The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776-1848)

Reappraisals and Comparisons

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Paschalis M. Kitromilides

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000424713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776-1848) brings together twenty-one scholars and a host of original ideas, revisionist arguments, and new information to mark the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution of 1821.

The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the significance of the Greek liberation struggle to international history, and to highlight how it was a turning point that signalled the revival of revolution in Europe after the defeat of the French Revolution in 1815. It argues that the sacrifices of rebellious Greeks paved the way for other resistance movements in European politics, culminating in the 'spring of European peoples' in 1848. Richly researched and innovative in approach, this volume also considers the diplomatic and transnational aspects of the insurrection, and examines hitherto unexplored dimensions of revolutionary change in the Greek world.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of the Age of Revolution, as well as those interested in comparative and transnational history, political theory and constitutional law.

Part I
Resonances of the Age of Revolution I

1 Revolutions in Europe (1776–1848)

Annie Jourdan

Despite the numerous publications discussing European revolutions, little has been presented on those of the seventeenth century, and much remains to be said on those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries¹. One may wonder why some countries remained immune to the five revolutionary waves that followed each other. For example, the first wave occurred in the 1780s, which includes the American Revolution as an extension of the European revolution given the intensity of transatlantic communications at that time. The second wave, which hit in the 1790s, affected much of Europe on the heels of the French Revolution and culminated in the uprisings of the 1820s. Thereafter came the 1830s wave and, finally, the ‘People’s Spring’ of 1848. Surprisingly enough, some important countries such as Prussia, and Austria, did not participate in the waves of the 1820s and the 1830s, nor did Great Britain – or, more accurately, England, given that Ireland tried time and again to liberate itself from British rule.² I am not going to provide a definitive answer to this important question, although it needs to be asked.³ Obviously, Great Britain is an exception in the European constellation because the country experienced two seventeenth-century revolutions that produced a number of liberal institutions such as bills of rights, writs of habeas corpus, and other private and public liberties. Britain was and has remained a model for Europe during the following centuries, as we will see later in this chapter. Conversely, countries governed by enlightened despots had more difficulty enforcing liberal laws in their government. The only reforms approved by these despots tended to strengthen their power and rationalize their states in the hope of increasing their resources. Such was the case of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II and the Prussian King Frederic the Great. In the Holy Roman Empire, Belgium was the only province to enter into a revolution; the others failed to resist official repression. Such was the case for Hungary.

One can also ask why recent historians are so fond of the term ‘Atlantic Revolution’, given that non-Atlantic countries were the first to be affected by the revolutionary phenomenon. Those that come to mind are Corsica in the 1750s, Poland in the 1790s, and then Italy, the Rhineland, the Republic of Geneva, and Switzerland which are Mediterranean or continental countries. In the 1820s, indeed, more Mediterranean nations were touched by revolution, notably Spain, Naples, Piedmont, and Greece. Although it is not strictly a Mediterranean country, Portugal was also affected.⁴ The popularity of the term ‘Atlantic Revolution’ suggests that an Americo-centrism may be replacing the old-fashioned Eurocentrism by focusing on the South American and Caribbean revolutions at the expense of the European uprisings. Additionally, with the rise of global history, thanks to Bayly’s works and successes, the Atlantic Revolution is considered to be a global revolution despite the fact that it is difficult or almost impossible to discover any Asian, African, or Russian echoes. Following the work of Eric Hobsbawm, Michael Lang has proven this point successfully.⁵ Since 2004, I have chosen to call them Western revolutions using the plural form because each was unique. However, this appellation is also open to criticism and dismissal as yet another centrism. To conclude on this point, since 1776, revolutions occurred in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean but also on the continent.⁶ Regardless of the name, however, the relevance was more Western and transnational than global.

Analysis of revolutionary waves has the undeniable advantage not only of discovering connections, which seem to function as ricochets, but also of making a distinction among them. Yet even if it produced the same effects in different countries, revolutionary contamination did not necessarily stem from the same causes of discontent and did not necessarily have the same consequences. This is true even though the expectations of the patriots were identical, at least between 1789 and 1799 and probably until 1848 with some qualifications. In fact, except for those in the United States between 1776–1786, which were separate cases,⁷ the first revolutions of the 1780s were mostly conservative. They strove to restore ancient liberties and customs, especially in Belgium, the Netherlands, Geneva, and Switzerland, that seemed to be threatened by the reforms of enlightened despots in Belgium/France, or by the autocratic laws enforced by magistrates in Holland/Geneva/Switzerland. Other causes of discontent could have included the loss of independence, or at least the fear of losing it. This could have driven states to strengthen national unity, as in the cases of Corsica in the 1750s and Poland in the 1790s and during the 1820s wave in Italy against Austria and in Greece against the Ottoman Empire. In contrast, revolutionaries in both North America and South America sought emancipation from their colonial masters.

These revolutionary waves can be studied from several perspectives.⁸ In a recent book review, David A. Bell reminds us that to understand global connections, historians have to consider several factors on different levels including direct or indirect influences, the different time scales, and the different reasonings behind public and individual decisions. In short, history is not just ‘a matter of the ripples on the surface of events, but of the current beneath them, and the slow, steady tides’.⁹ All these dimensions must be taken into account by historians.

In this essay, I try to understand what was really going on in Europe by studying the different constitutional plans and texts implemented or devised by European revolutionaries and then comparing them with those of the first revolutions. This can offer us far more information than any political discourse and gives an overview of the claims of the dominant coalitions. In addition, by comparing these claims with those of 1776 or 1789/1793, as well as with one another, we can reveal how the connections have functioned and have led to rejection, misunderstanding, acceptance, and inspiration or correction and adaptation.

The first wave

In the 1780s, despite the precedent of the American Revolution, which had recently proclaimed and enforced the rights of men,¹⁰ most European countries were asking only for e-establishment of their original rights – rights that were seen as having been violated by their respective governments. Even in France, where the American constitution was translated in 1783 with the approval of the French king, thinkers such as Condorcet were not venturing as far as the Americans in their request.¹¹ Rather than asking for absolute revolutionary Liberty with capital L, they requested only a few particular liberties. Everything changed between 1788 and 1789, when France itself, the most densely populated and powerful country on the continent, underwent a revolution. Consequently, discussions of bills of rights and constitutions proliferated, and the new American Republic was updated to alternately become a positive or negative reference. This suggests that until that time, Europe had not fully understood the degree of radical innovation born from the American War of Independence (1776–1783). Thanks to French events and to the debates of the National Assembly, these revolutionary creations came to be better understood, and they inspired the Europeans. Among these creations, the need for a bill of rights and a written constitution – both bastions against arbitrary power – prevailed. The 1780s had been an incubation period more than a radical impulse. One can detect this in the limited constitutional plans made in the 1780s by Dutch patriots or in the comments made by patriots such as Mandrillon, a French merchant living in Holland.¹² The same was true for Belgian patriots, who asked for radical reforms only after 1789. From that point onwards, everything changed. Patriots followed the trend and asked for more natural rights and popular participation. French and foreign patriots also became aware of at least two models: a federal republic attractive to European federalists, such as the idea of creating the Belgian United States, and a centralized republic appealing to all who dreamed of union and unity. In contrast, only a few patriots at that time considered the British monarchy to be an appropriate solution. Louis XVI’s minister Necker was among these patriots, as were the so-called monarchiens. In all concerned countries, the federal and central options were both debated and adapted to local contexts. For instance, the Dutch political debate rejected French ‘centralized unity’ in favour of decentralized unity, which went against the American absolute federalism.¹³ Meanwhile, European patriots had realized the importance of creating a written constitution and a universal bill of rights by this time, and they understood that they had to involve the people to win the battle.¹⁴

The French Revolution and Europe

We now turn to the relationships between France and her European neighbours, since the French Revolution had a great impact on the continent both during and after this major event. During the first years after the fall of the Bastille, as is well known, successive French governments oscillated between the desire to emancipate oppressed peoples and the need to favour national interest. At that time, Geneva was the only European country to revolutionize itself, taking advantage of the French annexation of Savoy in November 1792. The following February, its bill of rights was ready, and in 1793, a democratic constitution was implemented. At the end of 1792, the Rhineland was invaded by French troops and was occupied until July 1793, whereas Belgium was ‘liberated’ from the Austrians by the army of Dumouriez and was occupied until his defeat in April 1793. Meanwhile, France had annexed several enclaves including Corsica, Avignon, Savoy, and Nice on the pretence that their people wanted to become French. But the French government hesitated on the fate of the Belgians and Germans,¹⁵ questioning whether these territories should be annexed or remain independent.¹⁶ France’s military defeats in 1793 put an end to these questions. It was not until French military resurgence in 1795 that the problem of ‘liberated territories’ arose again.

At the end of the Thermidorian Convention in September 1795, following two French victories, only two countries had achieved their own revolutions: the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Republic of Geneva; Belgium was eventually annexed to France. It is important to note that these three countries had already experienced moderate revolutions in the 1780s. Their patriots sought revenge and closely followed what was going on in Paris in the hope that France would help them to return home and seize power. Moreover, two of them were already republics, albeit oligarchies, with a great republican tradition. This could explain why they were so quick to achieve their own revolutions. When the French Revolution broke out and the Dutch, Belgian, and Genevan refugees were able to return to their countries, they did so with dreams of revenge against their former oppressors. In addition, they had formulated and continually focused on numerous plans during their exile based on declaratory and constitutional concepts as well as ideas about legal codification. However, none of their visions were similar to the French ones. Each was adapted to a specific national character, as they themselves asserted.¹⁷ This point was not always as obvious at it appears to be today. Historians in the 1960s–1980s have largely neglected this aspect and have emphasized the unilateral influence of France far too much.

In Italy, the situation was quite different. Some states such as Tuscany and Lombardy had already been reformed and modernized by their Austrian rulers. Conversely, Rome and the Papal States, Piedmont–Sardinia and Naples–Sicily still repressed everyone who strove for changes, whereas the republics of Venice and Genoa had become more oligarchic.¹⁸ The situation was revolutionary only among some intellectuals just after the French Revolution began; the same was true in Germany and to a larger degree in the Rhineland. In Switzerland, the French and Genevan revolutions had stirred up democratic aspirations, or at least libertarian ones among inhabitants who suffered from a lack of liberty and Bern’s imperialism. Although authorities forbade the tricolor cockade and refused to recognize the French Republic, extensive changes were sought by patriots, including members of the Helvetic Club in Paris, where Swiss refugees met regularly. Until 1796, when the refugee Frederic César de la Harpe arrived in the French capital and Bonaparte was creating new republics in Italy, France refused to intervene because a neutral Switzerland had many advantages.¹⁹ Among other benefits, it protected France’s eastern frontiers from Austria. But Bonaparte’s victories and his so-called sister republics put an end to this policy. Once Bonaparte had created the Cisalpine Republic in Lombardy, he needed to protect his creation, and he realized that he had to obtain the Swiss canton of Valais. Some time later, he sought to reunite the Italian Swiss territories to ‘his’ republic. Meanwhile, La Harpe and his colleague Peter Ochs tried to convince the French Directory to help them overthrow the Swiss governments. At the end of 1797, they had written a draft constitution with the involvement of Bonaparte.

The key point is that until Bonaparte’s victori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Rector’s foreword
• List of Contributors
• The Greek World in the Age of Revolution
• Part I: Resonances of the Age of Revolution I
• Part II: Resonances of the Age of Revolution ΙΙ
• Part III: Reverberations of Revolution in Eastern and Southern Europe
• Part IV: Revolutionary Waves in the Greek World I
• Part V: Revolutionary Waves in the Greek World II