Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence
Authors: David Brewer
Tags: #History / Ancient
Greece, the Hidden Centuries
David Brewer
is the author of
The Flame of Freedom: The Greek War of Independence, 1821-1833
. After studying Classics at Oxford University he divided his working life between teaching, journalism and business before devoting himself to the study of the history of Greece.
P
RAISE FOR
T
HE
F
LAME OF
F
REEDOM
‘fascinating . . . Brewer has done a splendid and useful job for which he is to be warmly congratulated’
Adam Zamoyski,
The Sunday Times
‘fresh and compelling . . . this account of the war unfolds with the narrative drive of an exciting historical novel.’
Nicholas Gage,
Wall Street Journal
‘a remarkable debut, rigorously researched, engagingly written and capturing perfectly the dramatic yet tragic course of Greek independence.’
Saul David,
Sunday Telegraph
‘has all the strengths of old-fashioned narrative history, with a strong sense of pace, a firm control of line, a confident handling of Greek and philhellene sources, a familiarity with the landscape and a nice eye for detail.’
David Crane,
Spectator
‘an elegant and sympathetic study of the period’
Murrough O’Brien,
Independent on Sunday
‘remarkably detailed and highly readable’
Dominick Coyle,
Financial Times
‘
The Flame of Freedom
makes terrific reading, as thrilling as a good novel’
Roderick Beaton,
Times Literary Supplement
Reprinted in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
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Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
First published in 2010 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
Copyright © 2010 David Brewer
The right of David Brewer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, eletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 1 84885 047 7
eISBN: 978 0 85773 004 6
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd,
www.jcs-publishing.co.uk
Contents
2 1453 – The Fall of Constantinople
9 Mainland Greece and Town Life
12 1669 – The Turks Take Crete
13 Turkish Rule in Cyprus and Crete
14 The Changing Ottoman Empire
19 Greeks and the Enlightenment
22 1821 – The War of Independence
23 One Man’s War – Nikólaos Kasomoúlis
Maps
Illustrations
Picture Credits
2: Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna
3: Topkapi Museum, Istanbul; Royal Academy, London; photographer Hadiye Cangôkae
4 & 5: Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
9: Emfietzoglou Gallery, Athens
11 & 12: Laographikón Mousío, Míkonos
13: Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies, Athens
15: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
18 & 20: Benaki Museum, Athens
19: Dhimósia Kentrikí Vivliothíki, Lixoúri, Kephaloniá
21: History and Arts Museum, Mesolongi
22: Thémis Tsirónis
For Elisabeth
Acknowledgements
Sometimes the thanks in a book’s Acknowledgments appear simply formal, but mine are not. I am sincerely grateful to my agent, Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates, to everyone at I.B.Tauris, and especially to my editor Liz Friend-Smith – it has been a pleasure to work with her. Also to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for her meticulous copy editing, and to Adrian Roots, who drew the maps.
Of the many libraries consulted I have particularly appreciated the library of King’s College, London. It has a magnificent collection of books on all ages of Greece in English, Greek and other languages, and its librarians are always ready to guide the visitor through its splendid but labyrinthine building.
Comments from others are some of the most valuable influences on the making of a book, and my thanks go to those who have read all or part of the text or helped in other ways: to Roderick Beaton, Hugh Bicheno, Mark Dragoumis, Nikos Kokantzis, John Laughland, Diana Owen, Jerry Schneewind, Lily Venizelou, Paul and Thelma Walters, and Michael and Avra Ward. Any errors remaining are, of course, my responsibility.
I have explored some of this book’s issues in articles for
Athens News
, and I am very grateful to the paper’s editor John Psaropoulos for the opportunity to do so.
I recently read an Acknowledgements in which the writer’s teachers were thanked, and it struck me that more of us should do that. So I would like to remember, with gratitude and affection, Meston Batchelor, who first taught me Ancient Greek and later shared a keen interest in the Greece of today; to Herbert Brown, who opened my eyes to the scale and excitement of history; and to Eirlys Roberts, who edited my first journalism with an encouraging smile and a steely insistence on clarity and accuracy.
My family has been involved in the writing of this book from the start, and I really appreciate the generous encouragement of my daughters and of my step-children. But my greatest debt and biggest thank-you is to my wife Elisabeth. P.G. Wodehouse once light-heartedly dedicated a book to his wife, without whose constant help and encouragement, he wrote, this book would have been finished in half the time. I can genuinely say the reverse. Without Elisabeth’s perceptive comments, encouragement, love and support this book would not have been finished at all. It would probably not even have been started without her painstaking conversion of my handwritten and much-amended drafts into a respectable text. It is her book too, and I am delighted to dedicate it to her.
Notes on Pronunciation and Names
Pronunciation
Greek names can be an irritant or even a barrier to a reader who is not sure how to pronounce them. Stress often falls in unexpected places, so has been marked, but pronunciation of Greek is relatively straightforward because, unlike in English, each letter or combination of letters is always pronounced in the same way. In the transliteration of Greek used here, the vowel sounds are:
a as in b
a
skete as in b
e
di as in the first i in bl
i
nio as in b
o
x – even at the end of a wordou as in b
oo
t
The only unusual consonant sounds are:
ch as in lo
chdh a soft th as in
th
en – butth a hard th as in
th
in
Names
Anglicised versions have been used for the better-known place names – Athens, Corinth, Hydra (not Ídhra) – and personal names – Alexander and, a bit of a hybrid, Georgios rather than Yeóryios or George. For Greek names of the Byzantine era the more familiar anglicised versions are generally used – Isaac, Palaiologos and so on. Thereafter Greek names are transliterated.