Review of Thomas W. Gallant, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, viii + 372 p

Zanou, Konstantina

English

National Documentation Centre - EKT journals

    Historein   Vol 15, No 1 (2015)   Revisiting Democratic Transitions in Times of Crisis       Review of Thomas Gallant's The Edinburgh Historyof the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long NineteenthCentury   Konstantina Zanou     doi: 10.12681/historein.315         To cite this article:  Zanou, K. (2015). Review of Thomas Gallant’s The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long NineteenthCentury. Historein, 15(1), 160–163. https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.315Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)https://epublishing.ekt.gr  |  e-Publisher: EKT  |  Downloaded at: 06/12/2022 02:18:33Book Reviews160studies of Ottoman religio-linguistic commu-nities. It goes a step further in the direction of weakening the monopoly of now century-old national(ist) historiographies on the narra-tives of belonging, thereby taking the poros-ity of intercommunal boundaries back up to historically credible levels. By sifting through a treasure trove of anecdotal evidence in con-nection to momentous historical events with empire-wide impact, this book invites not only reflection on the Jewish communal trajectory, but even more importantly, to the mind of this reviewer at least, comparative explorations of the experiences and trajectories of other im-perial communities, such as Greek- and Bul-garian-Orthodox, Armenian and so on. There-in may lie one of its most lasting legacies in terms of setting a stimulating agenda for fu-ture comparative research that will be, more likely than not, along collaborative lines.Thomas W. GallantThe Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long Nineteenth CenturyEdinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. viii + 372 pp. Konstantina ZanouParis Institute of Advanced Studies/ Columbia UniversityThere are four major traps a historian con-fronts when embarking upon the adventure of devising a new book: first, to write a bor-ing book; second, to write a narrowly framed book which loses sight of the big picture; third, to write a chaotic and labyrinthine book; and fourth, to write a too general, oversimplified and teleological account. In one masterful movement, Thomas Gal-lant manages to avoid all of that. His History of the Greeks offers at one and the same time a book that can be taught in class as well as advance the knowledge of experts, be read in the metro as well as discussed at academic conferences, and engage unsuspecting read-ers as well as surprise specialists. How does he manage to do all of this? To begin with, Gallant seems to enjoy writing. In his book, detailed micro-descriptions and representa-tions of the wider historical context follow one another without the narrative ever losing pace (apart from one moment, as we will see later). Take for instance his chapters on the Greek War of Independence and on the Otho-nian kingdom: both start from the end and, in the manner of a film that features a story told backwards, they open with a single and powerful retrospective image: the assassina-tion of Kapodistrias and the punishment of the perpetrators, in the first case, and the last sad 161HISTOREIN VOLUME 15.1 (2015)years of Otho’s repatriation to Bavaria, in the second. These images introduce the reader to the discussion of the major questions of the period and allow the author to reach back and seize the thread with which his story begins. Gallant’s narrative skills are also exemplified in his breathtaking description of battles. His writing is not only bright and clear; it is also light and imbued with a sense of humour (I had never imagined that a book of Greek his-tory would bring a smile to my face). In short, Gallant’s sheer pleasure in writing makes his book a joy to read, with some of the virtues of the nineteenth-century novel (I confess that I could not put it down, even though I knew how the story ends, of course). This does not mean, however, that Gallant sac-rifices depth, complexity or academic rigour. This book is serious; indeed, it is profoundly so. Gallant revisits critically some of the most con-tested issues in modern Greek history. In addi-tion, he introduces elements which have long been missing from accounts of the Greek long nineteenth century, as I shall now try to show. First of all, the Ottoman empire. Of late, histo-rians have been drawing attention to the fact that the Greek and the Ottoman worlds hardly communicate in our depictions of their mod-ern histories. Nonetheless, far from being two self-contained political and cultural universes in the long nineteenth century, they can only be understood fully when their histories are fused or at any rate intertwined. Following that lead, Gallant’s book places developments of the long nineteenth century, such as the En-lightenment, the Revolution, the creation of the Greek state and the Macedonia question, back in the context where they really belong, the Ot-toman empire. (Besides, Gallant’s appreciation of the Ottoman framework can be seen in his choice, as the general editor of the Edinburgh series of the History of the Greeks, to include a volume – written by Molly Greene – on the Ot-toman empire between 1453 and 1785.)Second, the Russian empire. Gallant’s history of the Greek nineteenth century does not start with the ascent of the Phanariots in Constan-tinople, the consolidation of the Greek mer-chant diaspora in western and central Europe and the Enlightenment teachings of Adaman-tios Korais, as most histories do. It starts with a war between two empires, the Russo–Otto-man War of 1768–74, to which the author ded-icates not one page, but an entire chapter. In fact, by paying due attention to the Russian ele-ment, this is the first account of modern Greek history, to my knowledge, that views the coun-try as the historical product not of the (incom-plete) diffusion of Enlightenment ideals and modernisation processes from Western Eu-rope to its southeastern periphery, but rather of a Mediterranean geography of the “in-be-tween”, where different traditions from East and West met and conversed.But it is not only the Ottomans and the Rus-sians who are present in this volume. There are other important presences too, notably women, Greek Jews and Greek Catholics. Gallant successfully incorporates the pieces of their neglected stories – to the distaste, per-haps, of Greek nationalists or male chauvin-ists – in the master narrative of Greek history. The most important device, however, deployed by Gallant is highlighted in his title: the History of the Greeks – not the History of Greece. The difference is huge and the consequences of this decision are threefold: first, doing history of the people rather than of the place means that you include in your story not only the Greeks with-in the boundaries of the Greek state, but also the numerous Rom who remained in the Otto-man empire after the creation of the new state. Second, by examining seriously the history of Book Reviews162these people, as well as of other portions of Greek society which remained under the juris-diction of different states – and not necessarily “national states” – like the Greeks of the Ionian Islands under British protection, you arrive at a very different idea as to the inexorable neces-sity of the nation-state in the nineteenth cen-tury. By describing the different options avail-able during this transitional period, Gallant manages indeed to show that on various oc-casions nationhood and empire were not mu-tually exclusive. His book thus challenges the teleology of the nation-state. But the author’s decision to write the history of the Greeks rath-er than that of Greece has yet another impli-cation: it obliges him to take into account the various worlds of the so-called “Greek dias-poras”, from late-eighteenth-century settlers to southern Russia to early-twentieth-century immigrants to North America. Consequently, Greece is automatically placed within the wider regional and transnational framework that de-termined its history. In fact, it is a central con-tention of the book that Greek history, like any other, is part of global history. Gallant is fully abreast of current theoretical debates. This leads me to comment on another con-tribution of the book, which is, I think, equal-ly significant: the critical reassessment that it attempts of modernisation theory and of Greek exceptionalism. Gallant is clearly wea-ry of histories that treat Greece as an excep-tion to the “normal path” of modernity. He has dispensed with the once-dominant notion (still widespread among Mediterranean and Balkan scholars) that there are countries with differ-ent levels of political, industrial, social or in-tellectual modernisation. His observations in regard to the Greek clientelist/patronage sys-tem and to the level of industrialisation of the Greek economy are a case in point. The ten-dency to view a widespread use of patronage as the root cause of Greece’s political instabil-ity and supposedly impaired modernity – Gal-lant argues – obscures the fact that patronage was at the core of every democratic polity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As to the theory of the country’s backwardness and of its “incomplete” path towards industri-alisation, Gallant says that while it is true that Greece did not attain the level of industrialisa-tion that Britain or Germany did, nowhere else in Europe did so either. Greece, in other words, was no exception.All in all, this is a book that surprises with its richness of perspectives and disciplinary do-mains. It literally has a little bit of everything: economic history, political and legal history, military history, social and demographic his-tory, urban history, environmental history, cul-tural history, gender history, social anthropol-ogy and archaeology. One is tempted to say that the book reflects Gallant’s own universal formation, as a historian, an ancient and con-temporary archaeologist and a social anthro-pologist. Like every book, though, this one too has its flaws – if only minor. The first is that only a chapter before the end, the story is interrupt-ed by two (long) chapters which are dedicat-ed, respectively, to the social history of every-day life and to the economy during the Greek long nineteenth century. Both chapters are ex-tremely interesting and useful (even if the joy of reading diminishes when one is assailed by numbers and statistics, be they econom-ic or demographic – but what can you do? Numbers are by their very nature unforgiv-ing). What is not completely clear is why the author chooses to insert these two analyti-cal chapters at this point, interrupting thus his narrative and deferring the chapter about de-velopments during the Greek fin de siècle to the very end of the book. Wouldn’t it just have been simpler to put these two chapters at the 163HISTOREIN VOLUME 15.1 (2015)end? The second weakness of the book is the fact that it contains several spelling mistakes, both in English and in Greek, which can some-times be a little irksome. This, of course, has to do more with the scant proof-reading ser-vices of the publishing houses nowadays than with the author himself. But these are minor details. When all is said and done, Gallant’s delve into the past has produced the most all-encompassing account of the Greek long nineteenth century to have been written, a book that has genuine liter-ary merit and at the same time can be usefully used in class.Christopher ClarkΟι Υπνοβάτες: Πώς η Ευρώπη πήγε στον πόλεμο το 1914[The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914]Athens: Alexandria, 2014. 736 pp. Elli LemonidouUniversity of PatrasThere is hardly an issue (except obviously for Nazism and the Holocaust) in the entire history of the twentieth century that, in the course of time, has captured so much interest from his-torians and has seen the production of such a huge number of books and articles as the one regarding the origins of the First World War. If for the average European citizen knowledge and memory of the Great War is mainly linked to the images and descriptions of the suffering in the trenches of the Western Front and to the specific commemorative narratives existing (to a varying extent) in each separate country, academic historiography, which is very pro-lific as a whole in all war-related issues, has shown a particular interest in the core ques-tion of how Europe arrived at the bloodshed of 1914–1918 and who is mainly to blame for this outcome.The existing number of both primary and sec-ondary sources available on the subject is im-mense, almost beyond the reach of even the most hard-working and polyglot historian.1 The quest for the causes and responsibilities for the war emerged almost simultaneously with its outbreak in the summer of 19142 and in the intervening decades has never ceased to attract the interest of historians, politicians, diplomats and the general public. The question became even more crucial after the end of the Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Review of Thomas Gallant's The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long Nineteenth Century

https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/historein/article/download/2366/8991

Review of Thomas Gallant's The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

National Documentation Centre - EKT journals