Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (38 page)

In the towns where Greek expatriates gathered they needed three things to establish themselves as a community: their own church, school and newspaper. In Zemun the Greek Orthodox initially shared a church with the Serbian Orthodox, and disputes soon arose over whether services should be conducted in Greek or Serbian. At the end of the eighteenth century a compromise was reached: the language should be Greek on alternate Sundays and on important church festivals – Easter, Áyios Dhimítrios in October and the day after Christmas – but otherwise Serbian. The arrangement lasted until the early twentieth century, when Serbian finally ousted Greek.

In Budapest too Greeks and Serbians initially shared a church with alternating languages, but in 1790 the Greeks built their own church, funded by Greek merchants and decorated by Greek craftsmen. In Budapest there were also Vlachs from north-west Greece who spoke their own language, based on Latin and linked to Romanian, and on certain days the services were conducted by a Vlach priest in the Vlach language.

In Vienna the Greeks worshipped from 1726 onwards in a side chapel of the church of Áyios Georgios, but 50 years later, after disputes with the Serbs, the church was allocated exclusively to the Greeks. It seems that Greek and Serbian Orthodox continued to be at odds since in 1803 the Greeks built their own church, with major contributions as we have seen from Símonos Sínas.

Over schools too there was sometimes conflict between the Greeks and their hosts. In Sibiu and Brasov the German-speaking locals opposed the founding of Greek schools, which they saw as strengthening the Greek community to the detriment of their own. However in 1797 a Greek school was established in Brasov with a curriculum combining the patriotic with the practical: not only Greek language, history and religion, but also German, accountancy and business correspondence.

In Belgrade there was a Greek school from as early as 1718, and much later in 1842 a school specifically to teach business skills. The school in nearby Zemun, the
Ellinomousío
established in 1794, was reputed to be better than the one in Belgrade. Serbian children also studied there, and textbooks were translated from Greek to Serbian for their benefit. In Budapest the school was inaugurated by the Greek Orthodox bishop of Buda in 1812. It had a particularly good library, and students could also benefit from the two Greek bookshops in the city. In Vienna there was once again a difficulty with the locals, this time the authorities. The Greek school started in 1804 was under the control of the Austrian government, which insisted on German studies and set the criteria for awarding qualifications. The Greek school became less popular, Greeks
went instead to German-speaking schools, and many became Austrian citizens.

The Greeks of Vienna might be deprived of Greek education but by the end of the eighteenth century they had Greek newspapers. The first, started in 1784, was short lived, and nothing of it remains, even its title. A more successful venture was the twice-weekly
Ephimerís
(Daily) whose first issue, on 31 December 1790, optimistically proclaimed: ‘To the dear reader: here, long awaited and long promised, is a newspaper in demotic Greek, a new plant which will soon grow and flourish.’
⁵
In fact it lasted eight years, and was later followed in 1811 by the much more intellectual
Lóyios Ermís
(Literary Mercury), which discussed the language question – demotic versus the formal
katharévousa
– and the ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1821 the Austrian government ordered the editor to publish the denunciation by the Orthodox patriarch of the Greek rising. The editor complied under duress, but immediately closed the paper.

These Greek emigrants to the northern Balkans and beyond might be prosperous, have their own schools, churches and newspapers and in some cases take foreign citizenship, but the link with their origins remained strong. Rich Greeks supported education in their home towns: one Budapest merchant gave money to found a farm school in Kozáni, and another provided bursaries for poor students in Kozáni to attend universities. Exiles would go home for festivals, both church and secular, but these visits were sometimes painfully short, as the lament of a Koritsá girl shows: ‘This husband of mine spends twelve years in foreign lands and three nights at home. Three hours before dawn I found the doors open and the horse gone. He came with the night and left with the day.’
⁶
And some exiles felt the full pain of nostalgia: ‘A foreign land, prison, discontent, or the pain of love – of all four it is a foreign land which chafes the most.’
⁷

Naturally enough, given Greece’s long coastline and the profusion of Greek islands in the Aegean, it was the sea that often took Greeks abroad. Even before Turkish rule Greeks were to be found building ships for foreign navies, and in the Venetian arsenal of the first half of the fifteenth century Greek islanders were considered some of the finest galley-builders. Later the Greek islands were required to provide ships for the Turkish navy – eight galleys in 1621, and 50 years later fourteen. In the following century carpenters were summoned to Constantinople from Chíos and Hydra to work on repairing Turkish ships, a constantly necessary task: ‘In this year’, ran a 1714 firman from Sultan Ahmed III,
‘all the warships of my Imperial fleet in the Imperial dockyard – ships of the line, corvettes, frigates and transports – are in need of repair.’
⁸

The sea also took Greeks abroad as merchants. As early as 1490 there were sixteen Greek merchants listed as entering Kaffa in the Crimea during that year, and in the middle of the sixteenth century there were 200 houses in Ancona belonging to Greek merchants. There was also service in foreign navies: Cretans served in the Turkish navy a century before the Turks took over the island, and Cretans, including El Greco’s brother, acted for the other side as privateers for Venice against the Turks. And as we have seen there were some Greeks who practised small-scale piracy on their own account.

Sailing a small ship in the eastern Mediterranean was a hazardous business. Winds were unpredictable and could swing from moderate to ferocious in moments, especially at the equinoxes, as they still do. Navigation depended on the skill and experience of the pilot. ‘He knows the course of the stars and can always orient himself,’ says an early writer. ‘He knows the value of signs, both regular, accidental and abnormal, of good and bad weather. He distinguishes the regions of the ocean by the fish, by the colour of the water and the nature of the bottom, by the birds, the landmarks and other indications.’
⁹
Charts and portolans, that is collections of useful information about harbours, coasts and sailing generally, were expensive rarities, and in any case few sailors could read. Some thought that things had little improved by the start of the nineteenth century. According to Jakob Bartholdy, a Prussian visitor to Greece in 1803–4, ‘Everything one hears about the nautical prowess of the Hydriots needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. They blunder like blind men among the rocks of the Aegean and it is a wonder that there are not more accidents.’
¹⁰
But as Bartholdy lost no opportunity of denigrating the Greeks his observation too should be taken
cum grano
.

The first significant boost to the Greeks as sea traders on their own account came from the export of grain. From about 1550 there was increasing demand for grain in the central and western Mediterranean, basically because population was increasing while food production remained static. Naples suffered six famines between 1560 and 1600, Portugal became a massive importer of grain, and even fertile Sicily needed grain from abroad. Constantinople was threatened with famine three times between 1589 and 1600, and for long periods thereafter the Ottoman Empire banned grain exports from its territories. Much of the Greek grain trade was therefore illicit, riskier but potentially more profitable. By one estimate, in the second half of the eighteenth century 40 per cent of the wheat grown in Greece was exported.

The main market for grain was Italy, and it was on the western side of Greece and along the Adriatic coast to the north that ships to carry it were developed. In Greece the main shipyards were at Mesolongi with its nearby islet of Anatolikó (modern Etolikó), and at Galaxídhi some 30 miles inside the Gulf of Corinth on its north shore. There was fierce rivalry between the two, Mesolongi being financed by Iánnina money and Galaxídhi by rich merchants in Pátras. The development of shipping at Mesolongi was remarkably quick: before 1740 it had only small vessels but by 1764 Mesolongi and Anatolikó between them owned 75 ships, two thirds of them locally built, and of capacities of up to 300 tons. According to a report early in the following century Galaxídhi had 50 ships of 150 to 300 tons, more vessels than the whole of Crete.

Even greater opportunities for Greek shipping came from the ending of the war between Russia and Turkey of which the Orlov revolt was a part. Russia defeated the Turks at sea, notably at the 1770 battle of Çesme on the Turkish coast opposite Chíos in which fireships were devastatingly effective against the Turkish ships. On land the Russians occupied the Crimea and won a string of victories in the Danube region. In 1771 the Turks, in desperate straits, had formed an alliance with Austria, under which Turkey would cede territory in return for military assistance. But a year later Austria abandoned this alliance, to join Russia and Prussia in the partition of Poland. Prussia and Russia had no scruples about this – ‘Catherine and I are brigands,’ said Frederick of Prussia
¹¹
– and Maria Theresa of Austria overcame hers. Alas poor Poland, whose situation had triggered the Russo-Turkish war and indirectly contributed to its ending. In this first partition of 1772 Poland lost about a third of its territory and population to the three predatory powers, in the second partition of 1793 it lost half the remainder, and the final partition of 1795 brought a dissolution of the state.

The war between Russia and Turkey was ended in 1774 by the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, a village just south of the Danube in today’s Bulgaria. Under this treaty Turkey had to pay an enormous war indemnity of seven and a half million piastres, equivalent to half a year’s total imperial revenue. The Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji also extended Russia’s territory to the northern shores of the Black Sea, and Russian commercial shipping obtained the right to sail freely in the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean: Russia’s century-old aim of expansion southward was at last achieved. Significantly for the Greeks, the treaty was extended some years later in 1783 to allow Greek ships to fly the Russian flag and be registered as Russian, opening the way for Greek merchant ships to trade throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Greek shipbuilding
flourished, Greek ships voyaged more and more widely, and trade by sea increasingly took Greeks abroad.

Three of the Aegean islands took the greatest advantage of this new freedom of operation: Hydra and Spétses off the north-east coast of the Peloponnese, and the tiny island of Psará some twenty miles off Chíos on the opposite side of the Aegean. Until about 1750 only small ships of 15 to 50 tons had been used, and voyages were limited to the Aegean and Constantinople. In the second half of the century much larger ships began to be built, voyages were extended, and profits from maritime trade enormously increased.

Thus on Hydra the first 100-ton ship was built in 1745. It was described as ‘unsightly and double-ended’, but nevertheless sailed as far as Alexandria, Kephaloniá and Trieste. The first ship of 250 tons followed in 1757. In 1766 the French consul at Koróni in the southern Peloponnese was already reporting that Hydra threatened French trade in the area. By 1786 Hydra had 120 ships, two thirds of them over 45 tons, and the larger ones sailed to Venice or Livorno. The number of Hydra ships roughly stabilised after that, but carrying capacity increased up to 550 tons.

Similar developments followed on the other two islands. In 1792 Spétses built its first large ship of 254 tons, and Psará its first large ship of 150 tons two years later. One effect of this increased maritime activity was that the Turks demanded increasing numbers of the islands’ sailors to serve in the Turkish navy: from Hydra, for example, 10 in 1745, 50 in 1770, and between 100 and 500 each year from 1797 to the outbreak of the war of independence in 1821.

Until the latter part of the eighteenth century most shipbuilding was done by eye, without diagrams and without calculation of ratios. But by the end of the century more scientific methods had been introduced, as described by a historian of Psará:

Nevertheless the tools for shipbuilding remained primitive, and Samuel Howe, writing during the war of independence, described the tools in use on the island of Skópelos: a block of wood with a haft through the middle as a mallet, a notched iron hoop as a saw, a split piece of oak as dividers and, most useful of all, a long well-tempered knife.