The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism

Yanni Kotsonis

$62.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Princeton University Pres
01 May 2025

History; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Colonialism & imperialism; Nationalism

A sweeping global history of the birth of modern Greece.

In 1821, a diverse territory in the southern Balkans on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire was thrust into a decade of astounding mass violence. The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism traces how something new emerged from an imperial mosaic of myriad languages, religions, cultures, and localisms

the world's first ethnic nation-state, one that was born from the destruction and the creation of whole peoples, and which set the stage for the modern age of nationalism that was to come.

Yanni Kotsonis exposes the everyday chaos and brutality in the Balkan peninsula as the Ottoman regime unraveled. He follows the future Greeks on the seaways to Odesa, Alexandria, Livorno, and the Caribbean, and recovers the stories of peasants, merchants, warriors, aristocrats, and intellectuals who navigated the great empires that crisscrossed the region. Kotsonis recounts the experiences of the villagers and sailors who joined the armed battalions of the Napoleonic Wars and learned a new kind of warfare and a new practice of mass mobilisation, lessons that served them well during the revolutionary decade. He describes how, as the bloody 1820s came to a close, the region's Muslims were no more and Greece was an Orthodox Christian nation united by a shared language and a claim to an ancient past.

This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.

By: Yanni Kotsonis
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691215266
ISBN 10: 069121526X
Pages: 392
Publication Date: 01 May 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Yanni Kotsonis is professor of history and founding director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. He is the author of States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic and Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861-1914.

Reviews for The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism

""Scholarly, accessible, and engaging, this superb study will appeal to most history lovers, especially in an age where ethnic cleansing is common. A historical quest that’s also a riveting story that’s seldom heard."" * Library Journal (starred review) *