From one of our leading historians an important new history of the Greek War of
Independence-the ultimate worldwide liberal cause célèbre of the age of Byron Europe's first
nationalist uprising and the beginning of the downward spiral of the Ottoman Empire-published
two hundred years after its outbreak As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive
new account myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very
beginning and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause against long odds a disorganized
collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the
world the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it as
Europeans and Americans embraced the idea that the heirs to ancient Greece the wellspring of
Western civilization were fighting for their freedom against the proverbial Eastern despot
the Turkish sultan. This was Christianity versus Islam now given urgency by new ideas about
the nation-state and democracy that were shaking up the old order. Lord Byron is only the most
famous of the combatants who went to Greece to fight and die-along with many more who followed
events passionately and supported the cause through art music and humanitarian aid. To many
who did go it was a rude awakening to find that the Greeks were a far cry from their
illustrious forebears and were often hard to tell apart from the Ottomans. Mazower does full
justice to the realities on the ground as a revolutionary conspiracy triggered outright
rebellion and a fraying and distracted Ottoman leadership first missed the plot and then
overreacted disastrously. He shows how and why ethnic cleansing commenced almost immediately on
both sides. By the time the dust settled Greece was free and Europe was changed forever. It
was a victory for a completely new kind of politics-international in its range and affiliations
popular in its origins romantic in sentiment and radical in its goals. It was here on the
very edge of Europe that the first successful revolution took place in which a people claimed
liberty for themselves and overthrew an entire empire to attain it transforming diplomatic
norms and the direction of European politics forever and inaugurating a new world of
nation-states the world in which we still live.
