From Warriors to Soldiers: Regularising Military Logistics and the Emergence of Military Medicine. The Case of the Armatoles (c. 1800–1831)

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Published: Jan 7, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.25351
Keywords:
military medicine military logistics discipline tactics medical profession
Athanasios Barlagiannis
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0311-3794
Abstract

The article explores the coincidence of military and medical reforms in the Ottoman Empire, which occurred around the turn of the nineteenth century, by connecting both developments to the question of the steady flow of supplies to military camps. The intention to organise a standing army to replace the military force of local warriors, like the armatoles in Rumelia, presupposed the monopolisation of sources of power and the regularisation of logistics. As a result, free warriors became obedient soldiers as they were progressively alienated from the means of warfare. Physicians and surgeons were integrated at one point into the armies of the empire in order to successfully organise their logistics and to expand the definition of the means of warfare to include the soldier’s body – intensifying thus the forces of military discipline. Military medicine was the byproduct of a transformation process that the armatoles were already undergoing before the 1821 Greek Revolution and that Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias (1828–1831) concluded. Ultimately, the article opens up the discussion about the political, medical, cultural and military implications of the transition from the empire to the state and of the emergence in this context of military medicine.

Article Details
  • Section
  • I. THE CONSOLIDATION OF REVOLUTIONARY GREECE
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Author Biography
Athanasios Barlagiannis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Athanasios Barlagiannis graduated from the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA) and continued his studies (MA, PhD) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He is the author of Η υγειονομική συγκρότηση του ελληνικού κράτους (1833–1845) [The sanitary construction of the Greek state, 1833–1845] (Athens: Estia, 2018). He has worked on the medical history of the Greek Revolution (forthcoming, Hellenic Open University Press) and on the history of pharmacies in 19th-century Greece (European Social Fund [ESF], Operational Programme “Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning 2014–2020”). His research interests are on the history of the Greek state, on the history of the police and of public health and on the history of medicine. He is an affiliated researcher and academic fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (EKPA) and affiliated member of the research unit TELEMMe (CNRS, France).

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