Νεότερη Ελλάδα: Μια ιστορία από το 1821

A New History Of Modern Europe (NWME)

by John S. Koliopoulos, Θάνος Βερέμης, Διονύσης Χουρχούλης (Translator)

Στο βιβλίο αυτό οι συγγραφείς, συνδυάζοντας την πολύχρονη εμπειρία τους στην ιστορική έρευνα και στη διδασκαλία της ελληνικής ιστορίας, παρουσιάζουν την ιστορία του σύγχρονου ελληνικού κράτους από την Επανάσταση του 1821 έως τις μέρες μας. Το κείμενο διατηρεί με ερμηνευτική δεξιότητα την ισορροπία ανάμεσα στις ιστορικές αντιθέσεις και περιέχει νέες παρατηρήσεις και συμπεράσματα.

"Δύο διακεκριμένοι ιστορικοί συνδύασαν τη βαθιά γνώση τους και το εξαιρετικό τους ταλέντο για να γράφουν την καλύτερη γενική ιστορία της νεότερης Ελλάδας απ' όσες κυκλοφορούν σήμερα".
(John O. Iatrides, Southern Connecticut State University)

"Εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένη, περιεκτική και γλαφυρή ιστορία της νεότερης Ελλάδας από δύο εξέχοντες ιστορικούς της γενιάς τους".
(Robert Holland, University of London)

Genres: History, Greece, European History

477 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2002

Reviews

[Nicholas Nilsson]

Quote from the last chapter of this book:

”Approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Greece basks in relative affluence.”

Can you tell it was written in 2007?

[987643467881 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is for the two books I've read by the authors:

Modern Greece: A History Since 1821 (2010) (part of the series: A New History Of Modern Europe, which includes books on other European countries by different historians, published by Wiley-Blackwell) (my rating: 2 stars)
and
Greece: The Modern Sequel – From 1831 (published by Hurst and Company in 2002) (my rating: 3 stars)

Since I read the books directly one after the other, I thought it made more sense to combine the reviews as a sort of comparison that may help other ambivalent readers decide which of the two best coincides with what they're looking for.

I started with the more recent book (Modern Greece 2010) because I thought it would be better and have more up-to-date information; and while it did have more recent information, it was a huge disappointment. I wouldn't normally have given the authors a second chance on the same topic, but I had heard good things about them and since the older book was in a completely different format (and, crucially, not part of a publisher's series), I thought to give it a try, and I'm glad I did because it was a much better book overall.

The comparison basically boils down to: faults with structure and content (Modern Greece, 2010) versus faults with analysis and interpretation (Greece: The Modern Sequel, 2002) which are perhaps lesser faults since they're more subjective. In a nutshell: whereas Modern Greece (2010) felt like a rushed, abrupt chronological run-through of a series of events that wasn't really designed for any meaningful understanding, Greece: The Modern Sequel (2002) was structured thematically and seemed to be aimed at fostering a more meaningful understanding of the country and its people beyond “the lure of the obscure and the picturesque”, with a focus on the make up and development of the society, politics and culture. So, if I had to recommend one of the books, I would definitely go for Greece: The Modern Sequel (2002).

Since the things I took issue with in Greece: The Modern Sequel (2002) are more subjective (for example, the debatable iconic status of a photograph in the beginning of the book (The new shoes 1945, by photographer Voula Papaioannou), certain perceived attitudes of different groups of people, the implication that certain sociopolitical characteristics are uniquely Greek, etc.), in this review I'll focus more on my criticisms of Modern Greece (2010), which are overall more objective and make more sense to talk about in a review:

Too rushed, abrupt and open to misunderstanding:
This is by far my biggest problem with the book – and one that the other criticisms I have of it stem from. It's quite a short book considering the time frame it covers (1821-2010, in chronological order), and while I initially thought this would be a good feature of the book (allowing me to get a general picture of things without getting into all the minute details of everything), instead I ended up learning a bunch of random (albeit often interesting) facts, but not in any kind of meaningful way. It felt like everything was being rushed through, and sometimes even as though whole sections/paragraphs of the book were deleted during editing without really thinking about how that would affect the understanding of the whole chapter. For example, we read about Greece joining the EEC (European Economic Community) and then suddenly out of nowhere we have references to EU membership and the EU Customs Union with no explanation of how the three institutions are connected or differ from each other – for someone who doesn't already know this information (like myself) this raised more questions than it answered.
Also, at many different points in the book a chapter would abruptly include seemingly random facts and events, as though expecting the reader to put 2 and 2 together for themselves. While forcing the reader to use their brain a little bit isn't always a bad feature in books, I personally think that in history books, especially when it's not clear how much prior knowledge the reader is expected to have (if any), this format puts too much trust and responsibility on a reader to arrive at the right conclusions (I happen to believe that there is such a thing as objective history and that not everything should be fluid and subject to the whims of the time in which they are analysed). Not to mention that a reader may not have the self confidence to make their own (correct) deductions (especially if they don't have enough information to do so), or could use the book to justify their own crazy opinions, or may even simply not be willing to use the mental faculties and effort required to do so (a reader shouldn't be expected to conduct research on a topic in order to understand a book that's meant to be a summary of that actual topic!).

Unclear intended audience:
Because the book was so rushed and abrupt, inevitably certain things were left unsaid – which is understandable, but I would expect a historian to make wise choices about what to include or omit based on the intended audience, which doesn't seem to have been done in this case. For example, is the book intended for academics/historians who are already familiar with complicated historic labels for geographic areas (such as the different definitions of “Rumelia” within different contexts) and therefore do not require any clarifications on such labels? Is the book supposed to be read by non-Greeks who are unfamiliar with the country and therefore wouldn't be puzzled by the authors' decision to describe the event that lead to the Oxi/Ohi/No Day holiday, without actually mentioning that it was so significant a day that it was turned into arguably the biggest national holiday in the country? Is the reader meant to be someone familiar enough with economic terms such as “real income”, etc., for the terms to be used so casually without any explanations? The book assumes far too much prior knowledge in such a wide range of different fields that it can't possibly consistently appeal to a specific audience.

Bizarre choice/omission of specific words:
I assume space was of the essence in this book, and it's understandable that not every single world event could be mentioned in order to give a whole world history context of everything, but surely it's a lot quicker to just say the name of an event rather than to simply allude to it? It's not that I expected a book about the history of Greece to necessarily briefly talk about the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust (within the contexts of the first and second world wars), but if the authors allude to these events, why not mention them by name? (I searched the whole text and the words do not appear.) Are the authors really suggesting that these are controversial events/terms?
To give an example:
“Started in 1910, this policy [“Turkification”] was systematically pursued until the First World War when it peaked. Its victims were not only Greeks but also Arabs, Jews, and especially Armenians (1915). The massacre of the Armenians on orders from the leadership of the Young Turks was a political decision with long-term consequences for the Turkish state that succeeded them.”
A reader who is not familiar with the Armenian Genocide will have no idea of the scale of the event that is being alluded to here. I happened to know about the Armenian Genocide, so I got the reference, but it made me wonder what other allusions I missed and therefore didn't fully understand.

Misleading analyses and representations:
This last fault is more of a subjective one, and one that I initially didn't think was too important (since it was in a tiny section called “The Arts” in Chapter 10: The Post Civil War Period (1949–67)) until I thought about how it reflected on the rest of the book, and then it seemed a lot less trivial.
The authors' choice of which poets, artists and musicians to mention was in fact predictable (at least according to a few Greek people I discussed the section with), but what was a bit off in the section was the way that the different artists were presented. Their alleged “popularity” and how the majority of the general population perceive(d) them revealed what I saw as the authors' bias which seemed to be based on their own urban intelligentsia backgrounds and tastes: they picked the most well known artists, and while they actually may have produced arguably some of the best Greek art/music/literature, the artists and their work, were/are not in fact popular by any objective criteria.
To give an example from the book: “It was in popular music however that the Greeks did best. Manos Hatzidakis, Mikis Theodorakis, Stavros Xarchakos, Dionysis Savvopoulos, and many others, crossed the borders of Greece with their music.” All of these artists were more of “cult favourites” who were mythologised and turned into national symbols/icons – they were/are perhaps “popular” in the sense that they were/are known by everybody, but not in the sense that they were/are the most popular musicians listened to by the majority of the population, which is what the authors seem to be implying.
It was also telling that the deep rooted tradition of local folk music in different areas of the country, as well as rembetiko music, were not even given so much as a mention.
So why is this important? Because while it's relatively easy to pinpoint the misleading representations of things like art, music and poetry, it is significantly less so when your dealing with complex historical information. This section made me wonder what other parts of the book reflected the authors' bias, that as a non-Greek with little prior information on the topic, I simply couldn't pick up on.

My first reaction to the faults with the book was to blame the format and structure of the series that it was a part of - I have no idea if this is actually the case, but that's the only explanation I could come up with for such a horribly written book by otherwise not so horrible authors/historians. But then again, a good author can work within structural constraints and limitations and still produce a great, concise book, and if a historian is not a talented enough author to do that, perhaps it might have been best to simply pass on the opportunity.

[Panagiotis Efraimidis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το αγόρασα με αφορμή τον διαγωνισμό του ΑΣΕΠ και την προετοιμασία μου στην ενότητα της νεότερης ελληνικής ιστορίας. Θεωρώ ότι με βοήθησε αρκετά στην προετοιμασία μου όμως περίμενα περισσότερες λεπτομέρειες

[Miriam]

I'm reading a paperback edition that isn't listed here.

[Despoina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting summary of the modern Greek country. A story that started in 1821 with the stubborn revolution of many Greek intellectuals living outside the ottoman empire. They, together with Greek privileged landowners and fighters from the enslaved lands, succeeded in obtaining and defining an independent Greek country based on the ideals of the French revolution. However the mix of western thought with traditional ottoman style of survival and supporting "our own people" has been inherited to the Greeks down to the 21st century. Adding to that the numerous conflicts among the different ideologies and the civil war, Greece never managed to reach its full potential as a western European country.

The book is a nice, complete review of the political changes in Greece over the past 200 yrs. Although we don't get an in depth presentation of events and we need to trust the authors objectivity in narrating the events. Specially as we are coming closer and closer to today, an objective and calm presentation of events clearly becomes harder.

Let's hope that the optimistic and positive message with which the authors conclude this work will come true and Greece will manage to obtain the so sought-after progress and stability

[Alex K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind blown. What an excellent, well-written account of the true modern history of Greece. My perception of my own heritage is completely revolutionized, and I understand so much more about the basis for current events and the troubles that Greece has been going through.