Where was 1821? Space and Territory in the Greek Revolution

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Published: Dec 29, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.35712
Keywords:
1821 Greek Revolution Age of Revolutions spatial history spatial turn Greek historiography
Michalis Sotiropoulos
British School at Athens
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3913-1142
Antonis Hadjikyriacou
Panteion University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1197-4340
Ada Dialla
Athens School of Fine Arts
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2728-9783
Abstract

The aim of this special issue of Historein is to offer a new and fresh perspective on the 1821 Greek Revolution by drawing on the insights that the spatial turn has brought to the study of the Age of Revolutions. Our point of departure was that although the revolution took place in time and space, it is questions of temporality and of situating the revolution in a temporal context that have mainly preoccupied historians. This can hardly be said about space. In fact, as we argue, the spatial categories that historians have used have had a “natural” and self-evident character that required little or no probing. We wanted to interrogate this character, and what we consider as a lacuna in our understanding of the revolution. Thus, the aim of the introduction is threefold. The first part briefly discusses the historiography on space, and the ways in which this has been used in the study of Age of Revolutions. It also explains why the revolution provides a rich setting to think through space and pose questions about spatiality. The second part introduces the articles that comprise the issue. In this part, we also attempt to bring the contributions together by showing that they can be seen as falling into three very broad categories depending on the type of space they feature (space as place, space as territory, and space as an imagined category). The last part considers other possibilities, other vistas of research, where a “spatial” perspective can take us, if we want to better understand the 1821 Revolution.

Article Details
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Author Biographies
Michalis Sotiropoulos, British School at Athens

Michalis Sotiropoulos, FRHistS, is currently the 1821 Fellow in Modern Greek Studies at the British School at Athens. He has previously worked and taught at the University of London, Princeton University, the University of Athens and the University of Thrace. A historian of modern Europe, he specialises in the history of the Greek world and the transnational processes (revolts, revolutions, state formation, etc.) that transformed the political culture and ultimately the political geography of this world during the long 19th century. He has written on the 1821 Greek Revolution, law and the formation of states and the historiography on the Age of Revolutions. His most recent monograph, Liberalism after the Revolution: The Intellectual Foundations of the Greek State, ca. 1830–1880, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou, Panteion University

Antonis Hadjikyriacou is Assistant Professor of Ottoman and Turkish History at the Department of Political Science and History of Panteion University, Athens, and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University. He has worked and taught at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul); Princeton University; the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH, University of Crete; and the University of Cyprus. His research focuses on Cyprus from a Mediterranean vantage point, employing critical GIS tools and digital humanities methods for the purposes of social, economic and environmental history. His work has appeared in the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish History Association, Turkish Historical Review, Journal of Mediterranean Studies and Princeton Papers, and he has also published widely in Turkish and Greek journals and edited volumes. His monograph Χερσαίο νησί: Η Μεσόγειος και η Κύπρος στην οθωμανική εποχή των επαναστάσεων [Peninsular island: Cyprus and the Mediterranean during the Ottoman age of revolutions] was published in 2023 by Psifides.

Ada Dialla, Athens School of Fine Arts

Ada Dialla is Professor of European and Russian History at the Department of Theory and History of Art, Athens School of Fine Arts. She studied history at the State University of Moscow (Lοmonosov) (BA and MSc) and the University of Athens. She was a visiting researcher at the Russian Academy of Science (St Petersburg), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), Jordan Center for Advanced Studies in Russia of New York University, Princeton University. She is a founding member and chair of the governing board of the Research Center for the Humanities in Athens. Her main research interests are 19th- and 20th-century Russian and European history. Her recent publications include (with Alexis Heraclides) Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century: Setting the Precedent (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); with Yanni D. Kotsoni, “1821: What Made it Greek? What Made it Revolutionary?,” special issue, Historein 20, no 1 (2021); and Η Ρωσική Αυτοκρατορία και ο ελληνικός κόσμος: Τοπικές, ευρωπαϊκές και παγκόσμιες ιστορίες στην Εποχή των Επαναστάσεων [The Russian Empire and the Greek-speaking world: Local, European and global stories in the Age of Revolutions] (Athens: Alexandria, 2023).

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