'Byron and the Politics of Continental Europe' 4-5 December 2009 The Byron Centre University of Manchester

More than any other Romantic poet, indeed, arguably, any other British writer, Byron has always been famous as a particularly cosmopolitan character. His extensive travels in Europe and Asia, the use of European and 'Oriental' settings and subjects in his work, his Italian exile and, most prominently, his support of the Greek War of Independence and early death in Messolonghi all contributed to his international reputation. Moreover, while often described in Anglophone countries as an atypical Romantic poet, he has long been known throughout Europe as the quintessential voice of Romanticism, embodying the spirit of the age. Immensely influential even in countries he never visited or wrote about (particularly within the Slavonic and Germanic worlds), his poetry, along with his lifestyle and looks, was emulated and appropriated by countless 'Byronic' authors and artists throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, while European 'Byronism' has always had a highly political dimension, its affiliations could be complex and contradictory. Writing at a time when these concepts were emergent, the poet has been claimed both as a cosmopolitan liberal - even an advocate of a radical, proto-socialist concept of transnational 'liberty' - and as an exponent of a nationalist ideology that defined 'liberty' as the political independence of a völkisch nation state.

This kind of tension was one of the core themes at The Byron Centre's second annual conference, 'Byron and the Politics of Continental Europe', at the University of Manchester, 4-5 December 2009. The large proportion of international delegates (as is usual, even at smaller Byron events) was ample proof of the poet's ongoing cosmopolitan appeal. Featuring papers on Byron's involvement in the Greek and Italian independence movements, his engagement with Swiss, Italian, German, Czech, Portuguese and Assyrian history, his reaction to the French Revolution and his reception in Czech-speaking Bohemia, Poland and France, 'Byron and the Politics of Continental Europe', despite its relatively small size, reflected the international scale of Byron's interests and influence.

On Friday 4 December, Stephen Minta (York) kick-started the day with a paper on Byron's participation in the Greek fight for national independence. Taking a detailed look at the unstable, rapidly changing situation on the Greek peninsula while Byron was there, Minta showed how Greek leaders such as Prince Alexander Mavrokordatos used the poet as a symbol promoting their cause, particularly to gain the favour and financial support of the British government. Aware that a future Greek nation state would depend on the co-operation of the major European political powers, Mavrokordatos and his associates took care to represent the movement as national rather than revolutionary. Quickly grasping the realities of the situation, Byron negotiated on the behalf of the Mavrokordatos faction to obtain a major loan from the British government, which only materialised after his death.

Peter Cochran, editor of the Newstead Abbey Byron Society Review, then introduced the audience to the often-neglected dark side of the 'Greek War of Independence' (meaningfully put into quotation marks by Cochran). Pointing out chilling parallels to the wars in former Yugoslavia in the late twentieth century, Cochran showed how the Greek conflict in the early 1820s had a domino effect on community after community. With Greeks killing Turks with whom they had lived in relative peace for centuries, and vice versa, in what would now be described as acts of ethnic cleansing, the region effectively descended into civil war. Quickly disillusioned by the situation and the lack of infrastructure on the peninsula, Byron attempted to advance education, introduce military discipline and advocated a humane treatment of Turkish prisoners.

Both Minta's and Cochran's papers showed how Byron's participation in the Greek war reflected the tension between his fascination for the heroic fight for 'liberty', his rejection of war and violence and his sceptical approach towards ideologies. With a paper on Byron and Switzerland, Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster) presented the audience with one of Byron's more peaceful encounters with the continent. Despite his flippant remarks about the perceived rural backwardness of the Swiss, like many of...