Ottoman Greece
History of Greece  | |
|---|---|
| Pre-Hellenic Greece | |
| Prehistory of Greece | |
| -3200 | Cycladic civilization |
| -2700 | Minoan civilization |
| -1550 | Mycenaean civilization |
| Ancient Greece | |
| -1200 | Dark Ages |
| -800 | Archaic |
| -510 | Classical period |
| -323 | Hellenistic |
| -146 | Roman Greece |
| Medieval Greece (C) | |
| 330 | Byzantine Empire |
| 1202 | Fourth Crusade |
| 1453 | Ottoman Greece |
| Modern Greece | |
| 1799 | Republic of the Seven Islands |
| 1822 | Revolutionary War |
| 1832 | Kingdom of Greece |
| 1936 | Plan of August 4 |
| 1941 | Occupation |
| 1946 | Civil War |
| 1967 | Dictatorship of the colonels |
| 1974 | Hellenic Republic |
Ottoman Greece is the term used to designate the period of domination ottoman. Much of Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire , from the fourteenth century , so even before the Conquest of Constantinople , until the end of the war of Greek independence in the early 1830s.
Summary |
The Ottoman conquest
The steps of the conquest
The Byzantine Empire , Roman Empire Greek for 1000 years, had been weakened after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 : the Seljuk Turks settled in Asia Minor and the civil war that followed the defeat completed to weaken the Empire before the Fourth Crusade might lead eventually to the sacking of Constantinople in 1204. The Byzantine Empire, split, gave Greece the plundering of Latin States and Italian republics before the dynasty of Nicaea did not restore, for some decades.
The Ottomans arrived in Europe for the first time in 1354 , with the capture of Gallipoli , in the wake of an earthquake that brought down the walls, by Orhan (son of Osman I. which gave its name to Empire Ottoman) .
In 1430 , he captured Ioannina and Thessaloniki. Constantinople was taken in 1453. Athens fell in 1458. The Greeks resisted in the Peloponnese until 1460 , while the Venetians and Genoese retained a few islands. But in 1500 , most of the plains and the Greek islands were under Ottoman rule.
Cyprus fell in 1571 and the Venetians retained Crete until 1670. Only the Ionian Islands under Venetian control, were never attached to the Ottoman Empire.
Immediate Consequences of the Conquest
The arrival of the Ottomans in Greece led to a major migratory movement and double: within the Greek territory and abroad.
The Greek population fled before the invaders. They left most exposed places: mostly plains but also all the communities along the lines of communication. They went to live in places far removed from the Ottomans (and especially tax collectors). The mountains, which usually dumped their surplus population to the plains, had to accommodate, but also food, more and more refugees. It was the same for islands. New villages were built in places that had never previously known human occupation. The living conditions were difficult and partly explain the low economic development of the Ottoman Greece. The Greeks, however, made this conscious choice of poverty to keep their traditions and lifestyles :
A traditional song reminds this choice:
"In the cities and plains live slaves who live with the Turks.
The brave men prefer to be housed in the gorges and deserts.
Live rather close to the beasts that about the Turks. "
The other movement was one that could be called brain drain to the West. It came in two waves, before and after the respite caused by the defeat of Bajazet against Tamerlane. It was not that the fall of Constantinople who created them. Chrysoloras Manuel was among the first to leave Greece. A little later, there was John Bessarion. After 1453, departed John Argyropoulos or Constantine Lascaris. Apart from the role usually ascribed to them in the Renaissance , they introduced him as the first feelings Philhellenes. By cons, their knowledge and intelligence were lost to Greece entered a period where intellectual activity was reduced .
Resistance
Resistance against the Ottomans was organized by the Church (part), intellectuals and the last Byzantine rulers. The idea of a Christian alliance to resist the invading Ottoman born. Greek intellectuals established in the West, including Cardinal John Bessarion , militated in favor of a crusade against the Turks. For a long time, hopes were Greeks turned to the great Catholic powers of the West. Venice , was also fighting against the Ottomans, trying to preserve its territories in Greece. The Crusades were also organized by the Papacy, the Spain and Naples.
During the first centuries of occupation, the Greeks revolted several times but without result; insurgencies often caused by foreign powers.
In 1571 , a coalition between the Venetians, the Papacy and Spain won the battle of Lepanto against the Turks, which seems to have provoked a new uprising in Greece. But this battle in which 5,000 Greeks took part did not affect the Ottoman occupation in Greece .
The Ottoman occupation
Government and feudalism
Administrative divisions
Greece and other countries in the Balkans formed an administrative unit, the Eyalet of Rumelia (Rumelia was also called the " Turkey in Europe ") headed the BEYLER Bey of Rumelia with its headquarters in Sofia . The berleybey of Anatolia headed for its Asian part of the Empire. The Ottomans divided into six sandjaks Greece, each headed by a sandjakbey, obedient to the Sultan, whose capital was Constantinople since 1453. Five other sandjaks (three in Crete ) were added as and when the Greek islands were conquered . The Ottomans implanted system of millet , not recognizing the people that according to their religions. Orthodox Christians , Armenians and Jews were religious communities apart from .
The sandjaks were divided into pachalics governed by pashas who sandjakbeys the delegated power. The pachalics were further divided into administrative units assigned to a voivod
The beylerbeys the sandjakbeys and pashas bought, often quite expensive, their " office "with the Porte in Constantinople. Once in their province, they sought to repay their investment through direct deductions on taxes. A complaint of local populations could succeed. She gave the couch a pretext for calling the office on sale .
Justice was rendered by Kadis who received no pay. They depended only fines they inflicted, hence the many criticisms against them .
Feudal System
The conquered lands were distributed to the Ottoman warriors (ghazis who were then called spahis ) and servants of the state that held as feudal fiefs ( timar ziamet or after the fee was more or less ), directly under the authority of the Sultan. In fact, according to Muslim doctrine, the land belonged to God and therefore his representative on earth: the sultan. The lands of the Sultan used rewards for services rendered and as compensation for participation in military campaigns . However, they were only concessions with which recipients must provide funding for their equipment for war (horses, weapons ...). The land could be sold or bequeathed, but down under control of the Sultan on the death of the owner.
From the sixteenth century, the feudal lords of origin were supplanted by military officials and Muslim financiers able to lease the taxes .
The holders of fiefs living income (in taxes) they derived from their property. Surplus (on average 60%) went to the State .
Taxes and Conscription
Although the population was subject to tax, it seems that the charges were less serious than Frankish and Byzantine eras, at least at the beginning of the Turkish occupation .
The tax was the main poll (haradj) , which was demanded of Muslims and non-proportional to ability to pay of each taxpayer. This fee helps support the hypothesis that the Ottomans did not attempt to forcibly convert the Greeks in fact, the conversion would have deprived the Ottomans from this source of revenue .
A second tax was the tithe , based on the production of each property . The farmers also pays royalties to their lords and were subjected to various indirect taxes.
Urban dwellers were also subjected to taxes. The majority of economic activities were subject to withholding, in cash or in kind . The merchants were taxed on imports and exports, and this, doubling for non-Muslims, since trade was regarded as an occupation less worthy than the profession of arms. This explains the development of trade with the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, despite the taxes and the importance What would this trade at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The tchiftbozam or "eviction fee" was payable by individuals who have left farm work and moved to the city.
In addition to these charges, non-Muslims had to follow certain rules: do not ride, do not carry weapons, do not build churches. Moreover, the testimony of non-Muslims were not valid in court and they also had to dress in a manner distinct from that of Muslims .
As the Greeks were fulfilling their taxes and did not create any trouble, they were left alone. Non-Muslims were not serving in the army of the Sultan, so the burden of conscription did not weigh on the peasants, with the exception of the "raid of children" (, paidomazoma in Greek, in devsirme Turkish) that appears in the middle of the fourteenth century . Every Christian family should provide a son of five: the Turkish officer picked the best teenagers constituted the strongest and most beautiful, to enlist in the corps of Janissaries , an elite unit of the Ottoman army. Every four years, children between 8 and 20 years were collected in villages and, after an Islamic indoctrination calculated to rouse and iron discipline in special schools, they became Janissaries. The power of the Janissary corps drove the Turkish children to substitute for Christian children.
The public opposition against the taxes and tribute from the children (paidomazoma) was brutally repressed. If the parents of abducted children were opposed to this collection, they were hanged on the spot in front of their home . In 1705 , an Ottoman officer in charge of recruiting new Janissaries in Macedonia was killed by the Greeks who tried to fight against the burden of devsirme. The rebels were beheaded and their heads placed on the walls of Thessaloniki . The devsirme was afraid of Greek families who, despite themselves, let their son, who later could become their oppressors.
The samples of the administration coupled with those of the feudal system had resulted in a flight tax. The Greeks preferred to leave their village or region to take refuge in the mountains or abroad .
Economy
Religion
The Holy Synod , composed of senior officials and Metropolitans of the Patriarchate, was conducting the election, to form, the Ecumenical Patriarch , but in reality it was the Divan imposing his choice, and who, through the back door , could also drop . The Sultan regarded the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church as the leader of the Greeks in the empire. The Patriarch was accountable to the Sultan of good behavior of the Greeks, and in return he was left wide powers on the Greek community and the privileges he had obtained under the Byzantine Empire . Patriarch controlled both courts, schools as churches. The monks thus became the real leaders of the villages. Some Greek cities, including Athens and Rhodes maintained a system of municipal government, while others came under the authority of the Turkish governors. Some regions, such as Mani , the Epirus and parts of Crete remained virtually independent. For their part, the patriarchs chose to remain under the authority of the Ottomans tolerant rather than being under the authority of the Venetians , Roman Catholics , more threatening to the Orthodox faith of the Greeks.
The object of the Ottomans, favoring the Orthodox religion, could be political, in fact, the Turks could cause a deep divide between the churches in order to avoid a common resistance to all Christianity . Thus, when the Ottomans battled the Venetians, the Greeks rallied a majority on their side. Finally, the Orthodox Church helped to preserve the Greek heritage.
In general, the Ottomans n'imposrent not the Greeks to become Muslims. However, many were converted, often to escape the economic pressure imposed by the Turks (a special tax was levied on non-Muslims). Many Greeks became Crypto-Christians, that is to say the Greeks supposedly Muslims who continued to practice their Orthodox faith in secret. The Crypto-Christians were in danger of being killed if they were caught practicing another religion when converted to Islam (apostasy is a capital crime in Islam). The Greeks converted to Islam and were not Crypto-Christians became Turks to the Greek Orthodox.
Demographics
The inclusion of Greece in the Ottoman Empire had other consequences in the longer term. The economy collapsed (mainly because of shopping malls who moved to Smyrna and Constantinople ) and the population dwindled.
The consolidation of Ottoman rule was followed by two periods of Greek emigration distinct. The first touched the Greek intellectuals such as Jean Bessarion , George Gemistos Plethon and Marcus Musurus, migrating to Western Europe and participating in the development of the Renaissance.
The second wave touched the Greeks deserting the valleys of the peninsula and resettling in the mountains where the terrain made it difficult to presence of the Ottomans, whether military or administrative. Moreover, the Ottoman censuses did not include a large number of Greeks living in mountainous areas. Wars and emigration did fall demography: the Greek population was 1.5 million inhabitants in 1700 to the Ottoman Empire . Ottoman rule was not a homogeneous population, thus Morea Turks lived together with the Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Gypsies. This cohabitation is even more diverse in the north of the country resided in Bulgaria , the Vlachs , and Albanians ... . After their expulsion from Spain in 1492 , many Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki.
Each Greek region cut off from its neighbors, communications were hampered by the fact that only the Turks were allowed to travel on horseback. Greek dialects absorbed many Turkish-Arabic words. Greek music and other elements of Greek culture were influenced by Ottoman culture.
However, the system of millet (see above), and its organization in religious communities may have allowed the Greeks to preserve the Greek language and Orthodox Christian religion. Presumably, without this particular system, the Greek language would have disappeared just as the Latin .
The Greek language of that time is divided into two streams. On the one hand, there is a language more or less imitated ancient Greek, and the other a popular language, enriched with new elements.
Greek intellectual life is marked by the opposition since the days of Alexander the Great. The traditional side based on the imitation of classical antiquity is opposed to popular tradition, further away from the Greek people.
Although there have been efforts to reconcile the two streams to form a Greek civilization, they are somewhat suspended after the fall of Constantinople. They resumed under the leadership of the Church whose major purpose is the defense of orthodoxy , then confused with the idea of nation. The first century of Turkish rule is then dominated by the publication of books on the defense of the Christian faith. The Church considers dangerous return to a study of classical antiquity as well as humanism.
Humanism is yet cultivated by the Greek scholars who take refuge in the West, and participate in the development of the Renaissance.
From the middle of the sixteenth century , begins a new period for the development of culture, under the leadership of Patriarch Jeremiah II, who urged the establishment of schools . Moreover, the Greek schools were opened in Italy (the Greek College in Rome in 1517 for example), and students trained and then return to Greece, bringing pieces of Western civilization. Many Greek books are also printed in Italy by the Greeks. Cultural centers are multiplying to Greece and Secondary schools eventually opened up everywhere.
The establishment is popular in this period of new topics as the fate of the Greeks abroad, bondage, resistance ...
Decline of the Ottoman Empire
After the failure of the Battle of Vienna in 1683 , the Ottoman Empire entered a long period of decline, both domestic and military, leading to increased corruption, and repression. This caused more discontent and uprisings.
After capturing the Peloponnese in 1715 by the Turks , the political unity of Greece has been completed. The eighteenth century is a century while more stable than its predecessors. Indeed, conflict Turkish-Venetian and Turkish-Russian short-term and provide a relative peace in Greece, which promotes the growth of economic and trade, which the Greeks have a virtual monopoly. Only the Jews Salonika and the Armenians in Anatolia were their competition. Smyrna and Salonica became the economic capitals of the Empire, followed by other shopping centers such as Ioannina , Heraklion , Patras.
p> On the other hand, the position of some Greeks educated and privileged improved. More Empire grew, so did the need for recourse to the Greeks having technical faculties, administrative, financial, was felt. Areas in which the Ottomans had shortcomings. The Phanariotes , a class of wealthy Greeks living in the Fanar district of Constantinople , began to become powerful. They occupied the load among other Dragoman of the Porte (the Sublime Porte as one of the designations of the Ottoman Empire), a function which they manage to raise the importance to that of Minister of Foreign Affairs with their knowledge of the Western Europe. Their travels in Western Europe as merchants or diplomats made them rub the ideas of liberalism and nationalism. Thus, it is within the Phanariotes the Greek nationalist movement was born.The Greek national sentiment was also boosted by Catherine II of Russia , who hoped to acquire land with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, including Istanbul, and encouraged the Greeks to revolt. However, during the Russo-Turkish War which broke out in 1768 , the Greeks do not really revolted and the Russians were forced to abandon Constantinople. But the Treaty of Kk-Kainardji ( 1774 ) gave the Russians the right to defend the Orthodox subjects to the Sultan, which led Russia to interfere more and more regularly in the affairs of the Empire. This, combined with new ideas of the French Revolution of 1789, began to reconnect the Greeks with the outside world and led to a movement developing national asset.
Greece was not really involved in the Napoleonic wars , only one episode was important. When the French armies captured Venice in 1797 , they also acquired the Ionian islands , which became an independent state: the Republic of Seven Islands. Among those who led these islands, there was Ioannis Kapodistrias , which was subsequently the first head of state of independent Greece.
After the Napoleonic Wars, Greece does not relapse into isolation. Indeed, French and British writers began to visit the country and collecting Greek antiquities. These Philhellenes played an important role in mobilizing support for the independence of Greece.
This period saw the birth of a rivalry between France , the Russian and Ali Pasha for the control of the southern Balkans. The question was how to power in Greece belong, and he was in no question of an independent nation.
But the Greek national sentiment gained momentum for the creation of evidence Filiki Etairia (Society of Friends), a secret society formed in Odessa in 1814 , which provided an insurgency funded by the wealthy Greek Greek community in exile and with the assistance from Russia.
Revolutionary War
In 1821, the Greeks revolted against the Ottoman occupation. They had initially won many victories and proclaimed independence. However, it contravened the principles of the Congress of Vienna and the Holy Alliance , which imposed a European balance and prevented any change. Contrary to what was happening to the rest of Europe, the Holy Alliance did not intervene to quell the insurgents Greek Liberals.
The Liberal and National Uprising was not appropriate to the Austria of Metternich , principal architect of the policy of the Holy Alliance. However, Russia , another key player in the geopolitics of Europe, supported the uprising by religious solidarity Orthodox and geo-strategic interest (control of the Straits of Dardanelles and Bosphorus ). La France , another active member of the Holy Alliance (she had to intervene in Spain against the Liberals) had an ambiguous position: the Greeks, although liberals were first Christians and their uprising against the Ottoman Muslims could look like a new crusade. The Great Britain , a liberal country, was mainly interested in the situation of the region on the road to India and London wanted to exercise a form of control. Finally, for all of Europe, Greece was the cradle of civilization and art since the ancient times.
The Greek victories were short lived. The Sultan had called for help his Egyptian vassal Mehemet Ali , who had despatched his son in Greece Ibrahim Pasha with a fleet and, initially, 17,000 men. The intervention of Ibrahim was decisive: the Peloponnese had been reconquered in 1825 ; lock Missolonghi fell in 1826 , Athens was taken in 1827. It only remained then to Greece as Nafplio , Hydra and Aegina.
A strong current of opinion Philhellene developed in the West. It was then decided to intervene on behalf of Greece, the cradle of civilization, the vanguard Christian East, whose strategic position was evident. By the Treaty of London of July 1827 Notes Bibliography
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