Defiance: Greece and Europe - Softcover

Silverman, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785353985 ISBN 13: 9781785353987

Verlag: John Hunt Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

This socialist history of modern Greece tells the story of its rebirth in struggle, the heroic resistance to Nazi occupation, the civil war and its aftermath, the colonels' dictatorship and its overthrow, the rise and fall of PASOK, the debt crisis, the popular uprising of 2010-12, the election of SYRIZA, the referendum and the subsequent capitulation. What lessons can Greece's experience teach those campaigning against austerity throughout Europe? This book includes an Appendix by Eric Toussaint.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Roger Silverman is a teacher and former full-time political activist who has had connections with Greece since the 1970s.

Roger Silverman is a teacher and former full-time political activist who has had connections with Greece since the 1970s.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Defiance: Greece and Europe

By Roger Silverman

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2015 Roger Silverman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78535-398-7

Contents

Introduction, 
Chapter 1: Rebirth, 
Chapter 2: Resistance, 
Chapter 3: Civil War, 
Chapter 4: Riding the Tiger, 
Chapter 5: Under the Jackboot, 
Chapter 6: Deadlock, 
Chapter 7: The PASOK Years, 
Chapter 8: Greece and Europe, 
Chapter 9: Uprising, 
Chapter 10: Hope, 
Chapter 11: Debt, 
Chapter 12: From Defiance to Surrender, 
Chapter 13: Outrage, 
Chapter 14: Alternatives, 
Chapter 15: The International Dimension, 
Appendix: The Need for a Plan B in Europe, by Eric Toussaint, 
References, 
Map of Greece, 
Recent General Elections, 
Glossary, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Rebirth

The future of Europe, with a population of 500 million and a gross domestic product of &8364;13 trillion, depends on the self-sacrifice of 11 million Greeks in its south-eastern corner – or so we are told. If this seems to place an inordinate burden on a population 46 times fewer and a GDP 60 times smaller, then for the Greeks that is nothing new.

Like so many other nations within the Ottoman empire, and also the Russian and later the Austro-Hungarian empires (or the Kurds, Basques and Palestinians today), the Greeks were until the early nineteenth century a stateless and scattered people with a rich culture of their own and a growing yearning for statehood. Modern Greece is a product of revolution. Over three centuries, lawless kleftes or bandits had been defying the Ottoman rulers, together with defectors from the security forces (armatoloi) and their commanders (kapetanioi). Greece's rebirth was impelled by the radical wave that swept Europe in the wake of the French revolution. Inspired by the continental-wide aspiration for liberty, equality and fraternity, early Greek insurgents stood for a multi-national state where Greeks, Turks, Albanians, Slavs and all the other Balkan ethnic groups would participate as equals. Their pioneer Rigas Feraios translated the Marseillaise into Greek and appealed to Napoleon for military support. After his execution, the secret society Filiki Etaireia (Society of Friends) was founded to prepare an armed uprising alongside "the people of Europe, fighting for their own rights and liberties". Tens of thousands of Greeks were massacred during 11 years of guerrilla struggle. Since then, Greece has always been Europe's simmering volcano.

The Greek revolution was closely monitored by the "Great Powers", seeking to play off their rivals. Britain, France and Russia intervened decisively at the battle of Navarino to destroy the Ottoman fleet, while failing to raise the siege of Athens. The British were content to patronise a new Greek mini-state limited initially to the Peloponnese region.

Liberation from Ottoman rule did not free the Greeks from foreign domination, nor from constant coups, wars and civil wars over the following century and a half. In the 193 years since its foundation, Greece has had no fewer than 186 governments – some of them concurrently.

The ruling powers of Europe were wary from the beginning of these unpredictable Greek brigands. In London in 1830 it was decided that Greece's "independence" would take the form of rule by a king chosen by officials of the British Empire from one of the royal families of Europe. It was standard practice for British imperialism either to impose its rule through homegrown local chiefs and maharajahs or to foist surrogate hand-picked royals on those peoples not directly incorporated into its empire – the Hashemites, the Sauds, the Pahlavis and the rest. That is what it did in Greece repeatedly over the following 150 years.

First a spare prince from Saxe-Coburg was approached, and when he passed up the offer, Otto, a Bavarian teenager, was persuaded to accept. The British simultaneously appointed two imperial overlords to command Greece's naval and military forces.

Greece fell under the patronage of the British establishment, which soon found itself incapable of containing the implicit instability of the new state. The new puppet monarchy was propped up by Bavarian troops until new revolts in the 1840s forced Otto to concede cosmetic reforms, which gave him no more than a breathing space. In 1862, Otto was overthrown and fled the country. The "protecting powers" promptly began the search for a new king of Greece, first proposing Victoria's second son Alfred, but following objections from France and Russia, settling instead on another teenager: this time a Danish prince named Glucksburg (the grandfather of "our own" Prince Philip), who assumed the title George I.

The new Greece had a population of 700,000, which still left two million Greeks living under Ottoman rule, or that of other foreign powers (including Britain itself). To assuage anti-royalist sentiment, Britain later ceded the Ionian islands and granted Greece a formally democratic constitution, although it was not until 1951 that women would achieve the right to vote. By the time of the Crimean War, the British were now in alliance with the Turks, and actively suppressed any support for uprisings of Greeks still under Turkish rule.

It was largely left to the British government to determine the new boundaries of Greece. In doing so, it excluded the majority of its current territory. Even today, Greece's northern border is completely artificial: Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, Albanians, Gypsies and Turks were scattered all over the Balkans and moved freely throughout the area. Years later, there was still semi-clandestine movement across the border. (It was not until 1947 that Greece was to extend to its current boundaries, which were drawn in line with NATO's Cold-War considerations: its need to cut off the newly-established states of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania – all falling at least potentially within the Soviet sphere of influence – from access to the Mediterranean.)

From the very start, class conflicts were already raging, with the shipping magnates demanding huge compensation for their losses, and landowners blocking the attempts of the new government to distribute land previously owned by the Turks to the Greek poor. Between 1865 and 1875 Greece had seven general elections and 18 governments. It was only from 1875 onwards that Greek political life settled down for a while to a British-style alternation of rival establishment politicians: the "westerniser" Trikoupis and the "panhellenist" Deliyannis.

However, even this temporary stability was not to last long. Not only the government but the very borders of Greece were in constant flux. The drive for Pan-Hellenic unity – the Megali (big) Idea – remained powerful. In the 1860s, the people of Crete rose up under the demand for enosis (union with Greece) – a demand rejected by the "protecting powers". After Russia beat Turkey in a new war in 1878, the Ottoman Empire continued to crumble. Bulgaria gained independence and there were renewed claims on areas populated by Greeks. Britain gained overall responsibility for Cyprus, though it was to remain formally under Turkish sovereignty. In 1881, there were more uprisings which forced Turkey to cede more Greek-populated territories to Greece. In 1885, as Greece mobilised its armies for a new war to liberate other compatriots still under the Ottoman heel, the British government sent warships to impose a blockade.

Well before the end of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: John Hunt Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1785353985
• ISBN 13: 9781785353987
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 262
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland