Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History

Lecture 14: Greek nationalism, the "Megale Idea" and Venizelism to 1923
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As noted in Lecture 13, some themes and trends in Balkan history are easier to understand if we abandon
preconceptions drawn from general European history, including preconceptions about periodization. This is
true in Greek as well as Serbian history, and very apparent when we gauge the proper place of World War I
in Greek historical chronology. 1914 and 1918 are not the most useful or critical dates for an
understanding of Greek nationalism, because the forces at work began well before the start of the Great
War and continued after its conclusion.
Broadly, we can say that nationalism in foreign relations began for Greece with the Revolution of 1821.
Narrowly, we can say that the European War of 1914-1918 was only one episode in a series of wars for
national territorial expansion, than began with the First Balkan War of 1912 and ended with the war against
Kemal Ataturk's revived Turkish republic in 1923. And this decade-long contest was merely one link in a
chain of events that is still being forged in places like Cyprus and in Greek relations with the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Origins of the Megale Idea
Greek nationalism has the "Megale Idea," the counterpart of Serbia's "Nacertanije." Literally translated as
the "great idea" or "grand idea," the Megale Idea implies the goal of reestablishing a Greek state as a
homeland for all the Greeks of the Mediterranean and Balkan world. Such a Greece would be territorially
larger than the Greek state of today, but would be smaller than the Greek world of classical times, which
extended west to the coast of Sicily, northeast into the Black Sea, and south to Egypt. Alexander the Great
-- a figure of classical Greek history and legend exploited by competing modern-day politicians -- spread
the influence of Hellenism even wider, into Africa and Asia. The Eastern half of the Roman Empire became
solidly Greek as Byzantium, and sustained Greek culture in the Balkans and Asia Minor.
One of the unsettled aspects of the Megale Idea and the goals of Greek nationalism has been uncertainty
about what is properly considered Greek, and why. In the nineteenth century, religious affiliation with the
Greek Orthodox church was often confused with ethnic affiliation: the Bulgarians, for example, worked for
many years to secure a separate Bulgarian Exarchate Church for this reason. Extreme Greek territorial
claims resulted when the geography of classical Greece was applied to modern maps. The result has been
conflict with Albania over Epirus, with Serbia and Bulgaria over Macedonia, and with Turkey over Istanbul
(Constantinople), the western coast of Anatolia and islands from the Aegean to Cyprus.
While the fall of Constantinople in 1453 put an end to Greek political power in the Balkans, the Ottoman
millet system ensured that Greek influence would remain strong through the agency of the Orthodox
Church. As indicated in Lecture 6, the power of the Patriarch and his hierarchy opened important doors for
Greeks, and this helped to keep alive visions of a revived Greek state among the Greeks of the Ottoman
empire.
Intellectual currents outside the Ottoman Empire also contributed to a consciousness of things Greek.
Some educated Greeks fled to Italy after the fall of Constantinople: their writings promoted interest in
antiquity during the Renaissance. Western European interest in ancient Greece led to Phil-Hellenism. The
British ruling class, in particular, gained an interest in Greece from their education in the classics, and this
led to British support for the Greek revolution in the 1820s.
Rhigas Pheraios published a manifesto in 1797, one year before his arrest and execution for anti-Turkish
plotting. His work offers insight into Greek thought about a revived Greece, on the eve of the modern
revolutionary era. Rhigas envisaged a large country occupying both the Balkans and Anatolia, sheltering all
the ethnic groups found there but ruled according to Greek ideas. Rhigas was advanced enough in his
thinking to abandon religion as a criterion for national identity but he was not farsighted enough to see the
ways in which modern ethnic nationalism, with its emphasis on shared language and culture, would make
such an idea impossible. He influenced the planners of the Revolution of 1821: we can see echoes of his
thinking in the plans for a three-fold uprising, to take place in Istanbul and the Romanian provinces, as well
as in the Greek Peloponessus. And we have seen how this idea broke down in the face of incipient
Romanian nationalism, so that the uprising in Romania failed because Romanians resented their Greek
Phanariot hospodars.
The Megale Idea after 1830
After the achievement of Greek independence in 1830, the Megale Idea played a major role in Greek
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politics. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Greek people remained outside the borders of the
limited Greece permitted by the Great Powers, who had no intention that a large Greek state should
replace the Ottoman Empire. King Othon became "King of Greece" and not "King of the Greeks" for exactly
that reason: the latter title would have implied interests outside the new border.
The Megale Idea continued to be an intellectual as well as a political concept. The work of the historian
Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos shows how ideas underlay politics. Paparrigopoulos was born in 1815 in
Istanbul. As a child his family fled to Odessa after the 1821 uprising failed in the Turkish capital. In the new
Greece, he became an influential professor writing history in the service of nationalism and "the
fatherland." His work shows to what degree the Greek state relied not only on present-day needs but
historical roots to justify and identify itself. In 1843 Paparrigopoulos refuted a German paper claiming that
the present Greek population was descended from Slavs and Albanians who had repopulated Greece in the
500s CE. His work was self-consciously political: he spoke at political rallies and offered his expertise at the
Congress of Berlin to ensure that the borders drawn in 1878 reflected Greek positions about the ethnic
identity of the Macedonian population. Paparrigopoulos tied modern Greece to its classical and medieval
roots, a position which implied valid claims to all the lands of the Byzantine Empire.
Greeks and their leaders uniformly wanted to liberate the "unredeemed" Greeks abroad, but differed about
when and how to do so. In the 1880s, Kharilaos Trikoupis (seven times prime minister between 1875 and
1895) stood for reform and modernizing the domestic economy before taking international risks. His rival,
Theodoros Deliyannis (five times prime minister between 1885 and 1905) took the opposite tack, and his
career shows the risks at work. When the small Bulgarian principality expanded into Eastern Roumelia in
1885, Deliyannis mobilized the Greek army in an effort to secure more territory for Greece as well: but the
Great Powers reacted with a blockade that damaged Greece's economy. Deliyannis went to war with
Turkey in 1897 over the island of Crete, leading to twin humiliations: the Ottomans soundly defeated
Greece in battle and a state bankruptcy led to Great Power control of the Greek national budget. But
despite these setbacks, pursuit of the Megale Idea remained a viable basis for a political career.
The Olympic Games
It is slightly unfair to dwell always on the negative aspects of nationalism. While national pride has caused
some of the worst of wars, it can also lead to positive results. One of the most interesting has been the
revival of the Olympic Games in a modern form, which took place for the first time in Athens in 1896.
The impetus for our modern international Olympics came from Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman who
hoped that athletic programs on the British model would help revive France after the defeat by Germany in
1870. Interest in the Olympic concept was not new. Groups of Phil-Hellenes in England held "Olympic
Games" off and on since the 1600s: Shakespeare referred to the ancient Olympic Games in 'Henry VI.' The
King of Greece contributed one of the trophies for a long-running series of English games held in
Shropshire from the 1840s to the 1880s. King Othon sponsored Olympic Games outside Athens in 1859,
an event that took place again in 1870, 1875 and 1888.
None of these festivals involved competition between athletes from different countries but the notion of an
international event, held in modern Greece but harking back to classical times, had obvious appeal for
Greeks trying to attract attention in the world community. The Games carried the clear message that
ancient and modern Greece were one and the same, and supported Greek hopes that the glories of the
former would attract international support for the ambitions of the latter. Greeks therefore welcomed de
Coubertin's idea.
When de Coubertin began serious planning in 1894, a Greek named Demetrios Bikelas organized the
International Olympic Committee. Consistent with their contrasting politics, Deliyannis endorsed the idea,
while Trikoupis rejected it as a waste of money. However, the idea had the support of both the Greek
population and King George. The king agreed to host the Games at Athens in 1896, and private funds were
found to pay for them. To further the identification between ancient feats and modern sports, sponsors
invented a new 40-kilometer "Marathon" race based on legends about the Athenian victory at Marathon in
490 BCE. Again in line with nationalist undercurrents, the games opened on the Greek independence day:
April 6, 1896. Greek pride received a boost when a Greek won the first marathon race. Even though a
Greek proposal to make Athens the permanent site of the quadrennial games was rejected, the Olympics
became an unusual and peaceful way to secure credibility for Greece, based on its national history.
Crete and Macedonia
After the high good times of 1896, the lost war of 1897 was a reminder that economic backwardness,
military weakness and political corruption still prevented Greece from achieving the goals of the Megale
Idea.
The country was unable to achieve union ("enosis") with Crete despite repeated uprisings on the island. In
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Macedonia, Greeks were surprised by the pro-Bulgarian uprising of 1903 and had to create a rival guerilla
force in haste. When Paul Melas, son of a prominent Athens family and a commissioned officer in the Greek
army, was killed while serving secretly and illegally in Macedonia, the revelation caused a scandal: the
Great Powers condemned Greek interference inside Turkey, but the Greek population condemned the
government for not doing more to secure Macedonia for Greece. Although Greek guerillas gradually
secured the southern half of Macedonia by defeating pro-Bulgarian units, nothing came of their victories
because the 1908 Young Turk revolution restored Ottoman rule, apparently in a form that was stronger
than ever. 1909 saw another uprising on the island of Crete, and once again Greece was too weak to risk
"enosis" by war.
The Goudhi coup
No one was more aware of political corruption and military weakness, or more susceptible to patriotic
embarassment, than the officers in the Greek army. In July 1909, 1300 junior officers organized
themselves as the "Military League" and drew up a petition asking for financial and tax reforms, to be used
to pay for expansion and improvement of the military. King George installed a ministry that promised
reform, but within a few days the new prime minister (the unremarkable Mavromichalis) went back on his
pledge and installed the usual cronies in key posts. The officers' protest seemed to have become an excuse
for the usual factional politics. Mavromichalis then began court martial proceedings against the Military
League's leaders and refused to meet with a delegation of officers.
In response, the Athens garrison marched to the suburb of Goudhi, then threatened to occupy the capital
to enforce demands for reforms and amnesty. The small craft guilds of the city came out in favor of the
League, which was also calling for lower taxes. Another reform ministry took power but this time the
Military League placed the government on notice: unless specified laws were passed, the League would
assume power as a military dictatorship. The measures were promptly passed.
As in Serbia in 1903, a dangerous precedent had been set: the civilian government now functioned at the
mercy of junior officers in the army. In the next months, the Military League forced some civilian officials
and ambassadors out of office, repressed a mutiny by naval personnel who wanted a share of the power
seized by the army, and forced the legislature to pass a list of economic bills, many of which were
unworkable (lower taxes, for example, could not be reconciled with demands to spend more on the
military).
Venizelos
By January 1910, the officers were frustrated by an inability to make progress through dealings with the
legislature. Most members of the Military League had no wish to become politicians, only to assure
themselves that the military would get sound financial support. To improve their legislative negotiating
skills, they brought in the Cretan politician Eleutherios Venizelos as their adviser and spokesman.
Venizelos was 46 years old and a native of the island of Crete, which was still under Ottoman rule and
remained so until the Balkan Wars. He had attended law school in Athens, then returned to Crete.
Venizelos was active in an 1896 rebellion that led the Great Powers to grant the island some degree of
autonomy under Turkish rule. He served in Crete's assembly and as minister of justice. Venizelos'
supporters called him a political genius; his detractors, an opportunist. By 1910 he saw that he could do
little more in his position on Crete, so he accepted the League's offer to become its spokesman. He soon
negotiated the dissolution of the League, when the officers accepted a royal promise to hold special
elections for a national assembly.
When the special elections took place, independents and reformers replaced the old party hacks as the
majority and Venizelos was invited to lead them, even though he was technically not a citizen. Venizelos'
rhetoric appealed to all the important constituencies: he spoke in favor of a moral regeneration of Greece,
but also praised the monarchy. In this way he gained the support of the king, who felt threatened by
republican extremists in the Military League. Late in 1910 Venizelos had the king call another round of
elections: Venizelist delegates now took 260 of 362 seats. This large majority let him pass a long list of
reform bills aimed at ending the spoils system, the manipulation of votes, and other tools of the old
oligarchical parties.
Venizelos' success has been ascribed to a "bourgeois revolution" in Greek politics: the political heirs of the
old notables and landowners gave way to a new class based on manufacturing, shipping, the professions
and other new forms of enterprise. The Venizelist party also captured popular support by becoming the
primary advocate for the Megale Idea. The old elite was often lukewarm about national expansion, because
its power base in the the old core of the state would have been diluted by the addition of new lands whose
inhabitants often worked in the new industries. When World War I raised the question of national
expansion in an acute form, Venizelos' identification with irredentism led to a crisis in Greek politics.
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We can also call this a conflict between "insiders" and "outsiders." Recall that at the time of the Greek
Revolution, there was a deep split -- even civil war -- between two competing classes. On one side, power
and wealth flowed from a legacy of old privileges granted to ex-Ottoman officials and the landowning
notables of the Peloponnessus: both had been well-connected insiders during the Ottoman period. On the
other side, the outsiders came from a newer class of merchants, shipowners and professionals, and were
sustained by incomes, skills and connections derived from ties to Western Europe.
By 1909, the old wealth-holding class of landowners had been joined by a new kind of insiders:
bureaucrats and politicians who lived by controlling government patronage. The status quo satisfied these
groups: for them, reforms meant higher taxes and the potential loss of their jobs. All their rivals, in turn,
suffered under the status quo: those rivals included reform-oriented liberal politicians, a growing industrial
and commercial middle-class, and members of modern professions ranging from teachers to army officers.
These outsider groups -- the party of Venizelism -- looked favorably on the expansion of Greek territory
because it offered them access to more resources, expanded markets and new voters, all of which further
pushed the balance in their favor against the entrenched power of the insiders and oligarchs. Every
territorial expansion not only took Greece closer to the goals of the Megale Idea: it also strengthened
Venizelism. After the victorious Balkans Wars of 1912-1913 Greece added a million new citizens, and most
of them voted as Venizelists.
Greece in World War I
Involvement in the Balkan Wars was not controversial or risky: Greece had pursued land in Macedonia for
thirty years, and the Balkan League alliance clearly was too strong to be defeated by Turkey. But in 1914,
Greeks were divided about their best course. When Bulgaria and Turkey joined the Central Powers, the
potential stakes rose for Greece. It was likely that the end of the war would bring major border changes. If
the Central Powers won, Bulgaria might claim land in Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Greece. On
the other hand, if the Allies won, Bulgaria and especially Turkey would lose territory. As a noncombatant, a
neutral Greece would have no say in the peace treaty and the lands of the Megale Idea might be awarded
to rival states.
King Constantine (George having been assassinated in 1913) opposed entering the war at all, and
especially opposed joining on the Allied side. His family was German: he was the Kaiser's brother-in-law.
He expected the Central Powers to win. Prime Minister Venizelos on the other hand was sure that the Allies
would win the war and that Greek participation would yield benefits against Bulgaria and Turkey.
Relations between the king and Venizelos deteriorated. When Bulgaria attacked Serbia in October 1915,
Allied interest in a Greek alliance rose. As Prime Minister, Venizelos invited French and British troops to land
at Salonika. He justified his action under a very wide interpretation of an old Greco-Serb treaty, and under
the original 1830 treaty that gave the British and French rights to act as protecting powers for the Greek
state. The assembly voted (147 to 110) to declare war against Germany. When the King refused to go
along, Venizelos resigned and Greece remained neutral (despite the presence of Allied troops in the north).
In 1916 Venizelos' party boycotted new elections: by doing so he ended any chance to resolve the crisis
through constitutional, parliamentary channels and made the situation much more dangerous. In
September 1916 Bulgarian forces occupied part of northern Greece (the Allies had forced neutral Greek
troops out of the area, uncertain whether Greece might unexpectedly join the Central Powers). Venizelos
decided on extreme measures to save the state. He proclaimed himself the head of a revolutionary
government. Eager to bring Greece into the war, the Allies backed Venizelos and forced the king to
abdicate in June 1917. This divided Greece into hostile camps, on the verge of civil war.
Venizelos had staked his political prestige on the assumption that the Allies would allow Greece to fulfill the
Megale Idea, but he had no specific promises that Greece would gain control of her unredeemed
populations in the event of an Allied victory. Meanwhile, the Royalists were treated as potentially hostile
elements to be neutralized. The Allies demanded control of the Greek navy, key railroads and military
supplies, and enforced their demands with a naval blockade that left the country short of food and fuel.
King Constantine left the country to defuse the crisis. Prime Minister Venizelos became head of a regency,
and Greek units joined the French and British facing Bulgarian units around Salonika.
For the Balkan states, World War I had now become a referendum on the Balkan Wars: the territorial
winners (Serbia, Greece and Romania) faced the losers (Bulgaria and Turkey).
For a while the Central Powers prospered. Serbia was overrun, and Romania forced to sue for peace.
Bulgaria recovered lands in Macedonia, Thrace and the Dobrudja. Greece faced an ambiguous situation,
thanks to contradictory Allied promises about post-war arrangements. Greek designs on Albania competed
with Serbian, Montenegrin and Italian plans. Greek hopes to annex Western Anatolia conflicted with Italian
plans for a protectorate. Greek claims on Constantinople (Istanbul) faced Russian plans to annex the zone
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of the Straits.
Despite the minor and ambivalent role played by Greece during World War I, the Allied victory brought
substantial rewards. Competing Russian claims to Constantinople were ignored after the Russian
Revolution took Russia out of the war: instead the area became a demilitarized zone under weak Turkish
control. The collapse of Turkey allowed Greece to act in Anatolia. Greek troops landed at Smyrna (Izmir) in
1919, and the 1920 peace treaty with Turkey designated a large part of western Anatolia as an
autonomous zone under Greek occupation. A plebiscite was planned for 1925: after five years of Greek
administration, it was a certainty that the population then would vote for annexation to Greece.
However, the apparent triumph soon fell apart. Turkish nationalists refused to accept the harsh treaty and
retreated into the interior of Anatolia. A Greek army followed them to enforce Allied wishes. At the end of
extended supply lines, their advance stalled in 1921 and in 1922 a Turkish counterattack threw the Greek
forces all the way back to Izmir. The remnants had to be evacuated by sea and much of the city's Greek
population left with them, ending a Greek presence that stretched back thousands of years. A revised
peace with Turkey made the situation permanent: a million Greeks from Turkey were transferred to
Macedonia in exchange for a smaller number of Muslims.
The Megale Idea after the defeat of 1923
On the verge of the greatest achievement of the Megale Idea, the loss of Anatolia was a stunning defeat.
The disaster poisoned Greek politics, already strained by the civil conflict during the war. Although the
Anatolian adventure was the direct result of Venizelos' policy, the events of 1922-23 took place under a
Royalist administration thanks to an accident of timing (King Constantine had returned to the throne in
1920 after his son King Alexander died of an infection from a pet monkey's bite). When six royalist
generals were shot for treason after trial by a new and revolutionary government of Venizelists, the seeds
were sown for lingering political bitterness.
The competition between Venizelists and Royalists involved the social fabric as well. A million refugees
needed to be integrated into social and economic life. Many families arrived without possessions,
sometimes unable to speak Greek (Turkish-speaking Orthodox Greeks were a feature of Anatolia) and
certainly without connections in the cozy world of the Athens insiders. Quintessential outsiders, these new
voters became Venizelists. Most settled in northern Greece, where farms forfeited by expelled Turks were
redistributed by Venizelist administrators to refugees who remembered which party gave them their land.
38 percent of the cultivated land of Greece came into new hands during this period. Living on small plots,
the refugees found that export crops like tobacco offered a better living than subsistence farming. The
Venizelists were also the party that favored exports and trade.
The royalists, on the other hand, kept the allegiance of older rural smallholders who gained nothing from
the land reform; of the old-fashioned shopkeepers of Athens, who were threatened by imports and new
industries; and of Greece's small organized labor movement, whose members watched wages fall thanks
to the influx of refugees.
Conclusion
The legacy of the Megale Idea in the 1920s and 1930s became a destructive cycle of political rivalry and
dictatorships. Instead of seeking compromise and solving national problems, the two sides expended their
energy attacking each other. We will return to this in a later lecture, but it is safe to say that the immediate
interests of the Greek nation were sacrificed in the service of an illusory Greek nation that might have
been, based on the Megale Idea. This fundamental flaw in Greek politics continues as an influence even
today: the Megale Idea and aggressive nationalism reappear whenever one side or another needs a rallying
point at times of crisis. Both the right-wing Colonels of the 1970s and their leftist successors have
employed nationalism this way, and the ongoing Cyprus crisis is fueled by it. After generations of
population exchanges, the rationale for Greek irredentism has dwindled but its power has not.
Next lecture
This lecture is a portion of a larger Web site, Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History (The Balkans
in the Age of Nationalism); click here to return to the Table of Contents page.
This page created on 7 January 1997; last modified 11 June 2009.
URL=http://staff.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect14.htm
Copyright 1996 by Steven W. Sowards
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