SOCIETY

Nikos Papastergiadis (Professor of Media and Communication and Director of the Research Unit of Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne) + Viv Nguyen (Chair Victorian Multicultural Commission) join Just Gold CEO Kyriakos Gold to discuss how Greek society has evolved since the Greek Revolution, and how being Greek and Australian can complicate one’s identity. 

What does it mean to be Greek-Australian today? Do we have a successful multicultural system? What does Australia do well and where can we improve? 

Find out by watching the in-depth discussion between the speakers and our live studio audience.

It is widely accepted that the ideals of the European Enlightenment inspired the War of Greek Independence - that it was the Hellenic Enlightenment that provided the ideological framework. This narrative galvanised scattered groups of Greeks revolting against the Ottoman Empire into a national revolution force. But how did a group of Europe-nurtured intellectuals get the message across to an unorganised - and mostly illiterate - group of freedom fighters?

To understand this process as a cause-and-effect course of action, it is essential to see the kind of transformation that was taking place in Europe at the time. Following the defeat of Napoleon in Waterloo, the victorious powers (Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia) formed the Holy Alliance with the purpose of defending the status quo. This was not meant to last - one century later, the only Empire still standing strong was the British one - and it is not by accident that it was the one that embraced the industrial revolution, leading the world into the age of steam.

In the meantime, western societies were in turmoil. The French Revolution had restructured both the political system, favouring forms of democracy over the strict Monarch rule model and the class system.

As the European nobility was declining, it was essentially replaced by a rapidly rising urban middle class - business people and merchants who formed international networks. It was merchants and sailors travelling across Europe that were first influenced by the French Revolution ideas and the Enlightenment. Filiki Etaireia, the secret society established to inspire the Greeks to revolt, was founded by merchants imbued with liberal European ideas.

The more western Empires were progressing, the more the Ottoman Empire looked like a relic of times long-gone; by that time, the Phanariotes (a small caste of Greek and Hellenized Romanian and Albanian) families who took their collective name from the Phanar quarter of Constantinople, had seen their influence rise, due to the Ottomans need for skilled negotiators as the power of their Empire declined.

The Phanariotes were not the only Greek community gaining power within the Ottoman Empire. In the islands (Hydra, Spetses, Psara), Greek shipowners were controlling maritime commerce. And in other European cities, Greek communities were also becoming stronger.

They were printing books and periodicals - the first Greek newspaper was published in Vienna in 1796; they were diffusing ideals and championing the Cause. It was the advance of printing that allowed Rigas Feraios to publish his magnum opus, the ‘Carta’ - a map of the Balkan region, complemented by historical facts, and a political vision for the future of the peoples living in the region - Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, Vlachs, Turks. It was printing that made possible the urge of Hellenic Enlightenment figure Adamantios Korais - “to create periodicals, to awaken the Nation.” Seeing the ruling European classes learning Greek in universities, the diaspora leaders realised the need to establish schools and libraries in order to build consciousness of their own national identity as Greeks.

Meanwhile, in the Ottoman regions, the multicultural blend of peoples that had coexisted for centuries, oblivious of the notion of ‘otherness’, was undergoing a seismic shift of their own. In the end, the nation that was galvanised and identified as Greek was born out of this melting pot, connected mostly through religion. Which is why contrary to Enlightenment ideals, however, the church and the state were considered a single entity;the Constitution began with the line: “In the name of the Holy and indivisible Trinity …”