An identity struggle

Photo by Pit Stock

An important question was posed by Greek intellectuals at the start of the war of the country’s independence: what is Greece? Is it west or is it east? Does Greece belong with the Western Europeans, culturally and politically, or should it look to the East with Russia and with other Orthodox Christian nations? Greece was always caught in this identity struggle.

In the 18th century, during the country’s previous revolts, Greece had largely looked to Russia, to Catherine the Great, for support in its bid for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Ultimately, though, the Greek cause didn’t get the support that it needed to be successful in that bid. So, many of the Greek revolutionaries, coupled with intellectuals who were members of the Greek intellectual diaspora in Paris, Bucharest and Odessa, decided to change tactics and instead look to the Western Europeans, including the great powers of England and France, and eventually to the United States, to get support, arms and finances for their new bid for independence.

One of the ways in which Greece sought Western European support was by playing up the notion that Greece was inherently linked to the European West through a common tradition of ancient Greek classics, values, aesthetics and political commitments and cultural practices.

A unique model for revolution

Greece’s model of independence was new because it was deeply anchored in an idea of what the country had once been. The Greeks who were involved in the revolutionary movement looked to the United States, which was a recently independent nation with a democratic constitution. The Greek state adopted America’s model of independence from the outset, essentially.

This was a revolution founded on the idea that Greece needed to throw off what was referred to in discourse at the time the Ottoman yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Greece believed that the colonial powers, the imperialists who were occupying the Greek territory, were preventing Greece from being in touch with its ancient, and later medieval, tradition that stretched far back. Reclaiming Greek ancient territory and the ancient culture and status was an important aspect of the Greek Revolution. Throwing off this particular kind of colonial imperial dominance is what made the Greek Revolution a little bit different from, say, the American War of Independence or the French Revolution.

Upholding a high ideal of Greek culture

The Greek War of Independence that started in 1821 with the Greeks garnering financial, military and human support for their cause went on to shape what you might think of as the national personality, or the national brand, of the state. In garnering support for their cause, the Greeks largely played up to Western European and American expectations, idealising Greek antiquity.

Shortly after the war of independence was over, the newly formed archaeological service set about the project of what has been referred to as the “purification” of the Acropolis of Athens. Throughout history, all sorts of people had constructed buildings, mosques, churches and all sorts of other things in the Acropolis area, which today we tend to associate with that Greek miracle of Pericles. Over time, so many people had lived and worked there that the place had become crowded with monuments and structures from all different times. Then, because the war of independence had been so largely promoted along the lines of classicism, it was decided that the Acropolis needed to be restored to that ideal state of the Periclean 5th century. So, the area was cleaned up; all sorts of structures, like the buildings from the European occupation and the Ottoman occupation of the site, were cleared away, and some physical structures were turned into this kind of monument to the classical 5th century.

These changes have endured through history, where, even today, so much of the Greek tourist industry is built around the idea of not just ancient Greece, Byzantine Greece or Greek antiquity, but also the Greece of a very particular moment in time to which we ascribe the beginnings of democracy and of theatre, in certain ways of philosophising.

A shared identity

Photo by Mitotico

I think that one extraordinary aspect that links the Greek Revolution to the American Revolution that took place some half century earlier is that, in both the United States and Greece, it led to the question: are we European now?

In the case of the United States, there were some people who felt very strongly that their revolution created a rupture with Europe, that there were many reasons to throw off even old British traditions. This is the reason we no longer have a Guy Fawkes night in the United States. It was understood as simply too British of a tradition. This was also the reason that some people in the United States – like Benjamin Franklin, for example – thought that a classical education was of no use to anybody there.

In the case of Greece, there was a different orientation around the very similar question: are we now Europeans? Does our main identity belong to this greater Eastern Orthodox community? What is Greece now vis á vis what it was during the Ottoman Empire? Where does Greece fit into the world geopolitically and culturally? Both of these revolutions in America and in Greece bracketed this half century, taking place on the extreme margins of Europe in, sort of, more imaginary than literal, geographical terms.

Greece’s call on the United States for help

I think that one of the most exciting aspects of the story of Helleno-American relations is the moment when the Greek freedom fighters decided to announce their cause, that they were declaring independence from the Ottoman Empire. In the case of the United States, the first person that they happened to reach out to with this news through a letter was Edward Everett, a classicist. At the time, Everett held the chair now known as the Eliott Chair of Greek Literature at Harvard. Everett was also the editor of the North American Review, a popular literary gentleman’s magazine. The Greeks hoped that he would spread news of the Greek independence movement. In their letters and appeals to Everett, the Greeks used the common thread of democracy, hoping that it would appeal to all Americans.

Democracy is not quite the word that they used at the time though. The founding fathers, in framing the Constitution, were wary of this notion of Athenian democracy, which they thought descended much too easily and quickly into populism. They had this notion of representation, of republicanism: ‘I am not having a king.’ There was this interesting triangulation that happened between the Greek revolutionaries, the Americans and the ancient Greeks, in which the Greek revolutionaries appealed to the Americans for support and said: we recognise how much you revere our ancestors for the cultural and political contributions that they made. So, we think it is incumbent upon you to support us, who are their descendants today in order to hold true to your values to them by supporting us.

Greek fever

One of the reasons that I think there was such passion for the Greek Revolution in the United States was simply because of the time that it happened. So many of the people who found themselves in the position to support the Greek War of Independence had been too young to participate in the American War of Independence. They had perhaps grown up listening to stories of the American War of Independence from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. That generation of 1976 came to idealise the portrait of Greece. People like Edward Everett, one of the most famous Philhellenes Americans at the time (intellectuals inspired by the Hellenists’ idealised portrait of Greece associated with the ideals of freedom and democracy), and Daniel Webster, thought of the Greek Revolution as their second chance to get involved in a revolution, and to recapture some of the heroism that they so profoundly revered from the era of the fight for American independence.

Recapturing that heroism was one of the real motivators of the absolute commitment that spread across the northeast and down the east coast in the United States. This was sometimes referred to as “Greek fire” or “Greek fever”. Societies were formed to do fundraising, including for women’s education, and other activities to support the cause of Greek independence.

However, there was another aspect to it. This was a time at which ancient Greek culture was very popular in the United States and rising in popularity. In terms of décor and aesthetics, the neoclassical style of architecture and Greek revival architecture became so popular in the United States that it came to be known simply as the national style.

There was a real confluence of aesthetics, taste and idealisation of Greece in the early years of the American republic. In the early 19th century, an entire generation of Americans felt that they had been born just a little bit too late to have the opportunity to take part in their own revolution. So now they saw the Greek Revolution as a second chance for heroism.

America’s support for the Greek Revolution

The Birth of the Monroe Doctrine 1912.Historical Picture Archive. The Granger Collection. Wikimedia Commons.Public Domain.

Popular support for the Greek cause was enormous, but this was a time when the United States was considering and shaping its own foreign policy. Daniel Webster gave an incredibly famous, successful speech in Congress championing the Greek cause in very poetic terms. He said that the hall in which he stood giving the speech had been influenced by Greek ideals and by Greek principles of architecture. He said that American systems of government, America’s way of looking at the world was all Greek. He urged the Americans to support the descendants of those ancient Greeks and lend support to the Greek cause.

Interestingly, Webster’s speech was delivered just a week before the Monroe Doctrine was passed, which was a policy of American non-intervention in European affairs – and that included non-intervention in what was going on with this breakup of the Ottoman Empire as that was beginning. So, the American national participation was arrested entirely. That did not mean, though, that individual Americans didn’t travel to Greece. We know of several people who travelled there who participated in the war. From Providence, Samuel Gridley Howe travelled to Greece, participated in the Greek War of Independence and afterwards set up a camp for refugees from the war called Washingtonia, in Greece.

Even in the face of a lack of national policy or national support for the Greek War of Independence, there was an extraordinary outpouring of support that was organised at the grassroots level in the United States.

Discover more about

the Greek Revolution

Beaton, R. (2019). Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation. University of Chicago.

Santelli, M. C. (2020). The Greek Fire: American-Ottoman Relations and Democratic Fervor in the Age of Revolutions. Cornell University Press.

Winterer, C. (2002). The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910. Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Greek War of Independence and its impact on European identity