomous uh status within that new state. But for many, especially for many uh at the time uh participants of the Greek government, they wanted to nationalize the government. So they wanted to nationalize also the space. Uh and this is what happened with the two civil wars. And I think a crucial moment for me is in during the Second Civil War, the troops from what is today mainland Greece that is above in the north of the Peloponnese, some of the best troops in the Balkan peninsula at the time, irregular troops, uh, you know, very experienced, uh, they decided to invade the Peloponnese. And that was a crucial moment because it kind of, and ironically and cynically, it nationalized space. You know, the moment when someone with a very strong local identity coming from England, Greece, decides to invade the Peloponnese in order to trust the local lords of the Peloponnese is the moment when for them they think in national terms and they act on national terms.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Those mountaineers from the north marched in and the people on the Peloponnese were sort of welcoming them.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Exactly, exactly. And also they massacred a lot of them. Of course. Many in the Peloponnese, like local landlords.

SPEAKER_04 53:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Um and then that was you know the moment when the revolution becomes national. But then the Ottoman Empire uh strikes a deal with the Egyptians, with Mehmed Ali of Egypt, and Mehmed Ali sends his troops with his son Ibrahim in the Peloponnese, they land on the Peloponnese and they crash the rebellion, they crash the revolution. So what happens was actually the revolution was going to be lost. But in 1827, in the so-called Navarino naval battle in Navarino Bay, which is in the south of the Peloponnese, the Allied fleet of the European powers destroyed completely the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet. You had a de facto Greek state.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Just summarizing the last um eight or nine years or so. So 1821, the uprising, it starts in in various areas. Initially, you know, somewhere what we now call Romania. There was an actual declaration of independence, which is crucial. It was a parliament. And um and then there was an actual civil war inside of Greece as part of that. Um and then the Egyptians got on board, which I think were part of the Ottoman Empire anyway, right? It was sort of like a semi-autonomous region. And so Ibrahim came over with his fleet, was very successful, almost crushed the whole thing. But then thanks to Lord Byron and all his lobbyism and his friends, the Europeans got involved, but quite a bit later, including the Russians, and that then in the end, because we can't go through battle by battle, uh, led to the Treaty of Adrianopoli. Is that the right pronunciation or is that to Italian?

SPEAKER_02 55:29

The Treaty of Adrianopoli for us, but it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Cool, I'll take that one.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

You need to learn Greek.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

I am, I know. That's a different podcast, though. Me learning Greek, that'll get a lot more clicks because people have a laugh.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Many, many podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 55:46

So um, so that was then in 1829. And again, if people do want to know the details, you'll have to look it up. Unfortunately, yourself, there's too much to talk about. Do Greeks get offended if I say the Europeans won your battle of independence for you?

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Okay. But I don't say that at the local breaker.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

The Greeks fight it. Of course, um, as I said before, um, you need the approval from the big power. Uh, however, the actual fight was the Greeks and the the willingness behind it.

SPEAKER_00 56:21

Yeah. Is there um in at this day and age, because you uh you both mentioned a fair few names throughout this podcast, and I don't remember all of them, is there one iconic figure? Is there a Che Guevara of the of the Greek revolution? Is there one particular um freedom fighter, partisan that is celebrated today, or is there too many of them to name one?

SPEAKER_02 56:43

Sometimes people pick the one who is from their own uh region. Of course, no. Uh for me, to be honest, as because I have studied the the period, for me that my favorite is Jorgius Kareskaikis. Uh another household name. And the reason is that he was we have many letters written uh by him, or at least his secretary. He was swearing, kersing all the time. He couldn't actually make a sentence without actually swearing in kersing. You know, kersing can be very, very political, can be very also very shocked. And that's why I liked him because also he was he was one of those who uh shifted his allegiances during the revolution.

SPEAKER_04 57:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

He was accused of treason, he was actually tried. Uh the first one who was tried. Um by his own people or by the Ottomans? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, by the Greeks.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

The Greeks put their own feudal on Okay, on trial.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Yeah, because they they accused him of actually speaking with the Ottomans and making a pact with the Ottomans, which was probably true. Uh but the crucial thing is that A, the government at the time, took the decision to put on kind of show trial, so to make a case out of Kariskitis, right? Again, you have to show that you have the power to do that as a national government. So they did, but of course they didn't have the power to do something with kariskitis, so they didn't have the power to actually put him on jail. And she actually dies a very heroic um death uh in a battle. And of course, yeah, for me it's Periskitis and then Kolokotronis, another one, houseful name. You can see many statues of these people if you come to Greece, they're everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

And then as of 1830, we have the first modern Greek state. And the reason why I've got Christos here today is to talk about that because there's so many links to Germany, it's so interesting. But we I think we're really running out of time here because this podcast is getting a little bit too long for our listeners, and I think we have to catch up again. But can I also ask you? Um, you know, in hindsight, it's always all the Greeks rose up and they fought really hard and the bad Ottomans, and then they finally gained their independence. And as you said, in Greece, there's no mentioning of foreigners, the Greeks did it all themselves. But was there any Greeks at the time that regretted that and didn't sign up for the Greek cause and actually sided with the Ottomans? Because, you know, there's always winners and losers. Were there people, because I know Greeks were in Ottoman government as well, so or was there obviously a lot of Greeks remaining in what was the Ottoman Empire? It's not that all Greeks now lived in an independent Greece from 1830, right? So how did their life progress? Did the Ottomans keep an eye on them after the Greek Revolution and treated them any differently, or what was their life like afterwards?

SPEAKER_02 59:33

Well, of course, I mean, as you can imagine, many, many, many people, many Greeks sided with the Ottomans, or obviously did not wish to side with the Greeks because it was a very dangerous affair. Uh, in fact, the the the most notorious warlords of mainland Greece, uh, Jurgos Barnaciotis sided with the Ottomans. Uh now, of course, the Ottomans did, you know, there was a huge uh backlash in um the Ottoman Empire against the Christians in general, and especially against the Greeks uh during uh the first years of the revolution. But at the same time, you know, the Ottoman Empire was always very um uh ready to negotiate and to rethink its affairs with uh its population. So many Greeks, especially those who actually lived in Ottoman territories after the event, and probably there were many more than those who actually resided, lived in the Greek state, in the lands that became the Greek state. So they had to negotiate themselves, they had to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire again, and the Ottoman Empire in the process actually uh went into a series of reforms, one of which was to recognize the participation of local uh of Christians or non-Muslims in the local council. So that was an opening of the empire, partly produced and caused by uh the Greek Revolution and many other revolts that were taking place in the Ottoman Empire at the time, so they kind of opened up the gates for more political participation of this uh non-Muslim population. This opened the door, of course, to nationalism. And that that was in some ways the beginning of the end of the empire, because it was not an empire that was organized in national terms, it was an empire organized in religious terms.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:20

It it backfired on them. It didn't really work. Now um we won't have enough time, but we'll just talk another few minutes, Christos, because I think uh our listeners will find it and viewers, again reminding everyone out there that we're now on YouTube as well. You can watch us if you want to see um three handsome men talk about the uh Greek history, um, especially between 1821 and 1829. Everyone else now would think, okay, 1830, independence, all the Greeks shake hands, happy, got their own government and democracy, because that was the whole idea, wasn't it? But what happened was something very different. It actually ended up being a kingdom, and the the king of Greece after 1830 was everything but Greek Christos.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

No, it was uh it was Bavarian. Which is a state in Germany, yes, a state in Germany, and back uh then um there was pretty independent uh Bavaria, they've got their own their own king. I know that he was set up by the yeah big powers to bring to bring a little bit of of of certainty in.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

Um and also to join the European family. Yeah, kind of, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:37

Yeah. Well, that was Otto I of Greece, right? I mean, you couldn't have a more German name than Otto. And uh I also his his father, Ludwig, not the one with the fairy tale castles, that was the next one. But uh so his father, he changed the spelling of his own country. So Bavaria is Bayern in German.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

And it used to be spelt with an B-A-I. And during the Greek Civil War, because he was so obsessed with Greece, he changed the I to a Y, oops, epsilon, to make it look more Greek. Um, and but Bavaria is still spelled like this today, right? So if you look at Bayern Munich, that's why the why the football club is spelled like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:13

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

Yeah, and um, and also then there is, you know, there's various again, we spoke about architecture, and there's many monuments and buildings in Bavaria that look like ancient Greece. And these are the um these are the the the Phililines, yeah. You you said before. Foreigners loving Greece more than anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:32

Yeah, exactly. And this in this case, in the the Bavarian case, you have kind of an institutional free elite because it's like a whole state uh and a whole royal family, but it's very Philellenic. Uh so yeah. I mean, to go back to you know why why Bavaria, why Luthi, why King Otto, also it was it was a waste of the European powers. Let's not forget, this is Europe, the Europe at the time was still a Europe of monarchy. In order for a state, especially a new state, to gain legitimacy, uh, you know, having a even a foreign monarch was uh was the way to do it. Now for the Greeks, it wasn't a problem because one of the problems that the Greeks had was this local division. So exactly because you needed a kind of unifying power, like a king that would be, of course, appointed by someone else, and who a king who was not from Greece, because there were many enmities and divisions within within Greece itself. So it was kind of you know a a way out. Uh the problem was that it wasn't so much that he was a foreigner that that he was a Catholic. That was that became a problem in the 1850s because for the Greeks they were saying that the next one, the hierarchy, would have to be Orthodox. And that was the agreement. The problem was that Otto was childless. So that was uh it became a big issue uh in the 1850s, and then Otto was ousted, was dethroned in 1862 with another revolution. Yeah, and then the next king coming up as a podcast here.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:10

I'm making that pledge now. Um hopefully you join us for that one. So what was it um 1862, the coup against Otto? That's a great topic. I can't wait for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a coup against Otto, she's dethroned. Um, but this is not a coup against the monarchy stats, because actually the uh Revolutionary Assembly uh asks and votes for a new king. Yeah and so that would be the new King George of the Greeks, uh of uh Denmark. Uh so it's not it's it's it has a lot to do with the lack loss of legitimacy from the autos, what people at the time used to call autos systems. You know, some legacies in Greece itself, and you can see it in the building. Some of the buildings that someone can see even today in Africa. Were made and commissioned by Otto, and they follow this neoclassical style. And you can see it, I mean, whoever has ever visited Athens, these buildings are there. And you can see this influence from this neoclassical Bavarian architects.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

Apart of that, the Otto left something else behind in Greece. And is the German purity law for beer, where only four ingredients is allowed. Except of Germany is the Greeks, Greece is the only country who brews beer after the German purity law.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

There is a topic I'm very interested in. And again, another idea for a podcast. Now, here's another urban myth. First of all, apparently Otto spoke Greek very well because they were obsessed with it, but they came down there speaking ancient Greek, and they were so disappointed when they met the actual Greek population to say, hang on, that's not what we thought. We all thought they're like half-naked uh goddesses, you know, speaking this ancient language. And then a lot of them were peasants with ancient rifles and spears um you're fighting the Ottomans. An urban myth I've ever heard because the Greek flag is so iconic. And there's a reason why the Greek flag is blue and white. When you look at the Bavarian flag, that also happens to be blue and white, does that go back to Otto and the Bavarians as well? Do you know where the colours and the layout of the Greek flag comes from?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

I had not thought that it would go back to the Bavarians because also these were colours that were used. You know, during the revolution you have two different flags uh being created. Okay. Uh and the bla the blue and white was being used, but not in the sense, not in the way that it was used later on in the Greek flag as we know it today. It was usually like, you know, a cross, uh either blue or white, stuff like that. So but I actually don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:01

Oh my god, I love leaving questions.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:03

You caught me a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:04

Happy, and I'm so glad you admit it. You don't make up stuff because our listeners they're gonna point it out. Um if you sorry, if you know what the answer is, please leave it in the comments. Um, is the Greek flag that we know today related to the Bavarian flag, or is it coincidence? Um, and uh also send us an email, uh putcast at gmail.com. Christos, uh, what's your final verdict on today's episode? Have you learned something?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Absolutely. Uh thank you very much, uh Michalis, for all the details uh that you provided. Uh as um um a Greek um and I went to a Greek school um in Germany. So we learned these things, but not that much in in detail. And also for the preparation uh for this podcast, uh I did some research plus Mikali's details. Uh I learned quite a lot, and I understand now how things become together. So uh yes, I learned a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:04

Yeah, thanks uh thanks for joining us, uh Christos, and I hope to see and hear you again on the podcast. You just gave us a brilliant topic there. I want to find out exactly how Otto lost his job. Uh Michalis, can I ask you? We we started this podcast talking about you know two and a half thousand years of Greek uh history, and there's so much to learn and focus on. Why did you, for a career, pick this period of Greek history? What fascinates you about this?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:31

Well, that's a very good question. Uh A, because it's very understudied. Uh, you know, usually people study the 20th century or uh ancient Greek history, or some people Byzantium. But eighteenth the 18th and 19th centuries are very understudied, and I think because as in many other places, it was the moment when many things started, when many things that we are familiar with today actually started. And I wanted to understand the origins of it, you know, these moments that were crucial for the making of the Greek state, for the making of Europe, because the Greek state is part of Europe, but for the making of the Middle East, for the decline of the Ottoman Empire. You know, like these big uh moments that defined the region, that defined us as Greeks, but also the region. And I wanted to go back uh uh into the origins and study the origins. And also to get you know familiar with texts and languages and people that we're not very familiar with, even though we you know we celebrate them, but we actually don't know them. And it's nice to find and to see these life stories, uh, very interesting life stories of many, many protagonists, but also non-protagonists of the revolution itself, you know, how they grew up, what they did, what they said. And and this is a very different world than the ones that we thought uh it was when we you know when we learn about these things at school uh or even uh at the university. So that was the reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

Yeah, and uh I did research, and there are not that many experts like you, so I'm very, very fortunate to have had you on Putschcast. And again, I'll contact you again. Um, everyone else out there, please give us a like, share, subscribe. We need this to get more experts on this podcast and to uncover more hidden parts of European and world history, because um, someone will be toppled next, and we need to cover it and talk about it. So look us up, putcast.com or on all your favorite social media platforms. My name is Oliver Heute, your host, and uh I'll see you next time. Bye bye.