Rise of Nationalism in The Balkans - Greeks

Greeks

With the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire the pre-eminent role of Greek culture, literature and language became more apparent. From the 12th century onwards with the territorial reduction of the Empire to strictly Greek speaking areas the old multiethnic tradition, already weakened, gave way to a self-consciously national Greek consciousness and a greater interest in Hellenic culture evolved. Byzantines began to refer to themselves not just as Romans (Rhomaioi) but as Greeks (Hellenes). With the political extinction of the Empire it was the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek speaking communities in the areas of Greek colonization and emigration that continued to cultivate this identity through schooling as well as the ideology of a Byzantine imperial heritage rooted both in the classical Greek past and in Roman Empire.

The position of educated and privileged Greeks within the Ottoman Empire improved in the 17th and 18th centuries. As the empire became more settled, and began to feel its increasing backwardness in relation to the European powers, it increasingly recruited Greeks who had the kind of academic, administrative, technical and financial skills which the larger Ottoman population lacked. Greeks made up the majority of the Empires translators, financiers, doctors and scholars. From the late 1600s Greeks began to fill some of the highest offices of the Ottoman state. The Phanariotes, a class of wealthy Greeks who lived in the Phanar district of Constantinople, became increasingly powerful. Their travels to other parts of Western Europe as merchants or diplomats brought them into contact with advanced ideas of the Enlightenment notably liberalism, radicalism and nationalism, and it was among the Phanariotes that the modern Greek nationalist movement matured. However, the dominant form of Greek nationalism (that later developed into the Megali Idea) was a messianic ideology of imperial Byzantine restoration, that specifically looked down upon Frankish culture, and enjoyed the patronage of the Orthodox Church.

• In 1821 the Greek revolution, striving to create an independent Greece, broke out on Romanian ground, briefly supported by the princes of Moldavia and Muntenia.

• A secret Greek nationalist organization called the Friendly Society (Filiki Eteria) was formed in Odessa during 1814. On March 25 (now Greek Independence Day) 1821 of the Julian Calendar/6 April 1821 of the Gregorian Calendar the Orthodox Metropolitan Germanos of Patras proclaimed the national uprising. Simultaneous risings were planned across Greece, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The revolt began in March 1821 when Alexandros Ypsilantis, the leader of the Etairists, crossed the Prut River into Turkish-held Moldavia with a small force of troops. With the initial advantage of surprise, the Greeks succeeded in liberating the Peloponnese and some other areas.