The Greek War of Independence

Book excerpt: This “fresh and compelling” study sheds light on the dramatic military, political, and cultural forces that led Greece to liberation in the 19th century (Wall Street Journal). In The Greek War of Independence, Oxford scholar David Brewer presents a vividly detailed and comprehensive study of one of history’s most heroic and bloody struggles for independence. This was the revolution of the Romantic Age, inspiring painters, poets, and patriots the world over, fired as much by Lord Byron's ringing words and Delacroix's brilliant paintings as by Greece's seemingly hopeless plight. For nearly four hundred years, the Ottoman Turks governed Greece, subjecting the country to crushing and arbitrary tax burdens and its peasants to serfdom. The glories of the ancient past were gone, and under Turkish rule Greece was poor and backward. But inspired by the examples of the American and French revolutions, Napoleon's victories, and the Latin American wars of liberation, the Greek people rose up against their Turkish masters in 1821. Over the course of twelve brutal years—a time of terrible violence and bloody massacre—the Greeks and the foreign volunteers who flocked to their cause fought until independence was won in 1833.