Download Athens, 6-7 March 2015

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Mediterranean democracy, Year 3
CHURCH, ARMY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
1750-1860
Athens, 6-7 March 2015
Arcadia Centre, Empedekleous 26, Pagrati
Present: Eleni Andriakaina (memory and Greek revolution), Frederick Anscombe (Ottoman
empire), Arianna Arisi Rota (politicisation in the Risorgimento), Gonzalo Butron Prida (crisis
of ancien regime in Spain), Eleni Calligas (Ionian islands), Antonio Calvo Maturana (Spanish
intellectual life in the pre-liberal era), Ada Dialla (Balkans in international context), Sakis
Gekas (economic and social history of Ionian islands), Antonis Hadjikyriacou (Ottoman
Cyprus), Marios Hatzopoulos (Ottoman Balkans, concepts of national identity), Anna
Karakatsouli (book history, war of independence), Paschalis Kitromilides (Greek
enlightenment), Diego Palacios Cerezales (police and state in the Iberian peninsula), Michalis
Sotiropoulos (University of Athens and formation of Greek state and culture), Yannis
Spyropoulous (Ottoman Crete), Dimitris Stamatopoulos (Christian Orthodox populations in
late Ottoman empire), Yannis Tassopoulos (Greek constitutional and legal history), Yanna
Tzourmana (British and American cultural and intellectual history), Ignazio Veca
(comparative history of Catholic cultures), Thanos Veremis (military in Greek history)
And: Joanna Innes, Maurizio Isabella; Eduardo Posada Carbo
Speakers and organisers in absentia: David Bell (French revolution, Napoleonic empire),
Fernando Catroga (nineteenth-century Portuguese politics), Mark Philp
Other apologies: Antonis Anastasopoulos, Andrew Arsan, Maria Chatziioannou, Dimitris
Christopoulos, Dimitris Dimitropouos, Thanassis Gallos, Kostas Kostis, Socrates Petmezas,
Marinos Sariyannis, Lycourgos Sophoulis, Chrisa Tsagaroulaki, Nassia Yakovaki,
Konstantina Zanou, Aggelis Zarokostas
Day 1: Church and Religion
Introduction
Joanna Innes explained the general conception and aims of the project: it focussed on how
democracy became a category applied to understand and shape the modern world; though
there were some broad trends as to how this happened across Europe and the Americas,
different regions/states also had their own distinctive histories of ‘re-imagining democracy’;
the current phase of the project focussed on the Mediterranean region, and aimed both to
explore contrasts across the region, and to identify any common themes. The fact that in this
era the region was in general subordinated to the machinations of northern Great Powers was
perhaps the most striking common feature, though within the region there were also a variety
of cultural linkages and exchanges. Workshops in this third and final year of the
Mediterranean section of the project would be thematic, like this one. Church and army were
perhaps not obvious bedfellows, but the notion was that they both stood alongside but
potentially in tension with core apparatuses of government. The question was how
developing ideas and practices relating to democracy affected churches and armies. She
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suggested that the larger pattern of (unevenly developing) interest in and sometimes support
for democracy should not be taken for granted: the question of why this notion gained force
in European and American cultures remained worth asking, and it was by no means obvious
how to answer it. Insofar as they gained purchase in religious and military spheres, one
question worth posing was, was this an effect of political developments? Or to what extent
were there autonomous developments, specific to these contexts – and to the extent there
were, how did these interact with political developments?
Maurizio Isabella introduced the theme for the day, church and religion. He suggested that
religion provided a very important context for thinking about democracy, because nothing
touched the mass of the people more. But religious commitments also set limitations to
democracy’s possibilities. He suggested that in southern Europe, the nation was conceived in
religious terms: not adhering to the national religion tended to entail exclusion from the
sovereign body of the nation. National sovereignty did not necessarily entail tolerance. The
church as an institution also deserved attention. Every revolution and counterrevolution in the
region had clerical participants. Church reform was always part of the discussion – and
demand for this came from within as well as from outside the church. He suggested that
focussing on religion suggested the need to question some master narratives. C18 was often
characterised as an era of reform movements and Jansenism; C19 as a century of religious
reaction. But in fact reform movements continued into C19 and interacted with movements
for political renewal. He asked when the church-reform tradition in fact ran dry? He also
noted that older narratives of secularisation were rightly being revised: in place of a story
about the decline in the power of religion, a story about reconfiguration of relations between
state and church was being told. He wasn’t sure how to integrate the Ottoman empire into the
story. He noted though that the whole of the region was seen as backward by Protestant
missionaries: Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims alike.
Discussion:
Arianna Arisi Rota agreed with Joanna’s suggestion that regeneration was a concern
throughout the region. The need to recover past glory was a major theme in Italian patriotic
discourse, certainly military discourse. Joanna suggested that the regeneration theme equally
applied to religion.
Paschalis Kitromilides said that he had found it difficult to think how to conceptualise the
history of the church in relation to democracy. Reform and toleration were more obvious
topics. Though there was some interest in democratic themes, attention mainly focussed on
other issues. Concern with accountability seemed to him the most promising point of entry.
There was a notion that the apostolic church had been more directly identified with and hence
accountable to the people.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said that he had been pondering what linkages there might be
between reforms in the state and church reforms. He noted that the Greek Orthodox Holy
Synod declared, with reference to relations between church and state, that they did not want
the king to be head of the church (as he had been 1834-44). This arguably paralleled what
was said in 1854 in the second national assembly, when it was claimed that the nation, not
the king was sovereign.
Paschalis Kitromilides said that the sovereignty of the nation was stated in the 1864
constitution.
Maurizio said that in the Greek case too there were clerics who wanted to reform the Church.
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Yannis Tassopoulos said that he thought the idea that all human beings had equal worth in
the eyes of God was distinct from ideas about popular sovereignty, the nation etc.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that in Ottoman historiography a major problem was that people
looked for institutions and didn’t always find them, when they might more profitably look for
quasi-institutions, defined by repeated practice.
1. Antonio Calvo Maturana, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, “A Game
of Altars: Absolutism, Liberalism and Ultramontanism in Spain (1789-1836)”
During C18 the religious orders had become more independent of the state. The state
expelled the Jesuits in 1767 – they were blamed for the “Esquilache rising” of the previous
year, and they were seen to have become in effect a state within the state, In 1768, the king
claimed the right to control Vatican edicts. The so-called Jansenist party was more political
than theological in character. They conceived of religion as something personal; they didn’t
approve of the baroque church. The first disamorticisation took place under absolutism.
When Bonaparte imprisoned the Pope, the Spanish Church was for a few months completely
independent.
Late C18 saw a big expansion in the propaganda resources of the Church. He had found some
political catechisms issued under absolutism, though they are usually associated with liberal
governments. These absolutist catechisms took some ideas from Napoleon, which talk about
a society of citizens (without sovereignty, of course, with duties and without rights.
He said that the history of Spain 1789-1808 was relatively underexplored, but there was a
renovation of absolutism after the French revolution, and religious writers wrote about
homeland, nation and citizenship: the French revolution provided categories in which it was
possible to reimagine monarchical rule. Citizens were however not accorded sovereignty;
citizenship was seen to entail duties not rights. The catechism he had found (Fray Manuel de
san José: El niño instruido, 1807, before the Napoleonic takeover) was intended to serve as
the first reading text for all children in the monarchy on both sides of the Atlantic. It enjoined
them to be loyal to both king and law, rey and ley.
He said that the church infrastructure was important to the weak C18 state. Thus the
Seminario Agricultura, a weekly bulletin about agricultural improvement, was addressed to
the clergy. They provided a channel of communication, as also eg over vaccination.
The French revolution posed a particular challenge to Spain because France had been Spain’s
key ally. Initial reactions were hostile. Some interesting political treatises were written at the
time of the War of the Pyrenees (1793-5) - eg Catecismo de Estado, by Joaquín Lorenzo
Villanueva; La Monarquía, by Clemente Peñalosa; El vasallo instruido, by Antonio Vila y
Camps (see Portillo: Revolución de Nación y Calvo, Aquel que manda las conciencias…)
The Church presented the war as a new crusade against godless France. There seems to have
been a successful campaign to win over public opinion, which resulted in the King being able
to recruit a large army.
In 1808, the heir to the throne, Ferdinand, dethroned his father, Charles IV. Ferdinand was
supported by most conservative nobles, who felt excluded from the new politics, and also by
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the main part of the church. The church hierarchy has been seen as an enemy of reformation –
but in fact, an important part of the hierarchy was reformist; there were even enlightened
inquisitors (see his book, Aquel que manda las conciencias, 2011).
War against Napoleonic rule then pitted ‘patriots’ against so called afrancescados. Patriots
comprised both liberals and absolutists, The political vacuum allowed liberty of opinion to
flourish. The Cadiz Cortes, which met from 1810, hosted a diversity of views, but all points
of view were in some sense religious.
There has been a debate about whether the Cadiz constitution of 1812 was intolerant. Portillo
and Gregorio Alonso say that Spanish liberalism was always intolerant. Article 12 of the
constitution did indeed say that the Catholic religion was the national religion and must be
respected. Although the inquisition was abolished one year later, a new tribunal was
established to censor religious tracts. However, other historians have emphasised that the first
11 articles didn’t mention religion. The Spanish nation was placed first. In any case the
constitution was the fruit of a negotiation. It did not operate for long enough for its
implications to be worked out. The first secular constitution was the constitution of 1869. The
current Spanish constitution also mentions that Catholicism is the main religion, though that
doesn’t make modern Spain a confessional state.
Ferdinand on his return adopted a persecuting policy; the serviles were widely seen as ultra
Catholics. Against this background, when the liberals came back to power in 1820 they
weren’t so open to negotiating, and became more clearly anti-clerical.
Don Carlos embodied ideas of foralism, and of the importance of the link between throne and
altar. The liberals came to characterise these views as old-fashioned. Images were made
identifying the clergy polemically with such old fashioned views. Tensions around religion
mounted. In 1834, 80 friars were killed in Madrid in a violent manifestation of anticlericalism. ‘Milicias de voluntaries reales’ were created to defend absolutism during the last
decade of government of Ferdinand VII.
The church thus came to be seen as a synonym for tradition, even though this didn’t apply to
all individual clergy. Even under Franco, at least during the 60s, there was some opposition
from within the church. But the church was increasingly seen as an obstacle to change.
Discussion: several questions were collected
Paschalis Kitromilides wanted to know more about what was happening within the church
in response to these developments. What about ultramontanism.
Ignazio Veca wanted to know more about the role of the inquisition in C18 Spain. Also
about how contemporaries conceived the alliance between church and state.
Joanna wanted to know what happened to the Jansenist tradition.
Antonio said that throughout C18 the church fought against enlightenment. But the state used
its control of the church, its powers of patronage and ability to reward writers, to try to
promote enlightened voices within the church. So that happened, but there was still much
opposition; thus many bishops continued to oppose Jansenist policies. And there was
resentment about state control of the church. This was the background to most of the
hierarchy siding with Ferdinand against his father.
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Not all religious positions taken in Spain were distinctively Spanish. Javier Herrero (Los
orígenes del pensamiento reaccionario español) showed that the explosion against the
revolution was fed by texts produced in various places. Similarly when the Jesuits returned
1817.
The effect of the work of the Inquisition is that enlightenment in Spain didn’t focus on the
works of Voltaire, Rousseau etc, but was more related to practical matters, science and
education. The Inquisition was abolished four times: under Napoleon, at Cadiz, by the
liberals in 1820 and when the liberals returned to power in the 1830s. 1781 was the last date
at which someone was put to death by the Inquisition.
He said that Jansenism survived down to the Cadiz Cortes. When Jansenist politicians were
exiled at the Restoration, continuity was broken, but the tradition of thinking can be seen to
have survived into liberal church policy.
Maurizio observed that his research suggested that there was not just violence against the
clergy but also sometimes violence between the clergy.
Gonazlo Butron, on the question of intolerance and the Cadiz constitution, said that in his
view emphasis on Catholicism should be seen in the context of the quest for unity.
2. Ignazio Veca, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, “‘Baptizing Democracy’ : Pius
IX, Liberty and the Revolutions of 1848”
At his funeral oration for Daniel O’Connell in Rome 1847, Gioacchino Ventura declared that
the Church would turn towards democracy, would baptise this «savage heroine». Ventura
compared contemporary liberalism to the Protestant Reformation, which gave rise to the
Catholic Reformation: once the Church took up liberty, there would be reciprocal benefits.
One year later, Pius IX was elected Pope and offered a wide amnesty, reinforcing perceptions
of him as a liberal pope.
Ignazio said that he would focus on conceptions of liberalism and democracy particular to
this era. The image of Nation/Republic/Democracy, the french Marianne, as a “savage
heroine” was widespread in the early nineteenth century, eg in Delacroix’s portrait of Liberty
leading the people. No doubt Ventura was essentially anti-revolutionary, but he saw liberty as
a preventative against revolution, hoping to defeat Marianne through Marianne.
At that moment, Pius IX was hailed as a new Moses; even Mazzini paid tribute to the liberal
Pope.
He showed an image from France 1848, ‘La Liberté faisant le tour du monde’ which showed
liberty travelling around the world with the Pope. A long caption describes the scene as ‘the
progress of the people's spirit, enlightened by the genius of Christianity’. Strikingly, liberty
was represented by two figures, one representing brotherly liberty, one freedom from
tyranny. This was a complex image, drawing on two iconographic traditions, which he
illustrated by means of other images: one which had celebrated the return of the Pope Pius
VII to Rome in 1814 after his imprisonment: Rome made free from demagogues; the other
showing an anti-absolutist woman with a Phrygian cap (this was an 1833 anti-Orleanist
image, reprinted in 1848). The combination of these two traditions can be seen providing an
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account of Pius’ progress between the two liberties. It was an example of Romantic
syncretism.
He then showed another image from France 1848, ‘À Sa Sainteté Pie IX. Tous les peuples
réconnaissants’: an angel representing both religion and liberty, whispering to the Pope to
grant a constitution. He said he had found four more versions of this image from Italy. They
are a clear messianic evocation, joining Marianne and the Catholic Pope.
He said that the Italian struggle against Austria in 1848-9 took on some of the trappings of a
crusade, but to make this idea work, it was crucial that the Pope support it. A nengraving
from Rome 1848 depicts the papal benediction (‘Benedite Grand Dio l’Italia’). However, the
Pope said that he couldn’t declare war on another Catholic nation unless it was necessary to
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prevent clear detriment to religion (significantly, he didn’t say that war was in principle
wrong).
Gareth Stedman Jones has said that in the nineteenth century, Italian writers gave local
expression to common ideas about freedom. He agreed with this characterisation, but said
that we still don’t have a clear idea of this larger world of ideas on which Italians drew.
Instead of opposing religion to secularism, we need to ask which version of each is in
question at any moment. He asked in relation to the idea of religion baptising democracy and
opening the way to the immanent redemption of mankind, are we definitely out of this
modernity?
Discussion:
Marios Hatzopoulos and Paschalis Kitromilides both wanted to know more about the
sources of the images, and the audiences for which and contexts in which they were
produced.
Joanna said that it was her impression that a discourse about ‘Christian civilisation’ was
developed in the postrevolutionary period and employed by many people for many purposes.
She thought that those contemporaries who tried to link novel and revolutionary ideas with
older values – religion, monarchy, leadership of the educated or whatever – pursued a very
ambiguous strategy. On the one hand one could certainly see them as having tried to
domesticate troubling new ideas. But by backing those new ideas at all, they took significant
risks. This was very much the case with O’Connell, who sought to channel popular energy,
but by channelling it also amplified it. So she had reservations about portraying Ventura as
essentially anti-revolutionary.
Ignazio said in relation to sources that with more time he would have provided more details
about them. The print of the two images of liberty was the work of utopian printers, who
printed many images for humanitarian causes. They were sold in bookshops in Rome and
displayed eg in coffee bars. They were propaganda, circulated in places of sociability.
He agreed with Joanna that the strategy was ambiguous. He said that clergy engaging with
the lower classes used liberty as a catchword to which they thought people would respond:
they weren’t developing elaborate theories about it.
Thanos Veremis asked if Pius IX had an effect in France 1848.
Ignazio said yes; the images he had shown related to France 1848, Pius wrote a proclamation
30 March in which he said in relation to the French revolution that the extraordinary events of
the past few weeks were the work of God. The Catholic Church in France welcomed 1848 as
a ‘révolution chrétienne’; even Veuillot, the ultramontane par excellence, wrote approvingly
of the ‘reformer Pope’ in 1847-48. What was urged was the need to give ‘liberty’ to the
Church: that vocabulary was annexed to a religious cause.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos said he though that what was at stake was the political autonomy
of the clergy: the clergy were inclined to want political autonomy, but state authorities were
nervous about allowing it.
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Ignazio agreed that for the church, the issue was autonomy in a sense, but in the context of an
idea that man can never be fully autonomous: they didn’t have a Kantian view of modernity.
As they saw it, man was imperfect and could only achieve salvation under Christ as the
representative of God; Church hierarchies had an important role to play in making this
possible.
Arianna Arisi Rota said that across the papers so far she thought that the story being told
was one of co-existence and hybridisation. Different forces operating in the Italian political
market were all competing for customers. It was interesting to consider the public sphere
from this perspective. Mazzini told his recruiters not to talk about religion, for fear of
alienating people. Religion was deployed for propaganda purposes, she thought.
Ignazio agreed, but said it wasn’t just propaganda: beneath propaganda lay a mindset.
3. Paschalis Kitromilides, National and Kapodistria University of Athens, “A
national church for a national state. The autocephalous Church of Greece, 1830
– 1928.”
He said that the Orthodox church had endured in the region for 2000 years, when political
regimes had repeatedly changed: this fact helped to give it special significance. It supplied
meaning to people’s lives, and leadership to society. But the history of the Church was also
marked by certain ruptures, as when it was persecuted by Roman emperors, or when the
Balkan peninsula fell under Ottoman rule. In the nineteenth century, national churches
appeared throughout the Balkans, all ultimately gaining powers of self-government,
autocephaly, though by different routes. He said that he would focus on certain milestones in
this development.
Korais articulated the ideal of the national church in the Prolegomena to his edition of
Aristotle’s Politics. He did not think that the church of an independent nation could remain
subject to a patriarch who was himself subject to Ottoman rule. However, under Capodistrias,
no steps were taken to secure the independence of the Greek church. The issue was taken up
instead by the Bavarian regency, as part of a broader project of statecraft. They proclaimed
autocephaly – placing the church under a synod, as in Russia, members of which were
appointed by the crown. In secular affairs, the church was subject to the king; in that sense it
was made part of the Greek state. However, the declaration of autocephaly ignored the
procedures laid down by canon law to achieve that end. This upset the patriarch, and also
religious circles in Greece. The issue was debated in voluminous learned writings. The
schism – the illegimate separation of the Greek church – lasted until the 1850s, when
autocephaly was sought and granted according to standard procedures.
The Greek church was originally assigned authority over the territory of Greece as defined in
1830. In 1864, its jurisdiction was extended to embrace the Ionian islands, and in 1880s to
include Thessaly. Finally in 1828 a hybrid system was established, under which most of what
was by then recognised as Greece came under the autocephalous church (new dioceses being
established in more recently acquired territories); Crete however retained a semi-autonomous
church, and Mt Athos responded immediately to Constantinople.
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He posed the question, how was the nationalisation of the church achieved and consolidated?
On the one hand, it was freed from dependence on Constantinople, but on the other hand,
more tightly embraced by the state.
A national theology eas developed: a theology faculty was one of four constituent faculties of
the University of Athens. Ignorance was identified as a problem: the Greek church aspired to
reflect light back towards the east. The clergy were made agents of a project of cultivating the
Greek nation outside the kingdom, a task which the Church hierarchy willingly accepted. In
this way, the ethos of nationalism was transferred to Greeks in other territories. Other schools
of theology were founded: in Constantinople in 1845, in Jerusalem in 1835.
He said that historians were not on the whole good at developing a ‘thick’ understanding of
religion. They tended to regard religious identities as tags, rather than seeing religion as a
framework that made life meaningful to people. It was more than just an instrument of power.
He concluded by asking what the implications of this story might be for democracy. He said
that the Orthodox church was sometimes said to be democratic in contrast to the monocratic
Catholic church. There was no primate; all bishops were equal – though this, he said, made it
aristocratic or oligarchic rather than democratic. The participation of the laity in many
aspects of the life and administration of the church was doctrinally sanctioned – citing the
precedent of the early church, although now there is little of this; the role of the laity tends to
be passive participation in worship. But the laity had no role in the election of bishops
(though political parties might get involved, as happened in Cyprus). He said that the national
church had often supported anti-democratic movements. It could be seen as a weak element
in relation to the liberal tradition in Greek politics.
Discussion:
Ignazio Veca wanted to know how the Greeks saw the Philhellenic movement and their ideas
about church, nation etc.
Fred Anscombe had the same question, and also wanted to know more about how these
issues played out in wider Greek society
Michalis Sotiropoulos asked how the patriarchate reacted to developments in 1833-4.
Paschalis Kitromilides said that Philhellenism was a different subject. He noted though that
the various Greek constitutions issued by national assemblies during the period of the
revolution provided for the existence of the church in the new state. Orthodoxy was
recognised as the dominant religion, but there was also provision for toleration. He suggested
that there had been more debate about these matters during the Greek enlightenment, about
the place of religion and the Church in a free society. Thus Korais, commenting on the first
Greek constitution 1822 wrote extensively about the Church. He wanted it to be governed by
a synod elected directly from below.
Joanna took up the theme about how these developments impinged on wider society. She
asked if the state attempted to get the church to use excommunication as a sanction against
those who defied the state, as – if she remembered correctly -- Thomas Gallant suggested
was the case in the Ionian islands. She also asked whether Church-state relations were an
issue in 1843 or 1864.
Maurizio asked what if anything the Church gained from being recognised as a national
church.
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Thanos Veremis responded that they gained personal security: 40 metropolitans lost their
lives at the hands of the Ottomans.
Paschalis Kitromilides said that the Church was transformed through its involvement in the
uprising. It changed from being a bearer of tradition. The bishops were summoned to
Tripoli(tsa) by the Ottomans to discuss the uprising. All but one went. They were put in
prison, where several died. Others were limited when the Greeks took Tripoli. Those who
died were celebrated as ethnomartyrs. But this new role assigned to the Church did not of
itself answer the question, what shall we do with the church in the new state?
He thought that excommunication was used extremely sparingly, more so than by the
Catholic church. He said that the British encouraged the Ionian church to become
autocephalous. The church in Cyprus had been autocephaous for centuries.
Eleni Calligas commented that there was concern that the Church would be fragmented as a
result.
Paschalis said the common admission to communion remained as a defining feature of a
wider community.
He said that the case of Serbia was interesting. Although the Serbians first revolted against
the Ottomans in 1804, only in 1834 did the autonomous prince ask for the Church to be made
autocephalous. But since he proceeded according to canonical procedures, this was
unproblematic.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos said that in 1852 the nationalist Zampelios introduced the term
Hellenochristianism, which married nationalism with the Byzantine tradition. This
hybridisation bore comparison with other hybridisations discussed earlier. An intellectual
precondition for this was reconciliation with the patriarchate.
Yannis Tassopoulos said that this tradition had had reactionary and isolationist effects.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said that had been the case in the twentieth century, but not earlier.
4. Dimitris Stamatopoulos, University of Macedonia, “Orthodox Church and Civil
Society in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman context: the annexation model”
He said that he would present a model that he had developed in recent articles, about the
relationship between church, state and civil society. He cited a Bulgarian newspaper, which
had carried an article about the Christian family, describing it as a small state, perhaps the
best and most perfect, in which children bowed without question. Similar articles were
published in Athens and Constantinople. His question was, under what circumstances in the
Balkans was the public/private distinction blurred? He suggested that it was illuminating to
consider church-state relations through the prism of civil society.
He contrasted two theories of church-state relations. According to a view expounded eg by
Hobbes, the church must be subordinated to the state. Alternatively, in a view expounded by
Tocqueville, which could also be found in Locke, the church should be confined to the
private sphere, though conceivably it might play a mediating role between state and civil
society.
He said that in the Balkans, the Hobbesian model prevailed, in that churches were
subordinated to nation states. In Greece, the Hobbesian model found expression in a
paradoxical combination of the Petrine and the Bavarian models. The British and French saw
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the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as possible channels of Russian influence, and
feared this – though in fact the Petrine model entailed subordination of church to state. The
Tsar/King was head of the church; the church’s temporal affairs were overseen by a royal
commissioner; its spiritual life was overseen by the synod. Peter had himself been inspired by
the west.
He said however in the Balkans at the same time the Church never resigned its role in civil
society. He wanted to emphasise its significance in two contexts: first, in civil law. Civil
codes came late to the region. In the interim, their place was taken by compilations of
Byzantine laws. Secondly, in the context of sociability. The Church wanted to help shape
sociable activity; para-ecclesiastical organisations were founded in all Balkan states. NeoOrthodox intellectuals suggest that such organizations were intrinsically "protestant"
character and in tension with the official church. But in reality during the twentieth century
these organizations and the clergy exchanged executive figures; there was no suggestion of a
challenge to the intermediary role of the priesthood between the faithful and God. The
existence of these organizations made the sphere of civil morality autonomous
He cited in this context the ideas of Serif Mardin [a Turkish sociologist], who suggested that
religious representatives played the role of middlemen: thus the ulema used religious
knowledge to provide law and education. The clergy were active in the intermediate zone
between public and private.
So, whereas the Catholic church challenged its subordination to the state, the orthodox church
focussed instead on colonising the intermediate sphere. They formed a part of the state, but
also negotiated with it, thus contrasting with Protestant models, he suggested.
They were dual mediators: between God and the faithful, and between rulers and subjects.
This dual mediating role made the clergy so powerful socially, and religion so powerful
ideologically, that all the national movements which arose during nineteenth century (which
gradually eroded the unity of the Ottoman Empire) had to take them into serious
consideration.
This dual role allowed the Church to intervene decisively in the formation of the private
sphere. But how could the Church escape the consequences of an emerging ‘civil society’,
apparently destined to call its role into question? It found a solution in treating the private
sphere as an extension of the public one, as an extension of the state, and in the constitution
of collectivities, representing an internal redistribution of power relations.
[see also his “The Orthodox Church of Greece”, in Lucian Leustean (ed.), Orthodox
Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, New York: Fordham University
Press, 2014, pp. 34-64, available through academia.edu]
[see also his “The Orthodox Church of Greece”, in Lucian Leustean (ed.), Orthodox
Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, New York: Fordham University
Press, 2014, pp. 34-64, available through academia.edu]
Discussion:
Antonio Calvo wondered how the Greeks justified they idea that they were a nation, when
that notion lacked the kind of historical depth that helped the Spanish?
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Dimitris noted that the very influential historian Paparrigopoulos dealt with this problem by
tracing Greek roots to a Byzantine past. Still this was associated with a view in which Greece
(Byzantium) was oriented to the west, not the east. Greeks who had been condemned as
heretics by councils were reclaimed. [Dimitris has since added: With reference to the
differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, Paparrigopoulos defended the
model of the latter; whereas the former had been seduced by the exercise of political power,
the Orthodox Church had attempted to situate itself in a collaborative relationship with the
state. Paparrigopoulos responded to arguments by Catholics that the Orthodox Church was
dependent upon state authority in the following interesting fashion: if the Orthodox Church
had been uncontrolled and beyond the jurisdiction of the Byzantine emperors, this would
have resulted in the most unrelenting condemnation possible of the various heretical groups
in the East, with incalculable consequences for the state’s cohesion. In other words, it would
have done what the Catholic Church did to Protestants during the sixteenth century. Thus, in
an indirect manner he not only posed the issue of the Church’s subjugation to the will of the
state (in this context, the supposedly “Romantic” Paparrigopoulos appears much closer to
Pharmakidis than to Oikonomos) but also expressed his sympathy for the persecuted heretics
of all eras. This fondness for the heretics of Byzantium would reach its apogee with his
positive mapproach to the phenomenon of the Iconomachy. As he (Dimitris) has shown in his
"Byzantium after the nation" (2009), Paparrigopoulos viewed the Iconomachy as a potential
Reformation, and the Iconomach emperors as harbingers of Luther and Calvin.]
Paschalis said that it was interesting that the church didn’t contest this.
Thanos said that the Ministry of Education made sure they didn’t.
Yannis Spyropoulos said that there was a historiography which tried to trace the continuity
of communities through Greek history....
Others said this was not scholarship but ideology
Michalis said that there was a debate within Greece about who had the authority to speak for
God. He thought there was some relationship between this and questions of selfgovernment/democracy.
Paschalis said that Korais discussed these questions.
Dimitris said alternative answers to this question were still only variations on the Hobbesian
model.
Marios Hatzopoulos said that he was interested in the idea of a Petrine model. According to
Frazee [The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece] said that the Regency had two
German models in mind. What place was there for a Russian model?
Dimitris said that Pharmakidis [the leading Greek theologian] himself mentioned the Petrine
model.
Michalis noted that Maurer, the author of the Organic Law, said that the Greek church was
more independent than the Bavarian church.
5. Frederick Anscombe, Birkbeck College London, "Din ve Devlet", or the links
between religion and political authority in the Ottoman empire'
Said there was still a big question about how to understand the history of the Ottoman lands.
Nationalist views have coloured the historiography in unhelpful ways. Three common themes
were ethnicity; westernisation and secularisation. He would be focussing on the third. He did
13
not think that it provided a helpful narrative framework. At no point can Ottoman history be
understood without reference to religion.
The idea of an ‘Ottoman empire’ was also problematic: it was always a loose
conglomeration. This was important for an understanding both of its longevity and of its
demise. It covered what are today 30 different countries. The system of government that it
developed was adapted precisely to that challenge of governing highly diverse territories.
They did not attempt to homogenise these territories. They focussed rather on promoting the
interests of government in relation to the military; peace and justice at home; tax collection;
keeping the governing elite comfortable. Their approach to rule was extensive rather than
intensive. The populations over which they ruled were generally small. Istanbul was the great
city. Only Cairo could even begin to rival it. Few of the lands over which they ruled were
very productive. The object was just to extract something from it. Since the total population
of the territory was large, if everywhere yielded something, that was enough. Power was to a
great extent involved. Rather than conceptualising it as an integrated empire, it was better to
think of there being thousands of small communities all with some kind of link to Istanbul.
Most people’s sense of identity was based on lived experience. Who you were depended on
who was asking you. The closer the person to you, the more specific the answer – ultimately
in terms of family, but then blood ties, neighbourhood. Profession and religion were also
possible sources of answers, but rather than identifying themselves as members of a religious
group, people might think of themselves as someone who attended such-and-such a mosque,
or such-and-such a church. Religion though could provide a basis for imagining oneself as
part of a larger community. Governments wanted to know what people’s religious identities
were: this had tax and military implications. Some people were refugees – they identified
with somewhere other than where they currently were. Belonging was associated with
knowing the Ottoman way.
There territories were not termed an empire but the ‘well-connected domains’. They were a
domain subjected to both a state and a religion. The idea was that without religion one had
just bare rule, or kingship. The ruler determined what fell within the house of Islam. It was
necessary for sharia to be practised for without sharia there could be no peace.
The process of government could be conceptualised in terms of a triangle, whereby the
government provided defence, which allowed peace and justice to flourish, creating
prosperity which yielded taxes which supported the government. This was the underlying
idea of the ‘circle of equity’: sultan <-military <- wealth <- raiya <-justice <- harmony. Idea
that the world is a garden, the state is its walls.
Sharia meant not law but jurisprudence, it was all about interpretation. Custom was often the
operative principle. The state’s concerns were quite limited. Beyond those limited concerns,
it left people to get on with things. Kanun filled the gap between sharia and custom.
All these things remained important to the end, despite the Kemalist view of history.
Change came as a result of military pressure which led to many external wars, and therefore
to a felt need to do something to improve defensibility. That in turn created pressure to
reform religion. Modernisation, in the service of self-strengthening, was undertake under
Selim, who tried to copy the west, and precipitated a reaction, eg against western uniforms,
seen as breaching religio-sartorial codes. Mahmud II attempted a more general tightening of
14
control. The object was the defence of dar al Islam; the mode coercive. He got the mufti to
agree that one could suspend sharia in order to save civilisation.
Coercion prompted many rebellions, not only in Greece but also in many other places.
Mehmet Ali was driven by the knowledge that he was next. Mahmud in effect dissolved the
triangle. He gave priority to defence, and in effect enslaved Muslims to fight. Justice
disappeared from the equation.
He thought that it was at this point that the empire came closest to falling apart. The Tanzimat
represented an attempt to make good the damage. To this end, it focussed on three things:
- Problems arising from the fact that the law had not been followed
- Promise not to enslave people into military service; henceforth terms of service were
to be shorter
- Promise to lighten taxation
There was a general emphasis on the need to make government more answerable to popular
need. Constitutionalism was a later expression of this same drive.
Discussion:
Maurizio said he recognised these arguments from his book [State, faith and nation in
Ottoman and post-Ottoman lands, 2014]. He said he understood why it was thought
necessary to crush the notables and break with previous habits, but wanted to hear more about
why this was seen as breaking with sharia.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said that he had two questions. Why was Selim a failure and Mahmud
a success – why wasn’t he also overthrown? Also, he understood that the Greek rebellion was
from the Ottoman point of view not a central concern on its outbreak, but was it represented
at the time as responding to a collapse in justice?
Antonis Hadjikyriacou asked for clarification. He agreed that din and devlet, religion and
state, were inseparable, but for that very reason, either might need to be sacrificed for the
good of the other. The idea of suspending sharia to save the state can also be found in C16, in
relation to questions about making war on or peace with infidels: these were represented as
issues that could properly be dealt with in the light of raison d’etat.
Fred said that to say sharia had been breached was just a way of saying that things were
falling apart – because had sharia reigned, the community would have been at peace.
Mahmud was losing to external enemies; he was also attacking Muslims; these were seen as
unprovoked attacks.
As to why Mahmud succeeded where Selim failed, he said that Selim had a greater sense of
propriety; he accepted being overthrown. He thought that Mahmud was very close to being
overthrown when he died. Not failing was partly an accident of timing. Abdulhamid has a
reputation as an iron-fisted ruler, but he doesn’t see him that way. He was portrayed in those
terms by Young Turks, the west and Armenians, but really he was just reacting to the
situation.
Was the Greek revolt a response to a collapse of justice? – he thought so. It was more against
than for something. The Greeks had seen what happened when Ali Pasha was overthrown and
worried about what was in store for them. The fall of Ali Pasha led to the unravelling of
political society.
15
On sharia and raison d’etat: he said if you put the question to the mufti in the right way, you
could usually get the answer you wanted. Can we suspend the sharia to save civilisation?
Yes, certainly. The devshirme [former military levy among Christian children] was against
sharia but justified as for the greater good. The Hanafi school of jurisprudence, the Ottomans’
preferred school, allowed a lot of flexibility.
Joanna said that she had two questions about the ulema. Did having ulema justify what you
were doing make a crucial difference? And secondly, what was the role of the ulema under
the Tanzimat? She hadn’t found the English-language historiography very helpful on this.
Fred said that there were often tensions between higher and lower ulema. Higher ones found
it easier to see the state perspective, lower ones were more likely to adopt community
perspectives. Some local ulema and sufi sheikhs criticised Mahmud, and supported rebels
against him.
Yannis Spyropoulos said that in Mahmudian documents one finds lots of references to
sharia. Thus confiscating the properties of Bektashis was justified in terms of sharia; similarly
the destruction of the janissaries, who were said to be crypto-Christians (as manifest in their
unwillingness to fight the Russians). Mahmud also sent out an edict to the provinces
commanding the establishment of Islamic schools. An unpublished thesis by Şükrü Ilıcak said
that Mahmud approached the ulema before the destruction of the janissaries asking for their
support on the basis of patriotism. In his view sharia remained very much part of the political
scene under Mahmud, maybe even more so than before.
Fred said indeed he hadn’t meant to imply that Mahmud was irreligious. He did call on
people to do certain things as Muslims. He hated Albanians, and expressed this by saying that
they had no religion (because Albanians stopped fighting Greek infidels when not paid to do
so).
Dimitris thought it was not just Mahmud personally but the palace as an institution which
took a different line during his reign. He wondered whether the ‘confessionalisation’ thesis
was useful for understanding the Ottoman nineteenth century. He thought that the nature of
Islam changed; the circle of equity idea disappeared. Religion was idealised in new ways – as
Selim Deringil has argued, also suggesting that something similar happened in Russia and
Japan. What was in question was in part an innovative but anti-modernist response to the
oriental discourse of the west.
Fred said he knew he could be criticised for depicting Islam in too monolithic a way. There
were variations both in and over time. There were many internal debates about what was
proper, what was necessary and what merely voluntary. The palace always tried to steer those
debates.
Day 2: Army and Democracy
6. David Bell, Princeton University, “Citizen Soldiers and Pretorians: Democracy
and Armed Forces in the Mediterranean World”
This paper was read by Maurizio Isabella. The central argument was that the period saw
armed men given political agency. This development was manifested in the form of the
citizen soldier, but also in the form of the politically active army. The paper is separately
attached.
16
Discussion:
Maurizio said that citizens in arms had a place in the southern European enlightenment
tradition. He noted that in the 1820s, military officers were often to the fore in leading
revolutions, but they sought to distinguish themselves from French revolutionary armies: they
were keen to stress that they were not trying to conquer Europe, and were not trying to crush
freedom. He said that though the Mediterranean was a distinctive place, yet those within it
were very much aware of belonging to a wider world.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that he had some concerns about the teleology underlying Bell’s
story about the nationalisation of armies. It is possible to extend this story to the Ottoman
realm too: Mahmud II thought there was merit in recruiting esp among Turkish peasants. But
he thought that a hallmark of the project was to resist teleologies. As to professionalization:
he thought that a contrast was often drawn between depending on irregular forces and having
a modern army, but irregular forces were also a constituent part of modern armies.
Joanna said that a teleology which saw the nineteenth century as an age of rising nationhood
was itself problematic, not least because new nations often started amassing their own
empires.
Sakis Gekas said that he found the paper in general quite convincing, but wasn’t sure it
worked very well in the case of Greece. He said that the Bavarian regime did not promote
nationalisation of the army. The paper talked about the introduction of conscription in Greece
in the 1830s – he thought what was being referred to was probably the institution of a militia.
He said that the need to pay professional soldiers was crucial to the emergence of a budget.
Diego Palacios said that, though the paper did not discuss the case of Portugal, he thought
that in fact it fitted Portuguese circumstances too. He said however that the National Guard
was an important institution in both Spain and Portugal, and that institutions of this kind
deserved more attention. That provided a banalisation of military status; the idea of the
citizen soldier was in tension with a tendency to institutionalise state power in the form of
police forces.
Arianna Arisi Rota said she found the paper generally convincing in relation to the Italian
case. She thought this was the period in which the army gained acceptance as an institution of
society, and ceased to be associated with foreign mercenary troops. It was also a period in
which the military hero became a bourgeois icon. She noted that democrats sometimes
idealised crowned soldiers: admirers of Murat saw him in this light, and see also the case of
Pino in Milan [on whom see her chapter, ‘Domenico Pino. Il mestiere delle armi e le insidie
della pace’ in Maria Canella ed. Armi e nazione. Dalla Repubblica Cisalpina al Regno
d'Italia (1797-1814).]
Antonio Calvo thought there was some tendency to romanticise actors: Riego and his
followers were in part concerned not to be sent to crush rebellions in South America. Though
in general he agreed with what was said about Spain.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said in relation to irregular forces that a distinction might be drawn
between how they operated in the west and in the east. In Ottoman and formerly Ottoman
lands, he thought that irregular forces were more important than in the west. He thought that
there needed to be an element of contingency in the narrative: the role of the army inevitably
17
varied in relation to whether or not you wanted to engage in war. He wondered where the
navy fitted into the account. He said navies were very important in the eastern Mediterranean.
Ignazio Veca thought it was important to stress the difference between high and low culture.
He said that theorists/ideologists put their own gloss on what people did: thus Santa Rosa,
Garibaldi, Pepe all theorised the idea of voluntary war, but they didn’t necessarily capture
how ordinary people thought and acted.
Yannis Spyropoulos thought it was a common misconception that the Ottoman armed forces
were in any sense nationalised in this period; he thought this idea stemmed from the work of
Hakan Erdem. He said that no such aim could be shown from Ottoman documents. Old
janissaries were invited to enter the new corps, which wasn’t intended to be built around new
personnel so much as new regulations.
Eduardo Posada Carbo thought it would be worth bringing in the colonial dimension in the
Spanish case: the Latin American dimension was crucial for the Spanish army, which
continued to be engaged in overseas wars through the 1820s, and after that, soldiers were still
posted to Cuba.
Yannis Tassopoulos said that in the case of Greece, irregular forces played an important role
in state building. There was some friction between processes of nationalisation and state
building.
Thanis Veremis said that the army who fought the Greek war of independence was chiefly
composed of brigands, who were prone to turn against eachother and disrupt the war. The
lesson drawn from this was that it was crucial that the state be paymaster, and that a
generation of officers be created that was loyal to the state. Brigand heroes however often
became officers of the regular army.
Maurizio suggested that it was not just a matter of west/east differences. All fighting forces
were shaped by the historical conditions of each area, even by the conditions of particular
regions within states.
7. Diego Palacios Cerazales, University of Stirling, “The nation in arms and the
Portuguese military, 1807-1850”
He said that he had decided to focus on conscription, on how the question Who shall be
soldiers? was discussed, what different projects were put forward, and what was learnt from
experience.
There already was an ideal of the citizen soldier. There were in existence three kinds of force:
the regular army; the provincial militia and the ordenança a force based on a recruitment
system like the Prussian canton system: local gentry made a roll of all qualified to serve; this
put a lot of discretionary power in their hands. It had been common to invoke the ideal of the
nation in arms since the seventeenth century, when this local recruitment system was
introduced to support the war of independence against Spain. A Prussian general, Count
Lippe, employed in the Portuguese army in the 1770s respected this system of recruitment.
So in the case of the Portuguese it was not a case of borrowing a new idea from the French.
18
He said that Spain’s defeat of Portugal in 1801 prompted rethinking. General Gomes Freire
had been serving in the Russian army under Potemkin. He responded to government
proposals for military reform by leading a little pronunciamento. He suggested a reform in
the basis of recruitment. His proposal was that all kinds of privilege in the recruitment system
be abolished. In practice, it was clear that there were many ways in which service could be
evaded – and towndwellers generally managed to do that. Gomes Freire proposed that only
those who served in the army should be allowed to hold posts in civil administration, serve in
councils etc. He has been portrayed as a proto-liberal, but it’s important to note that he didn’t
recommend reforming the officer corps to admit non-noblemen; it’s possible to see him as
having defended the power of the aristocracy against that of the bureaucracy. Following the
pronunciamento, the government´s reform was frozen and it was agreed that everyone should
be at liberty to propose their own military reform projects, and eight or nine were put
forwards. The basic objective was to make the army more efficient.
But reform attempts were interrupted by the first French invasion, which led to the
dissolution of the Portuguese army, and the escape of the King to Brazil. When popular revolt
broke out in Portugal 1808 there was no organised army. The question was therefore how to
mobilise effectively against the French. There was a call for local militias to be formed
everywhere. Juntas were formed, on a traditional corporate basis, with noble, clerical and
common elements. In some cities, representation of the commons was an innovation. There
were other innovations, involving the introduction of new estates, for example, it was
common to recognise an estate of military officers. However, in fact it was the British who
expelled the French 1808, without paying much heed to what the Portuguese wanted; French
troops were sent home in British ships by the convention of Cintra.
In 1809, it became clear that the French were proposing a new invasion. The Regency then
called for a mass insurrection; irregular troops formed everywhere. Portuguese troops who
retreated before the French were seen as traitors; some officers were lynched by their own
troops. The British formed a negative image of the Portuguese. This first attempt at a levee en
masse left a very negative legacy.
Then was then a move to reorganise the army under British command, using the old cantonal
system. Irregular forces were disbanded. The biggest army of the whole C19 was raised,
comprising 60,000 men. British officers were placed over it. It’s hard therefore to see this as
a national army: Portuguese officers’ chances for promotion were compromised.
At the end of the Peninsular war, Beresford remained at the head of the army, which
remained large, at 50,000 men. The British wanted to keep this army in being as a reserve
continental force. This was burdensome to the Portuguese, then struggling with economic
collapse. Portuguese historians suggest that the British were in effect turning Portugal into a
garrison state. This would not work in the longer term, however; by 1850, the army would
have shrunk to 20,000. The Portuguese came away from this experience with a very negative
view of conscription. They saw conscription as destroying the economy, not in terms of a
citizen soldiery. All those proposing reforms at this point advocated a smaller army; often
they said that it should consist of proper citizens, not of vagrants etc. Gomes Freire led a
rising against Beresford in 1817 and was executed.
After the revolution of 1820, there was a new flood of projects. It was urged that the army
should be national, and not include foreigners. This partly reflected the ambitions of
Portuguese officers, who wanted chances of promotion. Radicals proposed the model of the
Roman army, but others said this was not suitable for a modern country. The Swiss cantonal
model was also discussed. However, professional army models persuaded the Congress to
19
reject all these. They advocated a smaller professional army, whose soldiers must take a pride
in what they did. There was a search for compromise between different models.
After the restoration of absolutism in 1823, the recruitment of conscripts became more and
more difficult. The Beresford model could not longer be reproduced. Regiments only reached
one third of their intended strength. The absolutists therefore had to rely on irregular forces.
The civil war of 1833-4 hasn’t been analysed in terms of the recruitment strategies pursued
by the two sides. It appears that the liberal side relied more on volunteers, and on some
militia forces serving as garrisons. Much of the actual fighting was done by foreign
mercenary troops. Liberals did not call for the general mobilisation of the population, because
they assumed that the rural population was if anything pro-absolutist. The absolutists
believed this too, but did not succeed in mobilising them, and they did not stand up well in
the face of British mercenaries.
Following the liberal victory, the problem of recruitment presented itself again. It was
thought that a national guard would have been ideal – if only the population had been
patriotic. However, the liberals didn’t trust the population, and therefore formed a national
guard only in certain towns, Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto etc. Elsewhere they recruited for the
regular army.
Having run out of time, he couldn’t go on to explain what happened in the next phase.
His main point was that the idea of the citizen in arms was always powerful, but there were
always difficulties about putting it into practice. In the 1850s, the model adopted would be
that of the small army, comprising trustworthy regiments. Britain was relied upon to provide
defence in the event of an attack from Spain.
Discussion:
Joanna asked whether the citizen soldier was a cultural icon: did he figure in pictures,
novels, plays?
Diego Palacios said that there were such popular images evoking C17, but not so much
modern times. In the 1830s, it was sometimes suggested that had there been a national militia,
absolutism would not have been restored. Dom Pedro cast himself as a citizen soldier. At the
Marshall´s Revolt on 1837 (attempting to restore the 1826 constitutional charter) that pitted
conservative liberals against radical liberals, both sides claimed in newspapers that the
national guard supported them.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos said that he had been struck to hear that the British used leverage
given them by loans to make the Portuguese comply with their wishes about the army. This
had reminded him of ways in which the British used loans to exert power in Greece.
He wanted to know more about how ordinary people regarded the large army. In the case of
Greece, we learn from the memoirs of Kolkotronis that villagers were resistant to being asked
to risk their lives.
Maurizio said that elsewhere, loss of jobs in the army at the end of the Napoleonic wars
provided an important background for revolution.
Sakis Gekas said that in case of the Ionian islands, the British took over the southern islands
with Anglo-Corsican or Anglo-Sicilian forces. The fleet became the fleet of the British
protectorate. The British later entertained the possibility of creating a militia, but that idea
was abandoned after the insurrection of 1819, and once the war in Greece opened up the
20
possibility that the islands might be destabilised. Instead, they then disarmed the population
and established a strong garrison force, using Ionian steamers to move troops around as
needed. He thought there might be parallels in terms of British conduct on Sicily.
Maurizio said in relation to this that there were foreign soldiers under the Bourbons,
including Greeks, but they were demobilised at the end of wars. Some Napoleonic reforms to
the army in Naples were retained, but he couldn’t think of any specific impact on Sicily.
Diego emphasised that in the case of Portugal, militia forces were not a British legacy, but a
local tradition.
Joanna noted in conclusion that what she had gleaned from Diego’s account was that he
identified no clear overall trends, but wanted to emphasise rather the situation-specific
character of projects. However, at the same time he did not want to suggest that proposals
came in random sequence: he did suggest that there were attempts to learn from the past.
8. Gonzalo Butron Prida, University of Cadiz, “From army to politics: military
officers and liberal political culture 1808-1823”
He focussed on the question, how did army officers come to participate in military culture in
Spain, to the point where their support for any given new regime was seen as essential to its
consolidation. He identified three contributing causes:
-
The crisis of the Spanish monarchy
The effect of war, in fortifying links between soldiers and society
Following the war, increasing reliance on military support to redress political
weakness
He said that the crisis of the Spanish monarchy was complex. It had domestic, international
and colonial dimensions. The crisis exploded because of what happened in relations between
Spain and France. They had been allies since the Bourbon accession in Spain, but this
alliance was called into question by the French revolution. Divisions within the Spanish royal
family then opened the way for French invasion. Charles and Ferdinand were at odds with
eachother. Both hoped for the support of Bonaparte, but he prevailed on both to abdicate in
his favour. Though some afrancescados supported the French presence, most joined in
opposition, under the leadership of juntas. The liberals took advantage of this context to
create new political ideas. They argued that it was necessary to overcome not only the
French, but also the absolutist political system.
The war created a new context because among other things it created roles for previously
marginalised social groups, including army officers. Some juntas included many officers;
sometimes they were even headed by them, as in Saragossa; they were most likely to be well
represented in towns with barracks. Patriotic officers and soldiers took part in crowd
demonstrations; they were crucial in the success of the uprising. As they confronted the
French, the population looked to military leaders. Changing perceptions of the army led to the
massive enlistment of volunteers, though this initial enthusiastic reaction declined as warweariness set in. The war encouraged ideas of renewal, though liberal officers in Cadiz and
local leaders in the provinces didn’t always share the same perspective on this. There was
disagreement about who best represented the nation. Military leaders came from various
backgrounds: some had been trained in military academies; some had emerged from a
guerrilla experience. The convention of the Cadiz Cortes saw an outpouring of debate and
propaganda. Military leaders played a role in much of this. 5/10 members of the council of
21
regency were military officers; 4 presidents of the Regency were, and around 50 deputies in
the Cortes.
Soldiers maintained their influence in the postwar crisis, sustained by the crisis of values, as
the king and Cortes clashed over the future of the constitution. Neither side was strong
enough to prevail. The army was seen to hold the balance. The king was saved by a military
coup in 1814, but soldiers also played a crucial role in overthrowing absolutism, via a new
political form, the pronunciamento. Thereafter, the army always played a crucial role in
engineering any political change. Lack of jobs for officers was one source of problems at the
end of the war. There were various attempted coups in the 1810s, supported by secret
societies: the hope was always to follow a military coup with the establishment of a new
constitution. Some of these uprisings were well prepared; others more spontaneous. In 1820,
one such was finally successful. By 1822, military officers had regained a leading role, first
among royalists, then among liberals.
He concluded that the long war, in combination with internal divisions, provided a crucial
context for the emergence of the military as important political actors.
Discussion:
Joanna said that the comparative context seemed to her crucial: most European countries in
this period experienced years of war. How distinctive were its effects and impact on Spain,
and why?
Also, it might seem that in 1823, the internal struggle was resolved in favour of an absolutist
monarchy. Was Spain still then in some sense different? If so, in what ways? How did the
political role of the military come to be institutionalised?
Maurizio agreed that the comparative context was in important, but said that in his view
France was not so very different. The country was also deeply divided, though they managed
for a time to find a middle-ground solution. Perhaps the role played by the monarch in each
case was crucial. He noted that the historian Carmine Pinto talks about a ‘Bourbon world’,
encompassing not only France and Spain but also Naples and Latin America.
Thanos Veremis asked in relation to that what was the relationship between the Bourbons of
France and the Bourbons of Spain? He also wanted to know the size of the Spanish army.
Gonzalo said that the French and Spanish Bourbon lines had a good relationship. The chief
problem, he said, was that Ferdinand wanted to turn the clock back to 1808. Some hoped to
restore his father, Charles. The idea that there was an alternative made his position in Spain
even weaker. He was also seen as owing something to Napoleon. Because he was weak, he
relied too much on the army.
He wasn’t sure what size the army was in 1820, but thought at least 100,000.
Antonio offered a couple of reflections on the War of Independence. He said that Junco
wrote an interesting paper on the invention of the war of independence, which he claimed
was a retrospective construct. At the time, the nature of the conflict was ambiguous. He did
not subscribe to Esdaile’s viewpoint, in which patriotism was largely dismissed: he saw that
as a British perspective, but he did think that Esdaile was right to say that the role of the
guerrillas had been overstated.
Arianna Arisi Rota asked about the role of the Comuneros.
22
Gonzalo said that their memory was invoked; this related to ideas about the ancient rights of
the Castilians.
Maurizio said to Antonio that in his view the terms of the debate about the nature of the War
of Independence were themselves problematic. He did not think there was any necessary
opposition between national patriotism and local motivations.
Diego Palacios observed that the Portuguese rising against the French was not in the same
way a liberal icon. Beresford punished the leaders of that revolt, calling them an ‘ochlocracy’
(democracy in a bad sense). If anyone, it was absolutists who would reclaim them.
He wondered if there were equivalents of the Spanish juntas in other contexts.
Thanos Veremis said that there was no Greek equivalent. The Greek rising was
masterminded from abroad. In the Peloponnese it was inspired by brigands in the person of
Kolokotronis; elsewhere by armatoloi. It was a revolt on the part of quasi-state officials, of
tax collectors, the police and the church, though fighting was done by landless peasants.
Joanna asked if Greek regional assemblies weren’t roughly analogous to juntas?
Michalis Sotiropoulos agreed with that. He said that leadership was provided by diasporic
Greeks and warlords in combination. He said that we didn’t really know very much about the
terms of this relationship.
Sakis Gekas said however that a Greek national state was not anyone’s initial objective; that
was something that emerged in the course of events.
Thanos Veremis said in the end the primates [military leaders] managed to create a state that
met their needs. The regular army came to own the Greek state, and never turned against it.
Joanna reiterated in conclusion that she thought it was important that the comparative
context be further developed.
Gonzalo suggested that the roots of difference might lie in Spanish temperament: Spaniards
were not willing to forgive and forget.
9. Arianna Arisi Rota, University of Pavia, “Serving and Volunteering: The
Military Road of Italian Society to the Risorgimento, 1796-1860”
She quoted Federigo Barbaro, who, writing under Napoleon, said that Italians must first learn
war – it didn’t matter under whom – and then they could be free. Ugo Foscolo expressed
similar sentiments. She said that Italian Jacobins developed complex relations with the
French, but French demands for military mobilisation were widely endorsed. Many Italians
served in the Grande Armee; Italian infantrymen fought in Russia, crying Viva l’imperatore,
viva Italia! These experiences left a lasting legacy: Foscolo later worked in the War Ministry.
Provision for soldiers helped to establish ideas about welfare rights. Military schools were
established. The experience was particularly powerful for the bourgeoisie, some of whom
experienced accelerated careers in the Napoleonic context. These experiences provide
important background to the aspirations of the secret societies.
The experience of permanent war ended with the Restoration. Some public discourse then
revolved around such binaries as honour/dishonour, courage/cowardice; glory was a crucial
idea. It was said that Italians had shown they were not unreliable cowards. But now how was
a new generation to prove themselves? They continued to seek opportunities to strike military
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attitudes: thus, the swearing-in ceremony for Giovine Italis involved civilians holding
daggers, soldiers, swords.
Some soldiers continued to operate in the exile milieu, playing a role for instance in uprisings
in 1820s, 30s. But there were deep cultural cleavages within these groups too. In 1836
Camillo Ugoni, a biographer of the Italian exile Giuseppe Pecchio and himself an exile,
contrasted experiences of French and Austrian rule, saying that since the French taught us to
fight, we can forgive much else. Volunteering provided a way of linking military and political
experience. Volunteering provided one of the most significant experiences of the Italian
Risorgimento. There were contrasting approaches to mobilising military force: Cavour was
associated with a focus on a royal army; Garibaldi with the notion of the nation in arms.
Gilles Pecout has written about the importance of volunteering in the nineteenth-century
imagination. Memoirs helped to share the experience.
What sorts of people volunteered? They included students, workers, professional men.
Mobilisation was often anarchical. Pisa university students readily mobilised for war against
Austria 1858 – the ethos was one of self-sacrifice. Cavour however wanted to avoid the
needless sacrifice of young men, and paid great attention to how mobilisation was
undertaken. The paradox was that too many volunteers came forwards to be easily absorbed.
It was a challenge to train and regulate them. Irregular soldiers are always distrusted by
professionals.
These experiences had long effects on state-building processes, and linked to cleavages
between moderates and democrats. The Garibaldi myth started with his role in the defence of
Rome. Students from the north came south to join his Sicilian expedition, as did radicals from
elsewhere. This story ended with volunteering in the First World War, in the ‘fourth war of
independence’ – but that was a different experience.
She ended by Cattaneo (Il Politecnico, 1860) on the Italian tricolour being modelled on the
French tricolour, suggesting both indebtedness to the French model and the revival of
national pride that had arisen from fighting under the symbol of a regenerate and unifying
flag.
Discussion:
Joanna observed by way of starting discussion that the Italian case presented another
variation on the theme of balancing professional against citizen armies
Maurizio wanted to add two further insights. He suggested that it was not just a matter of
absolutists taking one view and liberals another. Revolutionary armies were themselves
divided over the issue. He also wanted to underline the importance of volunteering as a
transnational experience.
Ignazio Veca wanted to complicate things further. In relation to values of honour and glory,
he asked, How did duel culture fit? He thought that the historiography of volunteering tended
to stress continuities, but he thought that there were many contrasts between the 1820s-30s
and the 1840s.
Arianna said of duels that indeed, the new generation turned to duels as a substitute for
military experience. She said that in the post war period, there were notable generational
clashes; she thought that in 1848, there was more homogeneity of mood and vocabulary. The
secret society cultures of the two periods could equally be compared and contrasted.
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Yannis Spyropoulos thought that there were parallels to volunteering in the Ottoman empire
in the form of holy warriors, gazis. However, their mobilisation was not channelled towards
the process of creating a political nation; the religious element always prevailed.
Joanna suggested that though the rhetoric might not be nationalistic, arguably the context
sometimes determined that mobilisation had something like that effect, thus in Algeria or
Morocco in the early nineteenth century.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said that the first Greek definition of citizenship made having taken
up arms against the Ottoman empire a criterion. He did not think in the case of Greek bandits
that there was an ethos of self-sacrifice. On the contrary, their fighting tactics prioritised selfpreservation, to fight again another day. Their code of honour emphasised loyalty to the
fighting group.
Arianna noted that some volunteers were integrated into the regular army, so that there could
be continuities between forms. She wanted to stress the importance of the category of martyr,
which linked religion and war [also important in the Greek case]. She cited images of
Garibaldi crucified after 1848.
Thanos Veremis said in relation to the transfer of loyalty from the community to the nation
in Greece, that he thought that took place eventually through education. Even within a
generation it is possible to see change. When Makriyannis wrote about his role in the War of
Independence years later, his account was coloured by subsequent changes of attitude.
10. Thanos Veremis, National University of Athens, “On the Greek army”
He said that the creation of an independent state as an outcome of the Greek revolution did
not reflect initial intentions. Some who certainly didn’t look to this development nonetheless
profited from it. The state that was created was an entirely new thing, different from anything
that had existed in the region before – even though, under the Ottomans, some local power
had been exercised by Greeks. Nonetheless, in courts Christians felt disadvantaged in relation
to Muslims.
He observed that nationalism was a very elusive subject. There were pre- and postrevolutionary visions of the nation. The post-revolutionary version was transmitted through
the educational system.
He suggested that Greek society corresponded to what Ernest Gellner called a segmentary
society, based on family loyalties. Loyalty extended outwards from the family. The War of
Independence was fought by a pre-modern people, largely by brigands. They were prepared
to fight on either side.
The Greek state was a different matter. The army had to be trustworthy – and to make it so, it
had to be paid. Even when conscription was introduced, great importance was attached to
making conscripts happy for the duration of ther service. The status of officers was
transformed by their identification with service of the state: they became admired. Their
children often became officers too.
The army served two main functions. It had to keep peace within the country, and to promote
the irredentist cause. Irredentism was partly driven by economic imperatives: Thessaly was a
great grain producing region; to acquire it would help to balance the books. As it was, though
the Peloponnese was able to export grapes and currants, the proceeds of this trade had to be
spent on purchasing grain.
25
He said that the irredentist cause was initially carried forwards by brigands, but they weren’t
trustworthy: prone to looting, and not knowing when to stop. What could happen when they
got out of hand was illustrated by developments in 1797.
Crucial to shaping the different character of the regular army was leadership by well educated
officers, who had attended the military academy. The military academy was the source of the
first technical corps, the engineers. The officers were too good for the men they commanded.
Many deserted. They could pay for substitutes to serve in their place. They were chosen by
lot – even today army service is talked about as ‘the lot’. [I note that above, pp. 14-15, Sakis
Gekas said that conscription was not introduced into the Greek army in the 1830s; Thanos
Veremis seems here to be implying that it was. When was it introduced?] The army was a
mere 10,000 strong – too small for practical use.
What could these well trained officers do in these circumstances? Some went abroad; some
served the irredentist cause; some entered Russian service. Bulgarians and Macedonians had
helped in the War of Independence as volunteers: some of them continued in Greek service.
Thus Timoleon Vassos, son of a Montenegrin fighter in that War, became a Greek army
officer, studied at the Greek Army Academy, fought many duels, and led the expeditionary
force of Greeks in the Crimea; he fought many times against the Ottomans in Cretan risings.
There was a regular army force in the War of Independence. The Philhellenes thought that the
Greeks needed one, though the Greeks themselves were less persuaded. It was commanded
by a former Napoleonic officer, General Fabvier. However the revolutionary state didn’t
always have enough money to pay regulars. This army did manage to break the siege of the
Acropolis, but failed to liberate Chios, and didn’t overall have a great record. Capodistrias
disbanded it, seeing it as too French [whereas his orientation was more Russian].
Bavarians set up the first regular army after the war. They were the real state builders. They
imposed what was in origin really a French administrative system, initially taken over in
Bavaria from France, then reproduced in Greece.
Discussion:
Joanna asked if irredentist expeditions were formally owned by the Greek state?
Thanos said in practice yes but not publicly. But they were led by regular army officers.
Michalis asked in what ways the revolutionary Greek and later Bavarian-founded regular
army were different? Was the chief difference simply that time passed and created a different
context? He also wanted to know more about how the national guard fitted in. This played a
key role in 1843.
Thanos said that indeed it played a part in pressing for a constitution. But so did eg the
regular army officer Chaleris[?], who was very flamboyant.
Joanna asked if the regular army was so reliable, why did the king have to concede a
constitution in 1843?
Thanos said that both then and in 1862 their loyalties were torn between king and
constitution.
Several questions were collected:
Eduardo Posada Carbo wanted to ask about the army-society relationship. How far did
allegiance to the regular army displace the loyalties of a segmented society?
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Antonis Hadjikyriacou pressed for further elaboration on his characterisation of the
revolutionary outcome. Was the new state really so entirely novel?
Sakis Gekas wanted to hear more about the role of the army in ousting Otho. He thought that
historians had not probed this sufficiently. In relation to regular forces during the revolution,
he thought that there was some attempt to unify naval and military force under British
leadership: Cochrane and Church.
Fred Anscombe invoked Maurizio’s earlier comment that national loyalties were not
necessarily incompatible with other loyalties and motivations, so that recognising the latter
need not entail writing off the first. In that context, he wanted to hear more about notions of
the nation that might have been held. He also asked how we were to understand ‘Greeks’ as a
category? There were also Albanians involved.
Thanos Veremis said that it took some time to build up loyalty to the state as an ethos. A
small number of influential officers provided a model. They operated within a new bourgeois
milieu made up of civil servants. Some primates became civil servants: thus Deligiannis. The
loyalty of the army to this socio-political establishment and to the king were usually aligned,
but not in 1862, when Otho was seen to have blundered by his choices during the Crimean
War, and the consensus turned against him.
In relation to Antonis’ question, in his view there was enormous discontinuity. In the
Ottoman period, local powerholders were important, but the state gradually obliterated these
people, eg the unruly Maniots. The army was given the means to keep them down. Unlike the
old polity, the new state was highly centralised.
Antonis responded by noting nonetheless some continuities of personnel.
Yannis similarly suggested that patronage networks provided building blocks for both.
Antonis added that communal organisations survived, even if their form changed.
Thanos said be that as it may, nonetheless it was a long time before the state showed
willingness to delegate power.
To Sakis Gekas, he said that it was only later that the army became a destabilising force,
notably in 1909, when the military turned against politicians. Also, the attempt to establish
coordinated leadership on the Cochrane-Church axis didn’t last very long. It was completely
out of the picture by the time the Bavarians arrived.
On the issue of how the nation was imagined, he said that this changed over the period.
Korais had one vision, a Girondist view. For him the nation was a legitimising force. But if
one sought to identify a form of nation enduring through time, the most obvious place to look
for continuities was in relation to the Church. This approach brought in other Greek speakers,
like Albanians. He cited the case of Botsaris, a fighter in the War of Independence, who
seems to have been bilingual, and who produced a Greek-Albanian dictionary. In practice
people didn’t necessarily speak one language or the other, but might mix the two in an argot.
Fred noted that Velestinlis championed a vision of a ‘Rum’ nation. He said that today the
‘Greek’ revolt was seen in Albania also to have been an Albanian revolt: it did not neatly fit
with modern national identities.
Joanna said that since nobody knew until it was finally decided quite where the borders of
the new state would like, there must have been an element of contingency: a different
decision about that could potentially have created a different kind of ‘Greek’ state.
Maurizio said of course, like all historical processes it had not been tidy. New and old
elements of identity co-existed. He continued to maintain that it wasn’t necessary or helpful
to dichotomise too sharply.
27
Dimitris Stamatopoulos noted that Velestinlis called even upon Turks to revolt against the
Sultan. He said that a variety of institutions could help to shape ideas of belonging, but their
effects might different: thus religion, language, birth.
Joanna added, having fought.
Thanos said that Paparrigopoulos was the most influential formulator of Greek nationalism
[but only started publishing in 1843]. He responded to attacks on the authenticity of Greek
identity. He said that of course the Greeks represented an ethnic mixture, but so did all
peoples; culture was what mattered. He saw the defining elements of Greek culture as
religion and language.
11. Yannis Spyropoulos, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Crete,
“Decentralization of Political Power, Military Revolts, and the Question of
'Democratization' in the Ottoman Empire: The Case of Crete, 1750-1826”
He said that there was a debate over the extent to which the early-modern Ottoman empire
was in some sense democratic. Part of the case made was that Ottoman government power
was limited, and limited by some institutions which had a ‘popular’ dimension, large among
which came to loom the janissaries. The devshirme – the system of recruiting Christian
children as janissaries – was obsolete by the early eighteenth century. The janissaries lost
their elite character, and opened their ranks to the ordinary Muslim population.
He said that he would be examining the character and role of the janissary force from a
provincial perspective, focussing on Crete, conquered from Venice by the Ottomans in 1669.
Crete was defined as a frontier land. It was home to two kinds of janissary force, imperial
ones and local ones – the difference being where their chains of command summited. He
would be focussing on imperial janissaries. These janissaries had quite high status, but could
expect to be moved around between different fortresses every three years or so. Local people
therefore tended to be reluctant to join them. However, from the 1730s, for financial reasons,
they were less often rotated. As they became more stable, their manpower tended to localise.
They enjoyed various privileges, and were powerfully placed within empire-wide commercial
networks, which made it attractive to join them. He would be focussing on the period after
1750.
Although there were attractions in being an imperial janissary, it wasn’t very easy to join.
Payrolls were controlled centrally. However, it was possible to take on unsalaried extras who
nonetheless shared in janissary privileges. These became the majority. Indeed, almost all
Cretan Muslims became janissaries. The janissaries had common funds, whose value grew
over time. They were invested in real estate, and in loans at interest. By this means, the
janissaries came to control the credit economy. They also took on tax farms. They acquired
an impact on Crete’s political life. Before 1750, janissaries didn’t play much part in revolts,
but this changed after 1750. Even those who did have salaries attached decreasing importance
to them. Wages were frozen from 1740-1826.
In relation to democratisation, he said that to his mind this was a qualitative concept. An
institution could be popularised without becoming democratic. To call it democratic implied,
he thought, that the rank and file could influence decisions. If not, calling it democratic is
confusing.
In fact, janissary leaders did begin to claim the right to represent the local population, and
expressed solidarity with them. And within the corps even the lowest ranking could elect
representatives to communicate their concerns to the centre: there were systems of
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representation. However, soldier councils had no say in the appointment of higher officers.
They were given privileges as the price of loyalty. Growing popular participation didn’t
determine the trajectory of the institution.
Discussion:
Joanna said that she took him to have in his sights particularly Baki Tezcan’s Second
Ottoman Empire.
Yannis said in fact he hesitated to target Tezcan, since he had talked with him, and found that
he didn’t want to push his interpretation to unrealistic extremes.
Joanna said, accepting that, she just wanted to note that Midhat Pasha, in his account of his
life, had a very different take on what was democratic and what was not: he thought there was
an egalitarian Ottoman tradition, but that janissaries represented one among several
accretions of privilege that had perverted that tradition.
She also noted though that within modern notions of democracy, there were a number of
potentially conflicting criteria at work. Participation did not always make for equality of
outcome. So that it was inescapable that something might be democratic by some criteria and
not by others. His test might be too demanding, and might marginalise certain features of the
organisation that were worth attention.
Yannis said he meant simply to indicate a reservation about the label. He thought that the
term popularisation might capture what happened better, with fewer hostages to fortune.
Several questions and comments were collected:
Fred Anscombe noted that some suggested the janissaries became a kind of mafia, and asked
if Yannis thought that a helpful characterisation.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos questioned whether it was right to link representation to democracy.
He said that modern democracy entailed the representation of the interests of the whole, not
the part.
Sakis Gekas said that he wasn’t aware of this debate. He wondered whether it was a debate
worth having. What did it help us to understand about what was happening.
Diego Palacios said that he had found the presentation fascinating. He said that the
janissaries seemed to merge what David Bell had presented as two sides of the coin: citizen
soldiers and praetorians. He said that plenty of references were made to janissaries in Europe
at the time, usually with an orientalising thrust. However, it surprised him that in some ways
they resembled a national guard. Their image in Portugal was very different. After the 1830s,
the militarised professional force that replaced the National Guard were often derided by the
democrats as ‘janissaries’. It seems that for the Portuguese critics ´Janissaries´ were the
opposite to citizen soldiers: they were detached from the people and they traded loyalty to the
government in exchange for luxury. As to the debate about who represents the people, he
thought variants of it took place everywhere.
Marios asked if membership was inherited?
Yannis said it could be purchased.
Maurizio said that some contemporaries also saw the janissaries as a democratic element in
the empire. Thus a Sicilian radical who joined the French army, Alfio Grassi. In the mid
1820s, he visited Istanbul, and wrote about it in his La Charte Turque (1825-6).
He wanted to know what happened to the janissaries after 1826?
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Yannis said to Sakis that at the moment he didn’t have a good answer as to how one should
conceptualise things. He was just expressing unease with one proposal.
He said that after 1826, an attempt was made to conscript old janissaries – that is, the salaried
minority -- into the new corps. Those who transferred didn’t retain their privileges. Their
common funds were confiscated by the state. A ministry was set up to control their assets. Its
proceedings haven’t been studied yet, though some doctoral students were now beginning to
unravel its affairs.