Networks of Power in Modern Greece: Essays in Honour of John Campbell (review)

Mark Mazower, the editor of this collection in honor of the pioneering anthropologist John Campbell, has collected 13 essays covering the period from the late Ottoman Empire to contemporary Greece. Although, as with most collections, the quality and novelty varies, this volume is a valuable contribution to the field, especially with regard to some of its initial essays. In the opening piece, Gelina Harlaftis and Sophia Laiou discuss Ottoman maritime trade. Behind a rather ponderous title lies one of the gems of the collection, an examination of Greek and Ottoman shipping, a topic that has been inexplicably little researched. Using ample archival evidence from Mediterranean port records and Ottoman archives, the two authors offer a detailed picture of Greek-Ottoman shipping, its role in the Mediterranean at large, and the responses of the Ottoman authorities to perceived threats.

The second essay, by Helen Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, on women in the Greek War of Independence, offers a conventional view of women at the time using as sources travelers accounts and memoirs from the War of Independence exclusively. The result is a familiar picture, but one that has been challenged by recent scholarship (Aglaia Kasdagli, Eva Kalpourtzi, and Sophia Laiou, among others, for Greece and Judith Tucker, Amira Sonbol, Madeleine Zilfi, Leslie Peirce, and Rositsa Gradeva for the Ottoman world in general). Thus although many parts of the essay are interesting, as, for instance, the discussion of matrimonial politics during the war, the picture that emerges of more or less secluded and passive women prior to the War of Independence is a rather misleading one.

Mark Mazower contributed the third essay and with it the collection returns to new and exciting research. He sheds light on the little explored subject of Orthodox-Catholic politics during the years of the Greek War of Independence and the ambiguous stance of several islands of the Cyclades with significant Catholic populations that wanted to avoid Ottoman attacks, escape the social unrest of the uprising, and evade the heavy taxation of the revolutionary authorities. As Mazower shows, such attitudes are hard to separate from local politics and confessional conflicts, and he links the emergence of the pilgrimage of the Evangelistria on Tinos to these circumstances and, in particular to the political and ecclesiastical vacuum created by the war. This piece ties together well with the following essay by Charles Stewart who examines the unsuccessful attempts to establish a pilgrimage site on Naxos island, quite reminiscent of the contemporaneous emergence of the Evangelistria shrine on the island of Tinos. As Stewart shows in this case, both state and ecclesiastical authorities moved quickly to suppress it, and he traces the different outcomes to state economic policies and efforts to undermine local autonomy. The essay would have benefited from a comparative look at the emergence of various Marian pilgrimage sites in Europe in the nineteenth century (e.g., Lourdes, Marpingen, etc.) instead of the comparison to Mayan twentieth century religious revival that the author uses, but it is still a valuable contribution.

The fifth essay is by Basil Gounaris in which he examines the clientelist networks that emerged following the "Macedonian Struggle" and the considerable social and political role played by the organization of the veterans of that conflict. Readers will be surprised by the longevity, evolution, and continued influence of such organizations, even if Gounaris's arguments regarding nationalism and its use by such organizations or political parties are not new. There is a curious absence of discussion regarding the current controversy over the name "Macedonia" here, but overall Gounaris presents a convincing and somewhat sobering picture of politics in northern Greece.

John Koliopoulos follows with a very concise piece in which he presents his views regarding ideas of modernity and the founding myth of Greece's continuity in space and time. He presents an older conventional view on the subject, but it is poorly served by its limited length which does not allow for a...