Historein Volume 14.1 (2014)

HISTOREIN VOLUME 14.1 (2014) Νikos Theotokas of the Peloponnese. However, he soon came to oppose the governor’s policies. He initially Ο Bίος του στρατηγού Μακρυγιάννη: welcomed the enthronement in 1833 of King Απομνημόνευμα και Ιστορία Otto, a Bavarian prince, but became disillu- sioned by the policies of the Bavarian-domi- [The life of General Makriyannis: nated regency. Makriyannis played a leading memoir and history] role in the conspiracy against the regime and in the 3 September 1843 movement that led to Athens: Vivliorama, 2012. 549 pp. the granting of the first constitution (1844). He was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to Eleni Andriakaina death, though he was later pardoned. During Panteion University the defence of the Acropolis during the war of independence, he sustained serious head inju- The publication of Nikos Theotokas’ study ries. An illiterate soldier, he learned to read and comes at a critical juncture in contempo- write and, in 1829, embarked on the writing of rary Greece. Neither the book’s modest title, his Memoirs, an extraordinary document that nor the pastness of its object, seem to have covers the period during and after the war of much relevance for the fierce urgencies of the independence. In 1851 he began writing a sec- present or even for the challenges – methodo- ond secret manuscript, known as Visions and logical, theoretical or institutional problems – Miracles. This was published in 1983, more now facing Greek scholars within the humani- than 120 years after his death. ties and the social sciences. How then can we explain the appeal of the book to a wide read- Given the mass production of memoirs writ- ership within and beyond academia? And why ten by the Greek fighters of the 1821 revolu- the numerous and enthusiastic reviews it has tion, Makriyannis’ text was just one among received? One explanation lies in the long- many. However, thanks to its complexities, lasting and enduring significance of Makriy- his Memoirs had the ability to respond to the annis’ writings for modern constructions of anxieties and the pursuits, the various inter- Greek identity. Makriyannis’ name evokes a ests and multiple needs of the modern Greek past still present and still contested: the foun- intelligentsia, who gave it a privileged place in dational event for modern Greece – the 1821 the national literary canon. Yannis Vlachoyan- revolution. But the specific contribution of The- nis, who discovered Makryiannis’ manuscript otokas’ book is also significant, since it power- in 1907, interpreted it along the lines of a popu- fully challenges a range of current orthodoxies. list view of 1821. It became a precious reposi- tory of a Greek folk culture and popular wis- We will come to the significance of Theotokas’ dom that was despised by the political elite and account soon, but first, who was Yannis Makri- the dominant culture. yannis? Born in 1797 to a peasant family, he fought in the war of independence, rising to In the interwar period, Makriyannis was estab- the rank of general by 1824 and marrying the lished at the core of Greek identity and has re- daughter of a prominent Athenian. In 1828, mained a powerful national myth ever since. upon the arrival to Greece of Ioannis Kapodis- For a generation of liberal bourgeois intellec- trias as governor, Makriyannis was appoint- tuals with cosmopolitan orientations and he- ed general leader of the executive authority gemonic aspirations, such as the poet Giorgos 127 Book Reviews Seferis – a key figure in Greek modernism – orientalism. Merging insights from functional Makriyannis’ writings appealed to their own anthropology and the concerns of the policy aesthetic and political concerns. They appro- advisor, Makriyannis’ life and ideas have been priated Makriyannis’ Memoirs for a definition placed within the grand narrative of Greece’s of Greekness that reconciled tensions between failed modernity. For some key Greek mod- tradition and modernism, west and east, cos- ernisers and reformers, such as Thanos Ver- mopolitan elite identities and national indige- emis, Makriyannis demythologised is nothing nous localism.1 but a Rumeliot warrior; that is, a traditional figure, a bearer of the kind of Ottoman premod- For many leftist intellectuals in subsequent ern mentality that has hampered Greek mod- decades, Makriyannis became the symbol of ernisation since the nineteenth century.4 This a socialist and democratic revolution yet to Makriyannis offers a cautionary tale of how come. Arguing that the 1821 revolution had Greek modernisation went wrong and is a been betrayed, unfulfilled or incomplete since metonym for Greek backwardness, clientism its radical ideals were frustrated, they turned and statism. In other words, this kind of per- to Makriyannis as a radical figure who could spective is a fierce polemic against images of infuse new life into the project of a democratic Makriyannis fabricated during the twentieth and socialist transformation of Greece during century. It refutes the claims to truth made by the German occupation, the civil war and, later, previous readings and puts the history of the the dictatorship. Makriyannis’ Memoirs was in- 1821 revolution in the service of current con- corporated into the grand narrative of struggle flicts, articulated in terms of an opposition be- between the democratic patriotism of the peo- tween modernisers and populists. Iconoclastic ple and the rightwing political and intellectual in its intentions, this approach seeks to revise representatives of the Greek state.2 and demythologise Greek national history, to disclose the truth about 1821, to discover the The rediscovery of Visions and Miracles, the “real” Makriyannis. Inspired by essentialising second manuscript of Makriyannis’ memoirs, understandings of tradition and modernity, this produced another interpretation. This text had kind of revisionist approach explains modern previously been characterised as the work of Greek history as the struggle between dark- a sick old man suffering from severe epileptic ness and light, between the bearers of tradi- seizures, the consequence of old war wounds. tion and the rational agents of modernity.5 The But now, Makriyannis’ manuscripts were narrative of Greece’s failed modernity main- praised as the arc of Hellenism, the lived intel- tains a series of dualisms (such as high/low lectual tradition of the Orthodox east. So they culture, active/passive, subject/object, state/ have been used to support a polemic against society) that dramatises the relationship be- western rationalism, individualism and mo- tween the intellectuals and the rest.6 From this dernity.3 standpoint, the 1821 armed uprising was con- verted into a national war and transfigured into Last but not least, a more recent interpreta- a revolution thanks to the efforts and the ac- tion of Makriyannis comes from the perspec- complishments of a small, foreign-educated, tive of a modernising messianism. What ap- westernised elite of Greeks. If for some Marx- pears at first sight to be a sympathetic and ists the driving force of Greek history was the scholarly understanding of Makriyannis’ world struggle between the people and the state elit- can, on closer scrutiny, be seen as a kind of es, according to the new grand narrative the 128 HISTOREIN VOLUME 14.1 (2014) driving force is a struggle between elites: be- fight alongside traditional warriors, klepht cap- tween a western-educated elite and its adver- tains and armatols. But Theotokas traces how saries. Seen from this elitist, rationalistic and Makriyannis, in the course of the war of inde- unhistorical perspective, the whole of Greek pendence and after the first civil war, aban- history is perverted, full of logical paradoxes, doned his old loyalties and aligned himself with pathologies and aberrances. the very different strategies of the central ad- ministration. How does Theotokas contribute something new to our historical understanding? Makriya- The author tries to understand the process nnis was born into a peasant family, a fact that of Makriyannis’ self-transformation. Avoid- national narratives highlight and dramatise. ing the reductionism or cultural determinism However they understate or completely write of revisionist approaches which consider the off Makriyannis’ unprecedented upward so- indigenous elites and the peasants as wholly cial mobility before, during and after the strug- determined by premodern structures and men- gle for independence. In Theotokas’ study, talities, Theotokas not only examines the social this is placed at the centre of Makriyannis’ life but also the intellectual and cultural mobility trajectory and connected to the great cultur- that marked Makriyannis’ life. He emphasises al and social transformations of the era. By his active, self-conscious and often conflicting 1821 Makriyannis had become a prosperous responses to the modernisation process. merchant. In an era of economic downturn, he succeeded in taking advantage of available The emphasis on human agency, on Makri- opportunities to enrich himself, trading with yannis’ own self-transformation, is connected all, Orthodox Christians and Muslims, acquir- to wider social, political and cultural changes: ing a significant real estate portfolio and mak- including his encounter with westernised intel- ing money from usury, by charging interest on lectuals and politicians; his exposure to nation- loans. At the outbreak of the revolution, Makri- al ideology and his familiarisation with ideas yannis could afford to recruit

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