Πρόγραμμα Προπτυχιακών Σπουδών

THE GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE: TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

This module seeks to explore the Greek war of independence from a comparative and transnational perspective. Besides being a key moment of Modern Greek history, the former was also a European event. It topped the agenda of European and international politics for a decade or so attracting sympathy and volunteers from the continent and overseas. It marked the birth of an autonomous Greek state against all odds, and long before other national movements succeeded in forming independent states, and thereby it set the standards for liberal revolutionaries in Europe and elsewhere. We will therefore study the development of the Greek national movement and the ensuing independence war considering the way this turbulent era was experienced and understood by Muslims and Christians, Greeks and Ottomans, Europeans and non-Europeans. We will look at the war through Greek and Ottoman eyes, connect it with the revolutionary wave that swept southern Europe in the 1820’s and see how the Greek independence war set the stage for the first-ever humanitarian intervention. Up-to-date historical research and a variety of primary sources will be utilized in order to study the local, national and international facets of the conflict and assess the various political, religious, military, geographic and economic factors at play. The course will close by tracing the shifts in the way Greek historiography perceived and interpreted the Greek war of independence from the 19th century up to our day, paying due respect to the historical approaches developed at Panteion university.
Specific topics include:
* Life of non-Muslims in the Ottoman empire
* Collective identities before nationalism
* Enlightenment and revolution
* Late 18th / early 19th century European politics
* Pre-modern myths and popular mobilization
* Modernity and war
* War and the sacred
* The Mediterranean moment of revolution (1820’s)
* The war in Ottoman eyes
* Philhellenism and humanitarian intervention
* Historiography: approaches and interpretations