While "the Bavarians were criticized for assuming Greece to be a tabula rasa." (p 39)...
For instance, she mentions the slightly ironic comment from the Athenian newspaper "Aion" of 1858: "We have no ships, no army, no roads, but soon we will have an Academy. Turkey, beware!" [p 160]...
Although the 1821-27 War of Independence had ended four hundred years of Ottoman rule, the Greeks of the nineteenth century were left without a strong sense of national identity.
The years of Ottoman oppression had disconnected the nineteenth century Greeks from their ancient roots. Evidence of this condition was found in the condition of early nineteenth century Athens, a decrepit town of ruins. Although to us Athens may seem like the most appropriate site, it was not everyone's first choice for a capital. In 1835 the newspaper Athena lamented: "To tell the truth, the seat of the Greek state does not at all differ from an African or a Turkish city." (P 11)...
Review of The Creation Of Modern Athens: Planning The Myth, by Eleni Bastјa
by Ioanna Theocharopoulou
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"...The university of Athens, which has been
founded just after Greece won its independence
from the Ottomans, set out to revive classical culture;
even the language of instruction was that of Socrates
and Aristotle, not that of contemporary Greece. Many
of its studens like Venizelos saw themselves as missi-
onaries of a Hellenic world to their fellows who stil lived,
unredeemed under Turkish rule.
One day, in his sudy, Venizelos gathered his friends around
a large map. On it he drew the boundaries of the Greece he
wanted: a good half of today's Albania and almost all of
today's Turkey. Constantinople would be the capital.
This was the "megali idea" -- the "great idea." "Natue,"
said na early nationalist, "has set limits to the aspirations
of other men, but not to those of the Greeks. The Greeks were
not in the past and are not now subjects to the laws of nature."
The megali idea (the word "megalomania" comes from the same
root) was made up of dreems and fantasies..."
(Margaret MacMillan, "Paris 1919," 2003 Random House Trade Paparbacks, New York 2003, pg. 348)
----------------
THE HELLENES OF TO-DAY; PROF. JEBB'S HISTORY OF MODERN GREECE. HOW THE GREEK NATIONALITY HAS SURVIVED --THE PROSPECTS OF THE GREEK OF THE PRESENT TIME--GREEK COMMERCE, --THE COMPLICATED QUESTION THAT CONCERNS THE MODERN GREEK.
" A truly independent Greece is an absurdity.
Greece can either be English or Russian, and
since she must not be Russian, it is necessary
that she be English. "
(Sir Edmund Lyons, British Minister to Greece, 1841)
(Richard Clogg, "A Concise History of Greece", Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pg. 53)
The purpose of the media is not to make you to think that the name must be changed, but to get you into debate - what name would suit us! - Bratot
Hmmm, so what you are saying is the Hellenes are a complete joke in the modern sense and that the people who choose to self-identify as such are nothing more than cheap imitators who have tried to steal some ancient combination of identities and roll them into a poetic ideal of sorts.
Hmmm, sounds like a new artificial product ... Hellenoplastic ?
Risto the Great MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA "Holding my breath for the revolution."
"The Helenistic age has one great advantage for us: it is easily definable. Its unity was first perceived, its limits set, even its name invented, by the Nineteenth century German historian Johann Gustav Droysen.
For him, as for most subsequent students of the period, it began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, continued through the rise, declina and fall of the great kingdoms carved by his marshals (known as the Diadochoi or "successors") from the empire he left, and ended with Octavian's dissolution of the last of these, Ptolomeic Egypt in 30 BC, just under three centuries later.
This is modern perspective: it is highly doubtful whether any ancient writer, from the Augustian age onwards, ever recognized the problem in these terms. Rome's triumph encouraged an innate natural tendency to take short views.
It follows that to attempt a historical survey of the Hellenistic period means, in effect, writing a history of the Greek world, the oikonmene, durin that period: no only of the Greek-speaking cities and states (as opposed to those that merely employed the vernacular Attic koine as a lingua franca), but also of thise far larger areas, profoundly alien in speech and culture to the Greek spirit, that were forcibly taken over, and in a very real sense exploited, by foreign overlords: Greek, Macedonian, and later, Roman.* It became clear to me during my researches that the degree to which the Greek-Macedonian diaspora spread its much vaunted culture, its reasons for doing so, and the audience it reached, especially in the East, had been in ways badly misunterpreted. Thus one of my objects in writing the present work is to draw a more realistic picture of the impact, nature, and limitations of this diffusion.
I must state plainly at the outset that I regard the whole notion of a conscious, idealistic missionary propagation in conquered territories of Greek culture, mores, literature, art, and religion -- much less the undertaking of such conquests, whether of Alexander himself or any of his successors, with this alterior end in view -- as a pernicious myth, compounded by anachronistic Christian evangelism and Plutarch-inspired wishful thinking, and designed (whether consciously or not) to provide moral justification for what was, in essence, despite its romantic popularity, large scale economic and imperial exploitation.
Edward Will points out how much the prewar attitude of Hellenistic imperialism was conditioned by "la bonne conscience", and to what extent "le choc de la decolonisation nous a fait prendre conscience de ce qu'etaient les realites coloniales," with a very similar impact on the thinking of the hellenistic historian. ..."
(Peter Green, Alexander to Actium, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1990, pg. Xv-xvi)
The purpose of the media is not to make you to think that the name must be changed, but to get you into debate - what name would suit us! - Bratot
" The first modern Greek national government, established in 1833, had certain unique attributes. Even though the ''Greeks'' had themselves conducted a bitter revolutionary war against the Ottoman, the three great powers -- Russia, Britain and France -- were responsible for the establishment of a political system in 1833 in which ''Greek'' nationals (mostly Albanians) occupied non of the major government positions.
Instead the newly independant country was organized as an absolte monarchy, under the rule of the 18 year old Bavarian Prince, Othon, with three Bavarian regents hold the real power in the new state... In addition, the ''Greek" (i.e., Albanian) forces were disbanded and the chief military prop of the government was a foriegn mercenary army of thirty five hundred men recruited in the German states ..."
(Irmgard Wilharm, Die Anfange Des Griechischen Nationalstaates, 1833-1843)
The second son of the philhellene King Ludwig I of Bavaria King Otto or Othon of Greece, (Greek: Όθων, Βασιλεύς της Ελλάδος, Othon, Vasileus tis Ellados) also Prince of Bavaria (June 1, 1815 – July 26, 1867) was made the first modern king of Greece in 1832 under the Convention of London, whereby Greece became a new independent kingdom under the protection of the Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire).
And the Bavarian flag became "Hellenic"
State and War flag on land during the Glьcksburg dynasty Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glьcksburg (in Danish: Slesvig-Holsten-Sшnderborg-Lyksborg (or Glьcksborg), from Glьcksburg in northernmost Germany, is a line of the House of Oldenburg that is descended from King Christian III of Denmark. Its members include the royal houses of Denmark and Norway, the deposed royal house of Greece, and the heirs to the throne of the United Kingdom.
Greece is so fast in accusing other nations for "stealing history" that she forgets that she is the one that actually stole a symbol of another nation- an old English flag:
Whoops! Who's the real thief now?
Left: The flag used on the ships of the colonial English Honourable East India Company established in 1600; Right: The modern Greek flag initialy adopted in 1822. So, Greece nicked a foreign flag, changed the colors.. and Voila! We have a flag! Before you disagree, count the number of the stripes, both flags have 9. The Greeks claim that they represent the 9 sylables of their Independence War motto: "Elefteria i Thanatos!" ("Freedom or Death!"). Why should a 17 century English flag also have exactly 9 stripes then? The Greek cross in the canton is evidently stolen from the red English St. George's cross and re-painted in white. Shame...
The East India Company flag changed over time. There has been much debate and discussion regarding the number of stripes on the flag and the order of the stripes. Historical documents and paintings show many variations from nine to thirteen stripes, with some images showing the top stripe being red and others showing the top stripe being white. In any case, its obvious that the whole concept of this flag was stolen by Greece and incorporated in its modern flag.
Maybe this deserved a whole new thread
The purpose of the media is not to make you to think that the name must be changed, but to get you into debate - what name would suit us! - Bratot
TerraNova, as you yourself do notice, Italy's flag is a version of the French one, thus your little propaganda stunt in 1995 is a joke, we had the Macedonian sun as our national flag long before you had your version of it.
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