Nationalism as a Claim to a State: The Greek Revolution of 1821 and the Formation of Modern Greece

Historical Materialism #278

by John Milios

In theorising on the causes, preconditions, dynamics and internal conflicts of the Greek Revolution of 1821, the analysis of Milios tackles the issue of bourgeois revolutions in general. Additionally, his investigation of the historical emergence and the limits of the Greek nation calls forth the broader theoretical and historical question of the economic, political, and ideological presuppositions of nation-building. The book illustrates how nationalism brings the masses to the political forefront, which the capitalist state then incorporates into its apparatuses as 'sovereign people'. Nationalism, being enmeshed within the political element, consists the basis upon which irredentism develops, recruiting populations into the expansionist-imperialist strategies of the ruling classes.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published January 19, 2023

Reviews

[Michael Sasson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the claim that Milios makes that nationalism is a bourgeois development that brings the masses into political awareness in some way that pre-bourgeois societies didn't interesting but I was never convinced that it was proven by the author in this book.

<

PP 41-57 what and how is a nation
164-66: banditry (compare to Sam Farber re social decay)
62,76, 82, 100-2, 111: non-muslim tax (or non-christian) in Ottoman empire
171, 184, 189-92, 197: Politicized masses. Does he prove this? Is this new?
PP 4, 34, 36, 225, 227
Chapter 9: Ideological Uses of History
P215 "The Greek Revolution ... could only take place when the bourgeois elements of the nation had reached great economic prosperity and had awakened the national sentiment and the idea of the homeland, which had been introduced by the bourgeois revolutions of western Europe." But Odyssey and Hebrew scriptures don't tell of awakened idea of homeland etc.?