The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism & the Uses of the Past (1797-1896) (review)

In the past two decades, a considerable number of books and articles by scholars of Modern Greek Studies have attempted a reading of Greek national identity against the background of various theoretical conceptualizations (postcolonial, anthropological, political, literary, etc.) and through the examination of particular cultural expressions (i.e., literature, language, theater, music, cinema, etc). In the past five years alone, a significant number of publications focusing on various cultural facets of Greek nationalism have made their appearance. A few paradigmatic examples are Peter Mackridge's Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976 (2009), Maria Koundoura's The Greek Idea: The Formation of National and Transnational Identity (2007), Yiannis Hamillakis's The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (2009), and the collection of essays Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity (edited by Katerina Zacharia, 2008). This is in addition to the already substantial number of works engaging with the concept of Greek nationalism and its relation to cultural production that have been steadily published since the 1990s.

The Making of Modern Greece is an important contribution to this growing corpus of studies on Greek nationalism, primarily because it attempts to engage different critical approaches, or academic disciplines, placing them in dialogue with one another. Broadly speaking, the volume consists of 19 essays that approach the subject of Greek nationalism through the study of history, literature, language, religion, and politics. Chronologically, they cover a period of about a century, spanning from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Thematically, they are divided into seven parts, each of them focusing on specific areas of Greek nationalism. The editors of The Making of Modern Greece (Roderick Beaton and David Ricks) have gone to great length in presenting the reader with a relatively cohesive and well-integrated volume, despite its fragmentary thematic composition and the diverse academic background of the authors. This cohesiveness, I must say, is largely a result of Beaton's introduction, which weaves the essays together thematically and provides a solid theoretical framework for the volume's contribution to the study of nationalism. I shall return to some of the key points Beaton makes, as well as to Michael Llewellyn-Smith's afterword, since they summarize much of the volume's scholarly intent. Naturally, I will not attempt an extensive critique of all the essays included in the book, but a cursory description of the themes they explore, which will provide the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the volume's scope in the context of nationalism.

The first part focuses on comparative perspectives—much needed in the study of Greek nationalism—that explore the Greek case either by situating it within the general theoretical discourse on nationalism (Paschalis Kitromilides) or against other national experiences, such as the German (Suzanne Marchand) or the Italian experience (Henrik Mouritsen). The second part examines the Greek historical narrative and its influence by British and German historiographies (Ioannis Koubourlis, Margarita Miliori). Part III focuses on the significance of religion in the definition of Greek national identity (Marios Hatzopoulos, Effi Gazi) and Part IV explores nationality by focusing on the distinction between "autochthonous" and "heterochthonous" Greeks (Yanna Delivoria), the Romantic movement's radical redefinition of Greek nationhood in the nineteenth century (Socrates Petzemas), and the historically ambivalent relationship between Greece and its Balkan neighbors (Basil Gounaris). Part V investigates Greek national identity against the background of the British colonization of the Ionian Islands in the nineteenth century (Eleni Calligas, Athanasios Gekas).

The last two parts of the book are especially interesting for literary scholars, as the focus turns exclusively on cultural aspects of nationalism. In Part VI, Peter Mackridge explores the importance of language in the forging of Greek identity and considers Turkish and Hebrew as parallel case studies (this is...