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The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism
A sweeping global history of the birth of modern Greece
In 1821, a diverse territory in the southern Balkans on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire was thrust into a decade of astounding mass violence. The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism traces how something new emerged from an imperial mosaic of myriad languages, religions, cultures, and localisms—the world’s first ethnic nation-state, one that was born from the destruction and the creation of whole peoples, and which set the stage for the modern age of nationalism that was to come.
Yanni Kotsonis exposes the everyday chaos and brutality in the Balkan peninsula as the Ottoman regime unraveled. He follows the future Greeks on the seaways to Odesa, Alexandria, Livorno, and the Caribbean, and recovers the stories of peasants, merchants, warriors, aristocrats, and intellectuals who navigated the great empires that crisscrossed the region. Kotsonis recounts the experiences of the villagers and sailors who joined the armed battalions of the Napoleonic Wars and learned a new kind of warfare and a new practice of mass mobilization, lessons that served them well during the revolutionary decade. He describes how, as the bloody 1820s came to a close, the region’s Muslims were no more and Greece was an Orthodox Christian nation united by a shared language and a claim to an ancient past.
This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.
In 1821, a diverse territory in the southern Balkans on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire was thrust into a decade of astounding mass violence. The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism traces how something new emerged from an imperial mosaic of myriad languages, religions, cultures, and localisms—the world’s first ethnic nation-state, one that was born from the destruction and the creation of whole peoples, and which set the stage for the modern age of nationalism that was to come.
Yanni Kotsonis exposes the everyday chaos and brutality in the Balkan peninsula as the Ottoman regime unraveled. He follows the future Greeks on the seaways to Odesa, Alexandria, Livorno, and the Caribbean, and recovers the stories of peasants, merchants, warriors, aristocrats, and intellectuals who navigated the great empires that crisscrossed the region. Kotsonis recounts the experiences of the villagers and sailors who joined the armed battalions of the Napoleonic Wars and learned a new kind of warfare and a new practice of mass mobilization, lessons that served them well during the revolutionary decade. He describes how, as the bloody 1820s came to a close, the region’s Muslims were no more and Greece was an Orthodox Christian nation united by a shared language and a claim to an ancient past.
This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.
- GenresHistoryGreeceNonfiction
392 pages, Hardcover
Published January 14, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 7, 2025
An excellent and accessible scholarly work about an oft-overlooked revolution in European history. The Greek Revolution has often been cited as the first ethno-nationalist revolution in world history (the nationalist spirit of the French Revolution was civic rather than ethnic based), and it set the pattern for the many that would follow over the next two centuries. Kotsonis falls clearly into the Anderson school of nationalist theory, demonstrating how the Hellenic nationalism that swept Greece in the late 1810s and early 1820s was entirely fictive.
Rather than a storied and ancient people reasserting their identity again, we see that Greek identity simply did not exist before the revolution. The ancient citizens of Classical Greece, so often invoked by these revolutionaries, would not have considered themselves ‘Greek’ in any modern sense of the word, and were in fact more likely to identify with their individual city-states over some sort of ethnic community. Then, following the conquest of the Greek lands by the Romans in the first-century BC, and especially after the establishment of the Eastern Roman Empire with Constantinople as its capital in the 300s, those whom we would today called Greeks self-identified as ‘Romans’ for 1500 years! Their endonym was ‘Romioi’, and when the Byzantines were conquered by the Ottomans, they did not take any Greek title, but instead referred to themselves as ‘Sultans of Rome’. Kotsonis shows how just months before this revolutionary outbreak, those who would go on to be the most passionate ‘Greeks’ had no set identity, working for Muslim or Orthodox or Catholic forces, whichever was paying the highest. The creation of a ‘Greek’ self-conception was one born in the literary salons and university offices, in far away European capitals and amongst the intellectual classes. In fact, it is through the philhellenism of the post Napoleonic elites of the great European powers that the Greek revolution got off the ground. His work shows that here, as in all nationalist movements which followed, identity is highly contingent, often performative, and built upon the appropriation of historical narrative and figures to whom it would seem quite foreign.
Kotsonis also shows how the formation of a nationalist movement is always tied to violence. The creation of a nationalist in-group requires the conceptualization of an otherized out-group. In the Greek case, that ‘Other’ was the Ottoman Turks, and all Muslims generally. This is a pattern we see repeated in every nationalist movement worldwide, with the consequence often being ethnic cleansing and genocide. We see this amongst various groups in the Yugoslav Wars, the Israel genocide of the Palestinians, the American genocides of Native American, etc. The Greek Revolution saw ethnic cleansing against Turks and other Muslim/Slavic groups which had lived peacefully alongside their ‘Greek’ Orthodox neighbors in Greece for centuries. Kotsonis demonstrates that ethno-nationalist identity building and political movements are directly tied to ethnic violence, they can not be separated. Overall this was an excellent work and the best book I’ve read so far published in 2025!
Rather than a storied and ancient people reasserting their identity again, we see that Greek identity simply did not exist before the revolution. The ancient citizens of Classical Greece, so often invoked by these revolutionaries, would not have considered themselves ‘Greek’ in any modern sense of the word, and were in fact more likely to identify with their individual city-states over some sort of ethnic community. Then, following the conquest of the Greek lands by the Romans in the first-century BC, and especially after the establishment of the Eastern Roman Empire with Constantinople as its capital in the 300s, those whom we would today called Greeks self-identified as ‘Romans’ for 1500 years! Their endonym was ‘Romioi’, and when the Byzantines were conquered by the Ottomans, they did not take any Greek title, but instead referred to themselves as ‘Sultans of Rome’. Kotsonis shows how just months before this revolutionary outbreak, those who would go on to be the most passionate ‘Greeks’ had no set identity, working for Muslim or Orthodox or Catholic forces, whichever was paying the highest. The creation of a ‘Greek’ self-conception was one born in the literary salons and university offices, in far away European capitals and amongst the intellectual classes. In fact, it is through the philhellenism of the post Napoleonic elites of the great European powers that the Greek revolution got off the ground. His work shows that here, as in all nationalist movements which followed, identity is highly contingent, often performative, and built upon the appropriation of historical narrative and figures to whom it would seem quite foreign.
Kotsonis also shows how the formation of a nationalist movement is always tied to violence. The creation of a nationalist in-group requires the conceptualization of an otherized out-group. In the Greek case, that ‘Other’ was the Ottoman Turks, and all Muslims generally. This is a pattern we see repeated in every nationalist movement worldwide, with the consequence often being ethnic cleansing and genocide. We see this amongst various groups in the Yugoslav Wars, the Israel genocide of the Palestinians, the American genocides of Native American, etc. The Greek Revolution saw ethnic cleansing against Turks and other Muslim/Slavic groups which had lived peacefully alongside their ‘Greek’ Orthodox neighbors in Greece for centuries. Kotsonis demonstrates that ethno-nationalist identity building and political movements are directly tied to ethnic violence, they can not be separated. Overall this was an excellent work and the best book I’ve read so far published in 2025!
August 18, 2025
I give the author credit for doing about as good a job as possible trying to sort out all this history surrounding the creation of the modern Greek State. The story is a sad one with death, destruction, and enslavement as the end result for many Christian and Muslim people living in that part of the world. I knew little of the Ottoman Empire after 16th century, and I can see how deep the decay had become by 1821. How Greece came into being as a country with the total chaos surrounding Revolution is an interesting story that kept my attention,.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews