The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism

More than the overthrow of an empire, the Greek Revolution of 1821 was an unexpected demographic revolt. As late as 1819, the revolution’s future military leaders routinely switched employment from Christian to Muslim overlords without qualms. Yet two years later, they united to drive Muslims out of the Peloponnese to create a new, Orthodox Christian entity called Greece. How did this sea change of self-identification happen? Kotsonis (history, Jordan Ctr. for the Advanced Study of Russia, NYU; States of Obligation) has written an indispensable account of a little-understood series of events, dispensing with the cloud of nationalist myths that obscures them today and tracing events as they happened back then, with all their complicated connections. The resulting book replaces simplified nationalist history with a crooked-line narrative that is occasionally harder to follow but infinitely richer. Kotsonis’s parsing of the Greek Revolution’s European inspirations—Russian, French, British—is particularly valuable.