Nationalism and Nationaliry

,ji
p

I $1
159-79. The dislocation of the Greek Patriarch of Antioch wns considered 'the hmt John S. Koliopoulos
real victory for Arab nationalism'.
I

Paschalis M. Kitromilides

is Professor of Political Science at the University of Athens and Brigandage and Irredentism in
director of the Centre d'Etudes d'Asie Mineure. His published Nineteenth-Century Greece
work includes Small States in the Modern World (1979), Culture and
Society in Contemporary Europe (1981) and Iossipos Moisiodax:
The Coordinates of Balkan Thought in the Eighteenth Century
(1985).
In the Greek War of Independence and in subsequent military and
political developments a central role was played by a distinctive i 1
military class which was the product of a combiliation of
1 I
mountainous terrain with foreign conquest ar~drule. The relevant . ,
, ,,
geographical context at the start of the nineteenth century was I!
historically conditioned: the existence of numerous mountain com- I /:
munities contrasting with a sparse lowland population. The origins
I'
of this demographic pattern may lie in environmental neglect and i,
decline during the early modern period, resulting in the exhaustion 11
of capital invested earlier in water-courses, cisterns, mills, farm 1
I I

buildings, bridges and roads. In consequence the land annually

lost some of its power to sustain life. Diminishing productivity and
general unhealthiness due to environmental decline, together with
the hazards associated with Turkish conquest and rule, led to the
relocation of a large part of the population in the highlands; the
majority took up animal husbandry, an ecological adjustment with
important and far-reaching consequences for the course of modern
Greek history.
Pastoralists in the affected regions practised transhumance
of sheep and goats, raised for milk, wool and meat. Large
flocks, accompanied by shepherd families, their horses, mules,
and possessions, moved in late April from the lowland to the
mountain pastures and returned in November. The true home of
shepherd families was the Pindus mountains, easily accessible from
the plains and valleys of central Greece. The Pindus range, the
adjacent mountains of Macedonia and Rumeli, and the lowlands of
Thessaly. Arta, Aetolia, Phthiotis and Pieria provided the appro-
priate combination of summer and winter pasture. Some pastoral
groups moved their flocks longer distances, sometimes across the
68 Nationalism and Nationality
Balkans, but most practised a less far-ranging transhumance, a
migratory cycle based on the turn of the seasons and confined
to more or less the same mountain districts and lowland winter
pastures. Migratory shepherds, on both their spring and autumn
journeys, followed pr-arranged and relatively safe routes, usually
along the region's rivers.2
This demographic and ecological pattern involved dispersed
habitation and an unsettled mode of life which accentuated the
insecurity arising out of foreign and arbitrary rule, and favoured
the development of a separate society in the highlands, strange
and basically hostile to the towns and the lowland world in general.
The use or threat of force, a primary determinant of access to and
defence of vital sources of livelihood, accentuated the climate of
insecurity and competition. Physical and socioeconomic fragmen-
tation, on the other hand, favoured strong local attachments and
loyalties combined with mistrust towards outside authority. This
social organization favoured sheep-stealing, robbery, and arms
bearing, which in turn contributed to the development of a military
class with its own ethos. This class grew within the foreign ruler's
security system; unable to bring the mountainous region under
effective state control and station garrisons at strategic points, the
Ottomans licensed bands of Christian irregulars, generally known
as armatoles, and entrusted them with the task of keeping away
brigands, known as klephts, from the villages and vulnerable
mountain passes which state officials, military detachments, flocks
of livestock and caravans had to cross.3
The klephts and armatoles were the product of insecurity
of life and property, conquest, foreign rule, and a terrain and
economy that favoured lawlessness in general and brigandage
in particular. They were mountaineers, mostly pastoralists, and
usually predatory in their habits. Whether bandits or militiamen
in the service of the authorities, they valued arms, and thrived on
violence and open or veiled defiance of established authority. No
doubt the availability of arms in the eighteenth century contributed
to the militarization of their defiance. B b a , an Albanian term
indicating pact and honour, was a regulatory principle in the world
of mountain outlaws, while pallikaria or leventia, indicating manli-
ness, courage and bravery, was a greatly esteemed ideal. Members
of this special group were also expected to be magnanimous,
generous, self-disciplined and capable of great feats of physical
strength and endurance. They had to distinguish themselves in
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 69
an area where military talent, in contrast to resources, was never
scarce.
The armatoles were former outlaws who had been amnestied
and employed to suppress banditry. Setting a thief to catch a
thief, a ploy used ever since rulers sought to protect their
exposed territories and frontiers without keeping standing armies,
was common practice. Armatoles were charged with the safety of
mountain passes and maintenance of law and order in the districts
of their jurisdiction, the armatoliks. These coincided with certain
administrative units in areas where brigandage was prevalent.
Each armatolik was entrusted to a kapitanos (captain), usually
chosen from among the ablest and most dangerous outlaws and
receiving his authority directly from the Turkish authorities in
the presence of the Christian notables. He pledged fidelity to
the state and was commissioned to keep a number of armatoles
under his command in order to be able to perform his duties.
The captain, once invested with formal authority, patrolled the
armatolik, collected as well as state and other taxes the special
taxes paid by Christian subjects towards the salaries of armatoles
under his command, and did his best to run the district as a family
preserve. raising flocks and engaging in farming and commerce.
The position gradually became hereditary and was identified with
a number of local families such as the Boukouvalas, the Blakhavas,
the Stornaris, the Kontoyanis and the Varnakiotis.
The klephts were mainly fugitives, debtors, outlaws. misfits.
adventurers, victims of oppression, men not attached to the land
by property or other obligations, who took to the hills and became
brigands. A real or imagined injustice, an infraction of the law, or
merely family tradition were enough to send a young man outside
the bounds of lawful society. In a world where the line separating
legality from illegality was blurred, crossing it did not always
involve a serious infringement of the law. By virtue of their
defiance of established authority, the klephts captured the popular
imagination and were exalted in the folk songs of the region. As
members of a band of outlaws. klephts were driven by two primary
considerations: survival, which was no easy matter, and amnesty.
which often entailed enlistment in a band of armatoles. To achieve
recognition, klephts had to prove their worth to the authorities;
through violence and terror they made themselves dangerous and
feared, at the same time discrediting their adversaries on the right
side of the law. The most enterprising, cunning and dangerous
Y;
,
1
1, I*;
,;li:l
'I!
70 Na~ionalismand Narionali~y
survived and attained the cherished goal: legitimacy as armatoles.
Once amnestied and invested with the authority to keep the
law, they used all means at their disposal to stay in power; when
deposed, as most ultimately were, they reverted to brigandage
and tried through violence and guile to re-emerge as armatoles.
Klephts were therefore indispensable to the particular system of
security that had developed in the region. Victims of tyrannical
officials and primates before taking to the hills, they became
instruments of oppression in the hands of the same powerful
elements. As klephts, they lived on plunder and extortion, indis-
criminately robbing the wealthy and the poor, preferably those
who had more to take but generally those they feared less. The
support that klephts were able to attract from the common folk was
the result of fear of reprisals rather than sympathy. The approval
and admiration reflected in folk songs for defying authority cannot
possibly be interpreted as proof of support for the klepht and his
pursuits, or of selective robbery on his part; when an outlaw, he
was an equal scourge to the rich and the poor, the Muslim and the
Christian. That peasants seldom co-operated with the authorities
to hunt the outlaws is neither surprising nor viewable as ,a form
of social protest against oppressors and exploiters. Far from being
champions and avengers, klephts terrorized the helpless peasantry
no less than did their powerful oppressors, if only because the
former were more exposed and vulnerable and the latter had
the state's armed force at their disposal; and, far from redressing
intolerable social evils, outlaws of that species invited by their acts
punitive measures whose consequences were felt more by the poor
and weak than by the wealthy and mighty. Similarly, notwith-
standing the unmistakable appeal of the mountain to the ordinary
peasant, who came to consider it a heaven of free men, there can
be little doubt that the ideal was developed and propounded more
by post-Independence nationalist intellectuals and historians than
by the oppressed peasantry. The ordinary klepht was a wretched,
hunted fugitive seeking,temporary refuge in the klephtic band and
aspiring to return through amnesty to lawful society, preferably as
an armatole.4
It was a game that required guile. calculation, carefully
measured defiance, and acceptance of its rules by everyone
concerned. Besides klephts and armatoles. it involved a weak
central authority which was obliged to tolerate a measure of
lawlessness, and a populace at whose expense this lawlessness was
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism
practised and which essentially had no effective means of defence
71
short of taking to the hills. That some powerful and famous klephts
like Katsantonis and Nikotsaras were crushed when they became
more defiant than the system of relative security and measured
self-regulating lawlessness allowed, proves that the klephts had to
operate within the undefined but unmistakable limits of calculated
lawlessness at the expense of the weak.
Like armatolism, klephtism involved more than the bearing
of arms, It was an integral part of the security system that had
developed in the mountainous and virtually autonomous districts
of the region. In fact klephts and armatoles, even when they
disturbed the peace and plundered the people with impunity,
placing themselves outside the law, were equally an element of
social stability, an instrument even of social and political control
and immobilization. Whether 'wilde' or 'tame', pursuing their
particular ends or in collusion, the representatives of this social
group proved an effective safety valve and useful instrument in
the hands of the rulers. Born into military life and conscious of
their power, they represented a potential threat to the security of
the state; but their vested interest in the particular regime and the
network of social relationships already described prevented them
from rising to national leadership. When in the 1820s they actually
did so, it was with some reluctance, in the context of the power
vacuum created in the region following the demise of Ali Pasha.
The War of Independence further increased the importance of
the Greek military element within the region under consideration.
Notwithstanding legislation by successive revolutionary assemblies
concerning the administration of insurgent districts. which gives
the mistaken impression of an organized government, the new
regime was very slow in taking shape and insurgent captains were
hesitant to commit themselves to it. In the first place, competent
functionaries, who could convincingly claim to represent the
central government, were scarce or non-existent. Secondly, even
when available, such functionaries were ineffec~ivebecause they
lacked both the means to put into effect the enacted measures
and the prestige associated with the supreme authority of the
land. Last, but not least, the insurgents had never really known
a central government that was not foreign, physically distant, and
usually exacting and hostile; as a result they could not easily accept
 72 Nationalism and Nationality
that the new one might be any different. Increased authority and
power in the hands of the captains, on the other hand, was less
liable to affect the military's general attitude towards authority and
its members' sense of their hitherto enjoyed status and social role.
At least, this was so in the initial stages of the conflict, when the
Greek cause appeared to have little prospect of success and when
traditional attitudes had not yet been rendered unacceptable by
new norms of acceptable behaviour backed up by newly emerging
vested interests. Far from being sufficiently imbued with a
suddenly developing national sentiment, the various groups of
the Greek military class continued to respond to local exigencies
and developments and, when possible, avoided openly committing
themselves or acting on their commitment.
The captains, more than the other indigenous elites, temporized
until overtaken by events, and joined the struggle, more often
than not, to secure a position of power and influence or to
dispossess the enemy or a rival. Most treated the authorities
appointed by the revolutionary government with utmost suspicion
and contempt, particularly those who were not under their control
or influence or who refused to tolerate their excesses. Powerful
captains usually disregarded such civil authorities as ventured into
their districts, and ruled as petty despots. Dimos Skaltsas, captain
of Lidoriki in central Rumeli, who had risen to the captanlik from
the ranks of the klephts, ruled the district with no regard for
established authority; like an 'emperor', complained the district
governor, who remained a practically impotent representative
of central authority until the captain's demise.5 'These people',
wrote the district governor of nearby Karpenisi, 'know not what
government means'; and he implored Alexander Mavrokordatos,
government representative in western Rumeli, to intercede with
George Peslis, captain of Sovolako, so that he and the inhabitants
of the district might show more respect for his authority.-or a but had since faccd many adversities.1
time, and before he fell both from grace and to an inglorious death
from the Acropolis. Odysseus held all power in Athens: military,
civil and legislative.7
Captains competed for position and the means to keep as many
armed men as possible, usually in the context of pre-war captanliks
and the associated network of interests. Through the right connec-
tions and alliances, by force of arms if necessary or by collaborating
with the enemy if force was of no avail. captains vied with each
other for control of a district and its resources. Possession of the
Koliopoulos. Brigandage and Irredentism 73
means to pay and feed the armed men under their command
was the main preoccupation of the captains at a time when the
government had neither adequate revenues to satisfy such basic
demands. nor the administrative machinery required to ascertain
that funds were used for the needs of the soldiery. Moreover. for
lack of cash and proper agencies of payment, direct access by the
military commander to the resources of the land was often the only
solution to thc problem of keeping the armed bands in the field.
Captains held fast to the territories they had seized, considering
them a legitimate prize. George Karai'skakis considered the district
of Agrapha, which he claimed to have liberated. 'legitimate
conquest'.H Odysseus held fast to the Acropolis of Athens, whence
he controlled Attica and part of Boeotia, until dislodged by rival
captains; and when he signed a truce with the Turks and submitted
in 1825 to a friendly Albanian chieftain, it was with the aim of
gaining reinstatement in the region by forcing the revolutionary
government to come to terms with him.9
Disputes over control of certain districts led to fierce little
civil wars that seriously limited the scale and impact of the war
against the Turks. Such disputes raged between Karaiskakis and
John Rangos over the district of Agrapha, which was a bone of
contention from the outbreak of hostilities until the former's death
in 1827. Agrapha was a 'border district' contested by both Greeks
and Turks, who alternated the appointment of authorities with
bouts of plunder. Rangos, a foreigner to Agrapha - he came from
nearby Valtos - but a friend of Mavrokordatos. was appointed
military governor of the district. No sooner had he secured the
position than he sent his trusted lieutenants to rule in his name, and
clashed with Karaiskakis and his men. The 'lawful' heir to the local
captanlik was Kostas Boukouvalas, scion of a famous armatolic
family that had been associated with the captanlik before the war
Some captains amassed riches or simply added to those they
already possessed, but others saw their fortunes disappear.
Varnakiotis, captain of Xeromero before the war, was a powerful
man before submitting to the Turks in 1822 - most probably after
securing a better bargain from a friendly Albanian commander
than the revolutionary government was in a position to grant
him. His considerable property in land. stored grain, sheep and
cattle became the easy prey of his former lieutenants, particularly
George Tsongas, a Sarakatsan who stepped into his master's shoes
 74 Narionalism and Narionaliry
and had the government appoint him military governor of the dis-
trict. Shortly before his submission and dispossession, the Senate
of Western Greece, the local assembly of captains and primates,
addressed the proud captain in most servile terms, fearing him
more than it did the revolutionary government or the sultan.11
For similar reasons and motives many captains went over to
the Turks, or merely threatened to do so. Submission to the Turks
and collaboration to any degree with the enemy, deplorable and
contemptible though they may have been to the representatives of
the insurgent government and the emerging new political entity,
were actions taken within the context of traditional roles and
values - indeed, the very roles and values associated with the
development of the military class of the region already described.
When, following the fall of Missolonghi to the Turks in April 1826
and the submission of most Rumeliot military chiefs to their former
masters, Andrew Siafakas was appointed captain of the armatolik
of Lidoriki by Mehmed Reshid Pasha, neither side appeared to
consider the act extraordinary.12 Even less extraordinary, to the
adversaries at least, appears to have been co-operation of a more
discreet character, like the mutually beneficial and unheralded
relationship between Tsongas and a friendly Albanian chieftain,
Bekir Djogador, who entrusted their flocks of sheep to each
other's protection whenever the Greeks invaded Bekir's domain in
Preveza or the Albanians did the same in the opposite direction.13
In more than one sense, submission and collaboration grew out
of the traditional exchange of roles between outlaws and organs
of security. It now operated in a novel context; the emergence
of an alternative central authority and the addition of a political
dimension to outlawry raised the stakesdramatically and made the
old game a rather grim undertaking.
Certainly, concern for the safety and well-being of the inhabit-
ants of the district under a captain's jurisdiction was a considera-
tion no less weighty than pursuit of personal and family interests
and advancement; in fact, they were inseparable. 'To bring the
poor wretches back to their huts', wrote Gogos Bakolas, a.wise old
captain, to justify his submission to his former masters following
the Greek defeat at Peta in August 1822 which left his border
captanlik of Radovitsi at the Turks' mercy.14 Concern for the
safety of the people - and for honour - prompted Karaiskakis, too,
to open negotiations in May 1824 with a Turkish commander: or so
he maintained with great and disarming force in a letter addressed
75
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and lrredenrism
to a pasha. 15 With Greek fortunes. especially in the border zone.
always in the balance, no responsible leader of the respective
communities could be expected to disregard the real danger of
his district becoming a battleground of adversaries lacking an
organized supply system and depending for their daily needs on
contributions and plunder. The captain, in his capacities as chief of
irregulars, military governor, and collector of taxes in his district.
had every interest In keeping the war and the attendant ravages
at bay, and securing a measure of peace for the people under his
protection. A captain's power and authority, particularly in times
of rapidly changing circumstances, rested almost exclusively on the
number of armed men he was able to keep under his command;
and when old loyalties were loosened or severed, the only effective
means of keeping irregulars attached to the band were salaries and
rations, which had to be secured by all means and at any cost.
Another related factor behind submission and collaboration.
in addition to concern for the safety of one's people and the
uninterrupted collection of vital revenue, was the tangled and
conflicting networks of alliances and their respective interests
in the region. Alliances were formed and re-formed and feuds
intensified due to the revolut~onary government's efforts to
harness individual military expertise and influence to the general
war effort. Theoretically, the result of such efforts and generally of
the exercise of central authority should have been the dissolution
of alliances and the termination of feuds. But until the central
government was in a position to reimburse military service, which
became possible only after the arrival from London of the first
instalment of the War Loan in 1824 and as national revenue was
collected and became available under government supervision,
captains and their pursuits had to be tolerated. Indeed, they had to
be favoured, when, submission to the enemy included, they were
felt to be generally harmless in the long run since they neutralized
each other and gradually undermined the power of the military
class.
Insurgent or submissive, captains were always sensitive to the
size of their bands, which they organized around a nucleus of
trusted men, preferably kinsmen, and which they always tried to
expand. A sizeable and compact band was a formidable weapon.
as an instrument of politics and influence no less than as an instru-
ment of war. Commissions and ranks carried so many salaries and
rations in cash or kind. Captains were never short of devices when
 76 Nationalism and Nationality
it came to attracting and keeping armed men in their bands. One's
gain was another's loss, and none could afford to lose unless he was
prepared to be crushed - or just to be 'chased away from the pie'.
as an observant captain put it,16 which led to the same fate. Salaries
and rations, like control of territory and its resources. became
a primary objective of military entrepreneurs and a powerful
, ,p.1 instrument in the hands of politicians. Increased and prompt
, >,I payments were interpreted as a show of government favour, while
I if
delayed o r cancelled payments signified disfavour. An increase
I! ! of salaries to one captain, even when absolutely necessary to
)I: strengthen a military position, provoked pressures and intrigues
rl! from many quarters for similar increases. Some had recourse to
I
time-honoured practices by which they secured free quarters and
A: salaries not necessarily approved by the central government, such
f,, as agreements with villages to keep the peace for a fee. Despite
V.. ' a solemn agreement among the captains and primates of western
Rumeli, in a special assembly of February 1822, that the armatolik
:;1 1
system should end and the captains never again have recourse to
the practices associated with it, these did not cease everywhere.
i! When salaries were slow in reaching the captains, or were
8'
I
/
considered inadequate and below their needs or expectations,
If they had recourse to ways and means they preferred in the first
i,! f place: contributions, usually raised with the use of force and with
ji~ impunity. The range of such forced contributions was almost
/i
limitless, varying according to the particular habits and talents
of each captain and local circumstances. Only the contributor did
not vary: he was always the unarmed and vulnerable peasant of
I
the plain o r the migratory shepherd. Border captains in particular,
lu1 who were essentially independent of the two command systems at
t i war, moved back and forth across undefined lines of jurisdiction,
IP seeking, in addition to rank and income appropriate to their
yi military talent. to maximize their material profit through plunder.
i ?? Military entrepreneurs of that region supplemented taxation of
114 the settled and vulnerable peasantry with plunder outside their
districts. Government representatives and military commanders
li' allowed captains and their ill-paid and poorly supplied men to
l/i! make forays into areas controlled by the enemy and carry off
!b whatever provisions came their way. preferably sheep and cattle.
li ,' Irregulars had to be paid and fed regularly, one way o r another,
,
8 ,
It, and when it came to claiming their due, they would stop at nothing.
'I! Pay and rations were both a means to carry on the fight against the
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 77
enemy and an end in themselves, since most knew little else besides
the life of a freebooter and the general devastation and disruption
caused by the war had dramatically increased the demand for paid
service in arms. In this sense, and to the extent that they entered
into agreement with a captain to serve for a monthly salary.
irregulars were mercenaries, but of a particular kind. As members
of the military class described earlier, they were associated with a
particular chief or sct of chiefs, identified with the same locality
as themselves. For all the war's upheavals and the attendant
loosening of social relationships, generally men led and followed
relatives and acquaintances, not strangers; and %hen they chose to
defect from a camp. they did so in the company of comrades and
under their petty chief.
Salaries were a primary consideration for both the irregular and
his captain, as of course was the prospect ot loot and food. For
lack of an effective supply system, the problem of provisioning
the roving bands of irregulars was solved by unofficially letting
the men help themselves from the possessions of those who had
something to lose. In the absence of effective central government
and because of the shifting fortunes and territorial zones of the
adversaries, everyone whose possessions attracted the attention
of the hungry irregular and who could not offer armed resistance
for the defence of property was considered 'enemy'. The flocks of
the local and passing shepherds attracted the irregular's attention
more than any other kind of property, no doubt because sheep
and goats can be made to walk and because of the local mastery in
sheep-stealing. Many of the Greek irregulars - and their Turkish
and Albanian adversaries - who fell on the sheep and goats of the
more vulnerable shepherds with such devastating familiarity with
sheep-stealing had been, and continued to be, shepherds.
In search of food, paid military service and booty, and while
fighting to secure what they considered their due, captains and
irregulars fought the war to a successful end, undermining all
the while, unintentionally but irrevocably, the very foundations of
their class. The extensive and systematic pillage and dispossession
practised throughout the war, which satisfied immediate needs.
seriously disrupted the regional economy. The pastoral economy
in particular, which constituted the main foundation of the military
class, was dealt a very serious blow. It could sustain institutiona-
lized and professional sheep-stealing, but could not absorb the
large-scale losses caused by undisciplined and hungry bands of
78 Nalionalism and Narionalily
irregulars. Mercenary and predatory by tradition, captains and
their men served whatsoever masters and causes they judged best
suited their interests. Ultimately, if indirectly, they nevertheless
advanced the cause of the emerging national state, which proved
a formidable master. Captains, however, did not recede into
oblivion. They survived the war and the post-war upheavals
and lingered on, delaying their demise by adapting to the new
realities and finding for themselves new roles in the emerging new
socio-political framework.
The Greek national state, disappointing though it may have
been to many Greeks. was a state that could be expanded. Most
Greeks viewed the territorial settlement of 1830 as nothing more
than a temporary arrangement. Successive Greek territorial gains
were expected to keep pace with Ottoman decline, subject, of
course, to the fluctuating interests and influence of the European
powers in the Balkans and the Near East. Those. however,
were variables that were subject t o different interpretations, and
ignored the objectives and requirements both of the Greek state
and of Christians in the sultan's domains. The more sober and
responsible social elements in both realms were understandably
reluctant to disturb the peace in the area and thus undermine
the fragile security in both countries. But there were many others
who seemed to thrive on such upheavals. To the captains and
their clientage, who needed suitable occasions to exercise their
predatory talents, as well as to other parties that derived a
political profit from band activity, such disturbances were more
than welcome; and when disturbances were slow in materializing,
they were readily incited in the name of the unredeemed brothers
across the border. Ottoman misrule and oppression could always
provide the necessary occasion for a call to arms, while grievances
related to the particular political game that had developed in the
Greek state contributed to the outbreak of such disturbances in
more than one way.
Upheavals of that nature produced great dislocation, particular-
ly in the northern Greek provinces and the neighbouring domains
of the sultan, where irredentist and brigand bands were attracted,
often with the same objectives. The disturbances of 1835-6 in the
northern provinces of Greece, in which disbanded and disaffected
irregulars of the War of Independence sought to force the state to
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and lrredentkm 79
re-employ them, produced a serious dislocation on both sides of
the frontier and heaped on the northern Greek provinces hordes
of destitute refugees from the sultan's domains. An irredentist
foray into the same domains in 1840, on the occasion of another
crisis of the 'Eastern Question', again allowed Greek nationalists
to make their point and provided predatory irregulars with an
opportunity to rob with impunity. Three years later the September
1843 revolt, which opened the way for the promulgation of the
constitution of 1844, also inaugurated a period in which the
government manipulated irredentism and irredentist bands of all
shades and pursuits to feed nationalist aspirations and satisfy the
captains and their following at the expense of the peasantry on
both sides of the border. Ioannis Kolettis, prime minister (1844-7)
and recognized patron of the Rumeliot pallikars (braves), allowed
captains to pursue their interests relatively freely but mostly across
the border. In that way Kolettis satisfied a potentially dangerous
social element without burdening state finances, while creating
the impression that Greek national aspirations were not being
abandoned. Kolettis manipulated the traditional military element
without precipitating a break with Turkey and without favouring
one set of military condot~ieriagainst another more than was safe
for the security of the state and his regime.
The end of Kolettis's regime in 1847 inaugurated a period
of instability, with roving bands of irregulars led by disaffected
captains. What started as a game of measured and calculated use
of band activity between 'ins' and 'outs' soon became transformed
into a clash between conflicting ideological and political currents.
especially after news of the 1848 revolutions in Europe began to
appear in the Athenian press. Certain demands of a liberal-con-
stitutional nature, which were never more than a smoke-screen for
the pursuit of objectives more dear to the captains of Rumeli, did
not mislead the government. A series of measures. such as permis-
sion to recruit irregulars at state expense and repeated amnesties
of outlaws, took the ground from under the feet of the rebels and
led to the gradual collapse of the disturbances.
The political turmoil of the late 1840s was followed by the
irredentist upheavals of the mid-1850s, occasioned by the Crimean
War. Even beforc the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and
Turkey in the autumn of 1853, nationalist feeling was rising in
Greece as a result of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of
the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in May 1453.
 80 Nationalism and Nationality
There was much talk about the establishment of a 'Greek Empire'
on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and the liberation of the
unredeemed brothers who were expected to rise in arms at the first
signal from Greece. Free and unredterned Greeks would embark
upon the 'Second Greco-Turkish War'on the pattern of the 'first'
war against the Turks, the War of Independence.17 By January
1854, Greek nationalists were able to incite revolt in Epirus and
Thessaly and to send across the border several thousand volunteers
to support the rebels.
The 1854 irredentist rising in the sultan's domains bordering on
Greece attracted, in addition to nationalist enthusiasts from across
the border, the traditional military element of the region and a
great collection of brigands and other outlaws. To confront the
Christian would-be liberators and marauders the Porte sent hordes
of Muslim Albanian irregulars, who proved more than a match for
their opponents in the art of dispossessing friend and foe. Before
long, the rising degenerated into indiscriminate and systematic
plunder, to the great disappointment of the nationalist press which
for the best part of a year had been exhorting the Greeks to join the
national crusade in Epirus and Thessaly. A change of government
and policy in mid-1854, which came after the intercession of the
British and the French with the king, put an end to the rising and
saved Greece some face: by the time the Greek government was
obliged to bow before foreign intervention, the rising had, for all
practical purposes, spent its force, and the insurgent bands had
turned into groups of undisciplincd marauders. The collapse of the
rising in Epirus and Thessaly sent into the northern provinces of
Greece hundreds of destitute refugees, many of them rebels who
had been compromised in the eyes of the Ottoman authorities and
could not return to their homes.
Frustrated national aspirations and resentment at the establish-
ment by the great European powers of an international financial
commission to examine and report on the poor shape of Greek
finances, as well as identification with the struggle of the Italians
for unification, led to the October 1862 revolution, which forced
King Otto and Queen Amalia to abdicate their rights to the throne
and leave the country. Until the arrival the following year of a
new king, the young Prince George of the Danish royal house of
Gliicksburg, and the promulgation of a new constitution in 1864,
the rebels had time to break open prisons and let loose scores of
political prisoners and common criminals.
81
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism
The general and unprecedented licence of the interregnum
favoured a state of lawlessness, which, after the promulgation
of the new constitution ruling out amnesty of common criminals,
produced an explosive situation during the next few years. Before
1864 the periodic amnesty of outlaws was employed to defuse
similar situations. The measure had been used in the 1830s
and 1840s, whenever brigands appeared to be more provocative
than usual. Another measure, putting a price on the heads of
notorious outlaws. was of little use. I f suppression was impossible
and amnesty unavailable. another tried expedient was certain to
produce results: recruitment of outlaws into irredentist bands. A
stillborn rising in Thessaly in 1867 gave outlaws of northern
Greece the opportunity to exercise their talents outside Greek
territory, while a protracted rising in Crete (1866-9) appeared
to offer great prospects for plunder to the same outlaws, who
were given free passage to the embattled island. By that time,
unfulfilled irredentist aspirations, the pressure of outlawry, and
the requirements of the particular brand of politics that had
developed in Greece allowed her rulers to see in the country's
outlaws so many. legitimate volunteers for the irredentist struggles
-
of the nation.
Irregulars, by that time, appear to have been established as the
favoured army of the nation. while the regular army had come to
be considered at best a decorative Western institution. This was
not unrelated to the impossibility of employing the regular army in
the pursuit of irredentist policy, since the great European powers
would not allow the use of force for the realization of Greek
national aspirations. In 1867 army commanders on the frontier
saw their regular army units gradually vanish, as more men were
persuaded by nationalist apostles to join irredentist bands across
the border. The same practice threatened to destroy the mobilized
army in 1877-8. o n the occasion of the RusstrTurkish War. This
threat. in conjunction with mounting and no less threatening
pressure on the government from public opinion to declare
war i~gai~ist Turkey. led in January 1878 to the iltadvised and
ill-fated invasion of Thessaly by the Greek army. The recall of
the army soon after its despatch across the harder. immediately
after the Russo-Turkish armistice in February, was the signal for
sending into Thcssaly. Epirus and Macedonia a number of sizeable
irredentist bands 10 stir up revolt among the Christians of these
districts.
82 Nationalism and Nationality
The rising in the neighbouring Ottoman domains in this instance
supported the Greek claims at the Congress of Berlin, which in
turn strengthened the hand of the British, who were able, with
the support of the Austrians, to limit drastically the territory of the
newly-born and Russian-supported Bulgarian state and maintain
Ottoman rule in fiercely contested Macedonia. A s a result of
the 1878 settlement of ;he 'Eastern Crisis' Thessaly was ceded
to Greece in 1881, and the Greeks acquired one more national
enemy: the Bulgarians, who claimed Macedonia for themselves.
In the next few decades and until World War I, Macedonia
became the focal point of Greek irredentist activity. In Macedonia
it increased in volume and intensitv after 1878 and in the context
of Bulgarian counter-claims in the region, which were responsible
for a more militant turn of Greek irredentism. The Bulgarian
provocation and the Russian support assumed to lie behind it
undermined and weakened the position of those who supported
the fulfilment of national aspirations in co-operation with the other
Balkan peoples. The challenge from the north also undermined a
certain national self-assurance, which had derived from traditional
and generally recognized Greek cultural superiority; in turn, this
was responsible for an increased urgency in the calls for national
unification through war and a less confident claim to the civilizing
mission of the Greeks.
T o support the new policy the Greeks needed an effective
national army. In the hectic days of early 1878, even as irredentist
bands crossed into Thessaly, the need for such an army was
stressed and the employment of bands of irregulars deprecated.
Charilaos Trikoupis's army reforms in the 1880s, which aimed
to increase the size of the country's armed forces and improve
the quality of their training and equipment. were well received.
Old practices and habits, however, died hard. On the occasion
of the Bulgarian annexation of eastern Rumelia in 1885, which
provoked Greek demands for territorial compensation. Theodore
Deliyannis, Trikoupis's political opponent and successor in gov-
ernment, turned a blind eye to the formation of irredentist bands
and their crossing the border even as he ordered the mobilization
of the army and kept it ostensibly ready for invasion throughout
the winter of 1885-6.
Even more striking was the role assigned to the irredentist bands
ten years later. on the occasion of the 1896-7 Greco-Turkish crisis,
which led to open hostilities in April 1897. A powerful irredentist
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 83
association, the National Society, in this instance recruited several
sizeable bands and directed them to Macedonia throughout the
summer and early autumn of 1896; and in the early spring
of the following year the Society brought together for action
in Macedonia several hundred irregulars of every description.
organized into bands and fitted out in the fashion of traditional
irregulars. Captains were not hard to come by, as enthusiastic
young army officers were thrilled to rub shoulders with the
professional marauders of the region who converged on the border
from their mountain retreats, attracted mainly by the prospect of
booty. The invading army in April 1897, it is worth noting, was
preceded by the collection of freebooters, who were the first to
fall back in disorderly fashion, followed soon by the regular army
which proved no match for the better trained and better equipped
Turkish army.
In the fifteen years before 1912, when Greece was at last able to
put in the field a sizeable and well-organized and -equipped regular
army, the Greeks waged yet another round of irredentist band war-
fare, the struggle for Macedonia. I t was a vicious and protracted
struggle against Bulgarian bands, and combined traditional tactics
and armed elements with modern expertise provided by young
army officers who led bands of irregulars in the contested region.
The struggle for Macedonia aimed to protect and support
Christians who were not afraid to claim a Greek national identity
and to inculcate it into those who felt only a Greek Orthodox
identity. Initially, it was conducted through ecclesiastical, educa-
tional and cultural propaganda. Progressively, however, and as
the opponent became increasingly provocative and used force to
win an advantage in the contested region, the Greeks came to
realize that schools and churches were of little use without the
means to keep the Bulgarian bands at bay. In the light of the
Turks' dogged refusal to relinquish Macedonia, the inability of the
European powers to agree on the dispossession of the sultan of
his last European domains, and the unavoidable conviction of the
contestants that such dispossession was bound to come sooner o r
later, dismemberment of Macedonia was postponed. Band warfare
for the control of villages and spheres of influence was adopted
by the contestants almost naturally: bands of every description
became one of the area's main features. From 1903, when the
Bulgarian-supported IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization) launched an unsuccessful rising against Turkish
 nation^, ' tn and Nationality
rule, until the Young Turk revolt in 1908, whi:,!l promised equal
treatment to non-Muslims under a constitution;^! government and
essentially put an end to the fighting in Macedonia. Greek bands
more than met the Bulgarian challenge. at Irast in southern
Macedonia, which was eventually won by the (;. :ek regular
army in the Balkan wars of 1912-13. The wars also removed
some .of the factors that had sustained the traditional military
element of the region under consideration. Captains and bandits
of all descriptions were at last relegated to the past. Some brigands
survived until the end of the 1920s. I)ut they were never more than
hunted outlaws, survivors of an era that had come to an end. The
growth, around the same time, of a popular literature based on the
lives and exploits of brigands was fitting tribute to an unforgotten
national pastime and reflected nostalgia for a world that had
outlived itself by almost a century. 18
Two developments that facilitated the prevalence and regular
reproduction of the captain class were (i) the growth 0f.a national
ideology that placed captains and their values and pursuits at
the centre of the process of national liberation; and (ii) the
steady disintegration of mountain'society and economy which,
in conjunction with the regular supply of destitute refugees from
across the border, provided a pool of prospective clients for the
captains. Major roles in the development of a national ideology
appear to have been played by the unsatisfactory boundaries of
the original national Greek state, and more particularly by the
distance separating those boundaries from what were believed by
Greeks to be the rightful boundaries of their nation. This distance
was so great that there appeared to be no point in putting forward
national aspirations in the form of concrete territorial claims.
What were felt to be the undeniable historical rights of the
Greeks, as well as the dominant position of Greek culture and
language in the Ottoman Empire, in the context of the expected
disintegration of Ottoman power in the European dominions of the
sultan, contributed to this postponement of working out concrete
and realistic territorial claims for the fledgling national state; so.
perhaps, did the fact that that national state had never been what
most Greeks had really fought for in the first place; so, finally,
did the extensive conspiratorial network of the Philike Hetairia, or
Society of Friends, which worked for the outbreak of the insurrec-
tion of 1821, the proclamation of that insurrection in the Danubian
Principalities, and the uprisings in southern Macedonia and Crete.
I boundaries of 'Greece': the Danube and the Black Sea in the
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 85
The War of Independence, as might be expected, became a
guiding point of reference; but it did not provide a framework for
the definition of national claims. The position put forward during
the war, that Greece would consist of the districts that had taken
or would take up arms against Ottoman rule,l9 instead of limiting
Greek national aspirations and expectations by placing them in
the framework of revolutionary action, essentially 'denationalized'
these aspiratior~sand expectations because it implied claims over
territories inhabited by Greek Orthodox, among whom those
sympathetic to the Greek national cause were not always in a
majority. Even more important for the development of a national
ideology and policy, the projection of revolutionary action as the
main defining and legitimizing point of reference set the course of
national policy and action.
The other point of reference led in the same direction. This
was that of the Ottoman Empire and the prospects of winning
a dominant position in the sultan's European dominions. The
Greeks of both the kingdom and the empire would eventually
take over the latter and run it as a Christian empire; their numbers
and superior culture, as well as their historical rights, made this
transfer of power inevitable. The Greek nation, a notion never
more vague and all-embracing than in the formative years of the
fledgling Greek state, came to be considered the rightful heir of the
Ottoman Turks. The nation was still conceived as a religious and
cultural unity in both space and time, which included, in addition
to the Greeks of the free state, the Greek Orthodox of both the
Ottoman Empire and the diaspora. This broad view of the Greek
nation favoured the postponement of the projection of definite
geographical boundaries and of adaptation of national aspirations
to them.
The idea of a 'great fatherland', so eloquently expressed
by Kolettis in his famous speech to the national assembly in
January 1844.20 of free Greece as a 'reserve' for the liberation
and unification of all Greeks in a great Greek empire, allowed
a deputy in 1848 to speak of Asia Minor, Thessaly, Epirus,
Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Thrace, Bulgaria, Dacia, the Ionian
Islands and the 'entire Mediterranean', as well as Syria, as 'these
splendid districts, these great Greek peoples'.21 Similarly, an
anonymous popular poet in 1855 envisioned, as a solace for
the humiliating foreign occupation, the 'rightful' and 'natural'

Nationalism and Nationality
north, the Euphrates in the east, the Adriatic Sea in the west, and
the Mediterranean in the south.22 The same all-encompassing and
elusive notion of a realm for the Greek nation nurtured the theory
of the 'indivisibility' and 'unity' of the Greeks and of the 'realm of
Greece', as well as that of Greece's 'mission' to civilize the East by
rising against Ottoman rule, in the manner of Christ's rising to save
the world.23 That 'mission', no less than the 'unity' of the Greeks,
called for a crusade to establish the Greek empire. The protecting
powers had no legitimate reason to obstruct the establishment of
that empire. Voices in favour of a model kingdom of Greece. and
of peaceful progress of the Greeks in both the Greek kingdom and
the Ottoman Empire, were not lacking but were drowned by the
calls to arms for the establishment of the new 'Greek Christian
Empire'.24
The other development which is connected with the undim-
,'&I.I inished influence of the captain class in the nineteenth century,
I i" the disintegration of the local mountain economy and society,
is more difficult to trace. Direct evidence for the gradual and
inexorable undermining and disintegration of the economy and
society of the Greek uplands is almost impossible to come by.
With few exceptions, contemporary observers fail t o record that
disintegration and the consequent exodus of mountaineers and
particularly pastoralists. A sensitive and perceptive young officer
became aware, while serving on the frontier in the early years
of the twentieth century, of this decline and disintegration of
mountain economy and society, as a result of their penetration
by modern 'civilization'. The mountaineers of the region. demor-
alized and miserable but 'proud like impoverished old nobles',
were unable to stem the tide, and simply fled the inroads of
modernity.25 Depopulated upland communities and the growth of
lowland villages and towns might be considered indirect evidence
of such disintegration, if the pace and volume of that migration
could be safely established to have been quicker and greater than
the natural trickle of mountaineers settling in the plain in times of
1I t
i relative peace and security, and if it could also be shown that the
mountaineers in question did not choose to emigrate abroad. Both
I
propositions are almost impossible to check for lack of regional
I, demographic studies; while an uncritical comparison of available
population figures can be very misleading, on account of (i) the
inadequacies of the state census, because of the popular tendency
I I :
to associate it with taxation or conscription; (ii) the reluctance,
I
Koliopoulos, Brigarldage and Irredentism 87
I
for similar reasons, of a large section of the population and
particularly the mountaineers to register with the authorities of a
settled community; and (iii) the frequent movement of migratory
shepherds from one realm to the other and from mountain to
plain or the opposite. No surprise. then, that no one in Greece at
the time seems to have possessed even approximate figures on the
migratory shepherds of the region.
The unmistakably hostile attitude of official Greece towards
migratory shepherds, while not constituting evidence of their
declining fortunes, does point to one of the main factors behind
this decline: state hostility towards modes of life and economic
activities that were difficult or impossible to incorporate into the
predominant system of political, social and economic relations.
This hostility, which can be explained in terms of the resistance
to the inroads of the modern state in traditional society, was
intensified in the case of modern Greece by at least four related
factors: brigandage, indiscriminate sheep-stealing and slaughtering
by roving bands of irregulars, the division of the vital territory of
migratory pastoralism by national boundaries, and the expansion
of ploughland to the detriment of grassland.
The dislocating effect of brigandage needs little explanation.
Desperate to secure grazing land for their flocks, as well as to be
able to migrate in the autumn and spring, shepherds were obliged
to bribe right and left, from the mayor who provided the necessary
certificate of residence in a particular deme, to the gendarme who
had to be convinced to turn a blind eye to the unavoidable visits
from brigands - relatives or strangers - as well as to the local entre-
preneur with enough political influence to rent extensive national
grazing land from the state and lease it piecemeal to shepherds.
Gendarmerie officers and district governors planted shepherd
spies in the various shepherd associations to report contacts with
the brigands, and set one group against the other by securing the
best pastures for shepherds under their protection. Fear of arrest
and deportation for harbouring brigands drove many shepherds to
the folds of the brigand bands and, ultimately. to brigandage; and
this, in turn, left their relatives at the mercy of the gendarmes and
the local political boss. Detention without trial in a frightful dun-
geon was usually long and painful, and was often expected to last
as long as the prisoner's endurance. Detention and imprisonment
drained the vital manpower of the pastoral association (tselingato),
especially in the spring and summer, the height of brigand activity
 88 Narionalisrn and Nationality
and the most active period for the pastoralist. Wild beasts and
I Koliopoulos. Brigandage and Irredentism
sheep-lifters got their share from the underprotected flocks, but
the lion's share went to the gendarme, the political boss, and
the lawyer who secured the shepherd's release from detention o r
prison. The brigand connection, which was due t o both custom and
necessity, invited regular and harsh punitive state action which, in
turn, led to the victimization and brutalization of the shepherds -
and increased connections with brigandage.
The pastoral association was losing young men to the brigand
bands, to the gendarmerie or the frontier guards, and t o the
sedentary peasantry. Impoverished and demoralized shepherd
families allowed a son to attach himself to a friendly band of
brigands or to the gendarmerie, essentially for the same reasons:
security, and augmentation of declining incomes. Brigandage
provided, in addition to immediate returns, the easiest path to
enlistment in the gendarmerie or the frontier guards; so did service
in the bands of irregulars employed in irredentist forays o r internal
political upheavals. Another male member of the family would
find employment with peasant sheep-owners, so as to bring home
some grain for his services as shepherd and take whatever came his
way as a collaborator with brigand bands or the gendarmerie. The
pastoral association was gradually losing its attraction to shepherd
families. as its ability to provide a measure of security and prosper-
ity was progressively undermined. Brigands, gendarmes, frontier
guards, and shepherds in the service of sedentary peasants were
primarily demoralized and drifting members of a traditional world
in a state of dissolution, at a time when the city and the plain could
not absorb all of them for lack of jobs and agricultural capital.
The dispossession of migratory shepherds was a drain on the
pastoral economy which it could not sustain. Plundering on a large
scale was practised whenever irregular bands crossed from Greece
into the neighbouring domains of the sultan t o stir up revolt among
the unredeemed Greeks, and whenever the Turks summoned
bands of Albanian irregulars to expel the invaders and suppress
the revolts. Such forays were extremely disruptive t o transhumant
pastoralism, because the flocks were often caught on the plain or
on their way to the mountain pastures. In the War of Independence
and in subsequent eruptions, particularly on the occasion of the
irredentist uprisings of 1854 and 1878, Christian and Muslim
irregulars wrought havoc on the flocks of sheep and goats of the
region. With no supply lines to keep the bands of irregulars fed,
the men fell on the possessions of both shepherd and peasant, irre-
spective of loyalty iind with unvarying results. Migratory shepherds
were again dispossessed in the Greek-Turkish war of 1897, during
the struggle for Macedonia (1903-8). and even in the Balkan wars
(1912-13) when the adversaries put in the field regular armies with
adequati supply lines.
Sheep-stealing. of course. had always been practised and was a
quasi-professional activity at which the shepherds themselves were
unsurpassed masters. But this kind of animal-lifting only led to
an insignificant and rather temporary readjustment of ownership.
What adversely affected the pastoral econonly of the region was
the large-scale dispossession of migratory shepherds and the
consequent dislocation caused by the activities of undisciplined
bands of irregulars. Such losses could not be sustained even by the
most powerful groups of transhumant shepherds, who had to meet
-
risine costs in a world increasingly dominated by nation-states and
peasant proprietors.
Even more dislocating than brigandage and indiscriminate
animal theft and slaughter was the division of the vital territory of
nomadic pastoralism by national boundaries separating perennially
hostile states. The first Greek-Turkish frontier ran through
continental Greece and harmed migratory shepherds in at least two
ways: it increased the cost of the seasonal rnovementsof the flocks,
as shepherds were obliged to pay, in addition to the regular sheep
tax, a certain duty on crossing from one state to the other; and it
contributed to the dispossession of the shepherd by the frontier
guards and other state officials on the border. In addition to legal
duties and illegal seizure of animals on the border. shepherds had
t o pay passport charges for entering and leaving the country, as
well as a special tax for each head of livestock which, short of the
figure registered on entry, was considered sold and hence taxable.
A migratory shepherd also had to satisfy border officials who could
stretch the time needed to count the animals on entry and exit long
enough to make the shepherd generous with his money and the
produce of his flock. Frontier guards in temporary state service,
refugees and fugitives of every description, bands of irredentist
irregulars and/or brigands, ill-paid gendarmes, unpaid soldiers
and desperate driift-evaders - all these and many more who lived
on the borderline of legality allowed by the frontier awaited the
passing shepherd and his flock to supplement inadequate and
insecure incomes. Lonp-established custom and relationships on
90 Nationalism and Nationality
both sides of the frontier made many migratory shepherds cross
the border twice a year and pay the price.
This drain on the migratory shepherd's resources became almost
prohibitive after the annexation of Thessaly and the district of Arta
to Greece in 1881, and the consequent separation of the main
winter grazing areas from the mountains of Epirus and southern
Macedonia. which remained in Turkish hands until 1912. Many
Pindus Vlakhs, for obvious and predictable reasons, opposed the
annexation, only to be condemned by nationalist circles in Greece
as traitors deserving the nation's scorn.26
The problems created by national boundaries were compounded
by the steady increase of cultivated holdings, which restricted the
transhumant grazing economy of many nomadic and semi-nomadic
shepherds. Rising rents of pasture-land made the maintenance of
flocks almost impossible. To reverse the tide, the state intervened
after World War I in favour of the shepherds, establishing rights
of protected lease on pasture-land and setting a limit to grazing
rents. But this intervention came too late to save the migratory
shepherd -if he could be saved at all, short of a radically different
course of national development. Ever since the establishment of
the modern Greek national state, the migratory shepherd and his
interests had been treated with outright hostility, in contrast to
the sedentary peasant who was seen as a solid and conservative
member of society who deserved all possible encouragement to
remain attached to the soil.
To the steady trickle of dislocated and demoralized shepherds
one must add the periodic waves of destitute refugees fleeing
the sultan's domains in Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia after
each unsuccessful round of irredentist revolt. Like shepherds
temporarily or permanently set adrift, refugees from the Greek
irredenta were prospective recruits of captains with funds or a
cause and promises of remuneration and booty. Their numbers,
as in the case of drifting mountaineers, are not known, nor is it
possible to arrive at even a rough estimate. This mercenary class,
which was conveniently settled near the frontier, never failed to
attract the military entrepreneur. Even more important, perhaps,
though less apparent at the time, refugees and heterochthons in
general found their way into the civil service, as there was no room
for them in their lands (no jobs of that kind, at least), and little
else they could do in Greece. They formed by the last quarter of
the century a sizeable and effective pressure group.
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 91
What other sections of the population contributed members to
the bands is not easy to say. Peasants, who constituted by far the
largest section of the population, did contribute recruits, though
it seems not as miiny as one might have expected save in times
of crisis, when the general licence weakened the bonds keeping
the agriculturist attached to the soil. Agriculturists of the lowlands
were less likely to participate in such ventures for at least three
reasons. First, their range of movement was circumscribed by the
requirements of their work in the fields. especially in the season of
high band activity. Secondly, their sedentary mode of life was more
easily expected to prevail over predatory inclinations. Thirdly,
they felt much more exposed and vulnerable to the authorities
than the shifting and drifting shepherds. Landless or dispossessed
peasants, usually younger sons of large peasa'nt families, who were
expected to find a trade for themselves, were naturally little
attached to the soil, and more likely to participate in band activity,
brigand or irredentist.
All these, in addition to less well defined social groups such
as itinerant artisans and seasonal workers of all kinds, were the
ready recruits and clients of the captains in their roles as military
contractors and political patrons. These men were often to be
found in considerable numbers in the northern provinces of the
country and particularly in the frontier zone, which developed,
from the establishment of the free Greek state in the early 1830s
onwards, all the characteristics of a military border.27 Not unlike
the military border (Militargrenze) of the Habsburg Empire, which
had grown on the frontier with the Ottoman Empire in the
sixteenth century, the military border separating free Greece from
the sultan's domains in the Greek peninsula gave rise to a situation
that favoured dispossession with impunity and lawlessness, and the
notion that beyond the border lay a land both open to plunder
and eventually to be liberated. It was the belt running astride the
Greek-Turkish frontier, whose width increased during periods of
tension, where the law of the respective realms was essentially
unenforceable. This was the area in which bands of irregulars
of all descriptions and intentions rubbed shoulders with units of
gendarmes and frontier guards, particularly in times of increased
tension or disturbance - where the already blurred line separating
legality from lawlessness vanished completely. More than a stretch
of land frequented by brigands, fugitives, refugees, draft evaders,
deserters, frontier guards and enterprising military chiefs in search
92 Narionalism and Narionaliry
of recruits, the military border was a world of its own, set apart by
certain factors that reproduced and nourished the very values and
practices that modernizers in the Greek national state were trying
to suppress.
The result of no particular policy, Greek or Turkish, the military
border grew out of certain conditions and practices which were in
turn products of particular needs and requirements of past and
contemporary ruling regimes. Certainly, the generally unfriendly
or hostile relations between the two neighbouring countries were
a prerequisite for this growth. These relations by themselves,
however, were not enough to produce such a state of affairs. What
really gave that border belt the features described above was the
continued use of the contracting armatolic system of security by
the Turks on their side of the border and its quiet and informal
adoption, despite their claims to the contrary, by the Greeks on
their own side. Custom in this respect was too strong to change,
while the military element that stood for that system was too
powerful and influential to be disregarded on either side of the
border. Another important factor was Greek irredentism, which
turned the frontier zone into the main base of operations for the
liberation of unredeemed brothers across the border. Irredentism
provided the necessary ideology to justify the plundering raids
issuing from the frontier, and made the authorities turn a blind
eye to such activities or even incite them, especially when they too
had a share in the material returns from such raids. Irredentism
also sustained the forces that occupied so central a position in the
military border.
The military border and the forces associated with it undermined
reforming and modernizing efforts in the region, and exercised a
regressive influence on the forces that were associated with the
emerging national state; indeed, it diverted patriotic motives into
self-defeating ventures and gave patriotism a suspect and sinister
outlook. Like the Habsburg military border, it had a stagnating
impact: it stood in the way of economic development and the
establishment of public order and security; and not unlike the
American frontier, though for different reasons, it favoured
lawlessness. The border belt was an integral part of what might
be described as a system of checked and manipulated lawlessness
which had developed ever since the Ottomans had set foot in those
lands and was given new lease of life after the establishment of the
national state in the south.
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 93
That lawlessness was initially too well entrenched and wide-
spread for the new state to suppress; and in due course it proved
not without some value to the security of the state and the ruling
regime. Paid service in bands of irregulars satisfied a social element
that otherwise might have proved dangerous to the security of the
state and the regime; so did the dispossession of the peasantry on
both sides of the border. By having their needs met partially from
state revenue and hy being allowed to supplement these needs by
levying tribute on the peasants or making plundering raids across
the border, captains and their armed irregular following created
fewer and lesser problems for the centra1,government. Brigandage
served the same end in times of decreased tension and relative
peace.
If irregulars in the service of rebellious captalns could be
attracted away from such service by being offered better prospects,
captains and irregulars could be kept from rebelling in the first
place by being offered similar service and prospects for booty. I t
was less costly to prevent rebellion than to suppress it. not only to
the government but to those who were always expected to pay the
cost, the vulnerablc peasantry. This is not to say that band activity
was fomented by cynical politicians so as to take the edge off the
traditional military element at the expense of the peasants, within
the country or across the frontier. It was not necessary for politi-
cians to go out of their way to channel such activities into directions
less dangerous for the security of the state and the regime. Besides,
politicians were part of the same world as captains and shared most
of their views on the employment of indigenous military talent.
What counted more than the conduct of some captains and their
men, as far as administrators were concerned, was power and the
means to stay in power. Moreover. security seems to have been
considered worth any sacrifice, including sacrifice of legality. As a
rule, the opposition condemned that reasoning, only to act like the
government when called to office.
The state of controlled and manipulated lawlessness dernoral-
ized and brutalized the peasantry, and sapped the strength of the
emerging new society; while at the same time it undermined the
credibility and image of the very regime for which the government
wanted to increase respect. In the long run that state of affairs did
exercise a pernicious influence on both popular attitudes towards
the emerging state and the actual functioning of that state. But
governments can seldom afford to take such long-range views.

Narionalism and Narionalirj
The objectives and priorities of politicians in power, even in more
orderly states than the Greece of the time, do not normally allow
them to disregard pressures like the ones exercised by captains of
that time and region.
Irredentist raids satisfied, in addition to the immediate needs
of the raiders, another important consideration: the impression
that the project of national liberation was not abandoned after
all. When this objective could not be realized by the regular
armed forces of the new national state, irredentist excursions,
which involved the irregular forces at the disposal of the nation,
helped to keep alive that project, over which there seemed to have
existed a consensus in the fledgling state. Irrespective of the means
employed for its realization, national liberation was an issue to
which no political leader could afford not to pay at least lip service.
Incidentally, it is worth noting in this context that the direction of
Greek irredentist policy also developed as a result of the decision
of the great European powers, Britain and France in particular.
not to allow the extension of Greece's frontiers by force of arms at
the expense of the Ottoman Empire - or, at least, not faster than
the balance of power in Europe and the Near East allowed. Forays
into the Greek irredenta and calls for the imminent liberation of
the unredeemed brothers were the only possible alternatives to a
dynamic state policy, which the protecting powers ruled out. These
alternatives, which were imposed in a sense by the great powers
of Europe and the needs of the traditional military element, were
not as unwelcome as Greek nationalists of the time wanted Europe
to believe, nor as useless as politicians maintained - at least as
safety valves which allowed the administration to let off steam
occasionally. The pursuit of a carefully measured irredentist policy
by Kolettis, for example, seems to have satisfied both national
and political considerations, which in turn secured a measure of
governmental stability, albeit at the expense of social and political
progress.
These considerations, though never explicitly admitted, were
fundamental requirements of the modern Greek polity established
under European guidance in the southern Balkans. The course of
internal reform and improvement, to set the country in order
before undertaking to realize further national liberation, which
did not lack public support,28 clashed with powerful interests and
the requirements of political action in the country. It was much
easier to allow the old order to survive under a Western veneer
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism
than to demolish that order and build the new on the ruins. That
was a Herculean task; and no Greek of the time, with the possible
exception of Kapodistria, appeared to be fit for the role.
The entrenchment of the ancien military order in public life
can also be discerned in the unmistakable attraction of the
values and pursuits associated with that order. By the end
of the nineteenth century, that attraction seems to have been
irresistible. That the first post-Independence generation of army
officers should feel obliged to identify with the old military order
is quite understandable. What is not easily explained, unless by
the enduring and waxing influence of what could be described as
the 'klephtarmatolic syndrome', is the unfailing devotion to the
old order and its values by representatives of a later generation of
officers.
The same syndrome and fascination were no doubt responsible
for the progressive rehabilitation of the brigands and their
projection on the national scene. After they were distinguished
from pre-revolutionary brigands29 so as to prevent the latter's
identification with banditry, post-revolutionary brigands were
allowed a place in national life, especially in times of increased
irredentist activity. The most common terms used to refer to the
brigands on such occasions were 'armatoles' and 'klephts'. In 1878
and in 18967, as well as in the years of the struggle for Macedonia,
brigands were seldom referred to as such, but as 'armatoles'.-\oIn
1904 Paul Melas, a representative junior officer of the day, not
only donned the bandit outfit on going to Macedonia so as to be
accepted by the local freebooters as their equal, but was conscious
that all his life he was being prepared for the life of the arrnatole.'l
A fitting term for the entrenched old order would be 'pallik-
arism'. More than the particular set of values and practices
commonly associated with klephtarmatolism, pallikarism was con-
nected with a certain pattern of behaviour characteristic of most
public men which was responsible for many and serious blunders
in the pursuit of foreign policy, as well as with a tendency to blame
these blunders on outside forces, particularly Western forces. The
lack of clear and realistic priorities and objectives and the inability
to place these priorities and objectives in a wider perspective. as
well as the ambivalent attitude towards the Western European
powers due to their role as protectors of both Greece and the
Ottoman Empire, were no doubt factors that favoured this kind of
behaviour on the part of Greek public men. Basically anti-Western
 7

% Nationalism and Narionaliry Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 97

1 1
in orientation on account of the frequent clash with British and
French policy requirements in the Near East, pallikarism did
not exclude identification with the West; because, in addition
to the need for protection, that association secured prestige and
respectability. Western philhellenism and the admiration for the
CountV's glorious past constituted a useful capital deposited in the
West, which provided vital interest, in the form of respectability,
as well as support in a time of crisis. Eventually pallikarism came
to terms with Western liberal principles and institutions, although
Only su~erficiallyso, and only when it was realized that these
principles and institutions, if properly manipulated, could be
to make old practices and pursuits even more profitable
and secure.
and a creeping of criminals of that species. have
never really penetrated the attractive veneer of pal1ikarism- the
klephtic song and the image of the folk hero. to expose the essence
of that attitude and its influence on modern Greek ideological
developments and state formation.
Notes
r h e material for this article was drawn from thc author's Lisres 11s kenlrikis Elladac
sra a;on4 [Brigands of central Greece in the middle o f the nineteenth
cent,,ry] (Athens 1979). and Brigands wirh a Cau~e:Brigandage and lrredenIlsm in
Modem Greece 1821-1912 (Oxford 1987).

'
1 ;'
I (
Pallikarism and its associated values were manifestations of
1, n i s analysis is based mainly on William W. McGrew's Land and
in Modern Greece 1&W1881 (Kent O H 1985). 1-19. For an
1 >I 4 the particular organization of political action and the sodial and discussion of the issues associated with the environmenlal neglect and decline
. economic structure Supporting that organization. An alternative in the region, see [George Finlay] 'The Euthanasia of the Ottoman Empire'.
I '!.,'!I. ! Organization and values more in agreement with the principles and ~ l ~ ~ Edinburgh k ~ ~Magazine ~ d (May ' ~1861). 57711. The V ~ u l movement a ~ ~ ~ ~
;1.n from ,he lowlands to the highlands is discussed by Apostolos Vaka1oVulos in 'La
I practices of the Western liberal state did not become possible until
I,,.., rttraite des populations greques dcs rCgions Cloigntes el m'Jntagne"ses pendant la
new forces intervened directly in the process of politics and the domination turques, Balkan Studies. Vol. 4 (1963). 265-76. C f . Fernand Braudel*
distribution of wealth. The strength and endurance of banditry and rhe ~ ~ and the Mediterranean
d World
i in the Age ~ translated ~
~ of Philip 11. ~

,
related forfns of o u t l a w ~testify to the slow transformation of the by sian~ ~ ~vol. ~1 (London
~ l 1972),
d 6 ~2 4 ; Richard
, I. Lawless. 'The Economy
state and society of nineteenth-century Greece. and ~~~d~~~~ of Thessaly during Ottoman Rule'. in F.W. Carder. ed.. An
~ ~Geography ~ of rhe Balkans
~ (London,
~ New
; York.~ and Sari ~Franciscol 1977),
Contemporaries occasionally attacked aspects of pallikarism, 518; B~~~~McGowan, Economic Life in Orroman Europe: Taxarion, Trade and lhe
such as the employment of irregulars to fight the countl-y's wars, ~~~~~~l~for Land, 16GO-1800 (Cambridge and London 1981). 133-7.
or the abuse of amnesty and pardon; but they never really saw 2, nebest studies are those by Carsten Hoeg. Les Sarokatsans: Une tribu
these practices as part of a more general attitude and conduct nomade grecque, 2 vols. (Paris and Copenhagen 1925-6); Angeliki Hatzimichali,
',I in the context of the organized state - nor, for that matter, with ~ ~ [Sarakatsansj,
~ 2 vols.~ (Athens 1957);
k K.D.~ Karavidas.~ Agrorika ~ ~
[ ~studies] (Athens
~ 1978,
~ fascimile~ of 1931 ~ edition); i A.J.B.~Wace and ~
few notable exceptions, did subsequent observers and analysts. nompson, rhe N ~ of ~the Balkam
~ & (London 1972. reissue of 1914 edition);
Pallikarism reflected the development of a home-grown populism I
K , Campbell, Honour, Family ond Parronage: A Sludy of l ~ f i l u t i and o~~
which?as has been recently observed, facilitated the identification ~~~~l values in a Greek Mountoin Cornrnunily (Oxford 1964); G.B. Kavadias-
of the 'nation' with the 'people' of imported and undigested P~~~~~~~ nomades m~llirerronCen:Les Sarakatsons de Grkce (Paris 1965); N.G.L.
Mamist theory, and their distinction from the 'foreignersf and ~ ~ Migrations~ and invasions
~ ~
in Greece ~
and Adlacen1 d
Areas (Park. Ridge
their 'agents', i.e. the local 'oligarch', who was turned into a NJ 1976). 37-51.
3, ~h~ basic argulnents ahout the armatoles and the klephts are drawn from
stateless outcast.32 George Philaretos, a deputy who was usually ~~h~ christos Alexallder's M A thesis for Columbia ~niversity.'The Klephtic
rather critical of the way the Greek state system operated, once institution of the Mores and its Destruction in 1806' (1966). and Dennis N .
felt obliged to speak of the 'Great Idea' as the 'national' policy of skiots, 'Mountain Warriors and the Greek Revolution'. in V.J. Parry and M.E.
Greece, as opposed to the 'foreign' policy for Greece or the policy 1 y a p p , eds. War, Tec/lnology and Sociery in rhe Middle Easr (London. New York
and ~~~~~t~ 1975). 31J(e29. The .social' bandit model which was Put foward
of the 'model kingdom in the East': the policy of the 'unredeemed E,J, ~ ~ in two bof his works.
~ b
Primitive ~ (Manchester
Rehels ~ 1959)
~ and
1 I:;, brothers', the Macedonians and the Epirotes, as opposed to the ~ ~( ~ ~ 1969).
d ~has ; been~~ of little
d value~ to the ~analysis used in this Paper.
~
! policy of the 'British and their organsl.33 Criticism and analysis,
I: ~h~ term was used to describe pre-~ndependenceklephts and armatoles by SPYros
I ', burdened with a morbid fascination wlth brigands and brigandage ~ ~ d in ~~~~l~~~~ ~ k aspectsh ~du banditisme
~ social en Grtce au XVlllc sikcle',
I
I ' .

I

&a Balkaniques, Vol. 8. No. 4 (1972). 97-112. For a less refined and rather
ludicrow analysis of the klephts and armatoles along these I~nes,see Georgios D.
Kontogiorgis. I elladiki laiki ideologia [Helladic popular ideology] (Athens 1979).
For criticism of Hobsbawm's analysis of brigandage, see a hook review of his
Primirive Rebclr by Raymond Carr in Economic Hbrory Review. 2nd series. Vol.
12, NO. 1-3 (19SP60). 348-50, but mainly a book review of his Bandits by Anton
Blok, 'The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered', Compararive
Studies in Society and Hirtory. Vol. 14, No. 4 (1972). 499-503. and reply by
Hobsbawm in the same journal. 503-5. For further criticism, see B.J. Chandler,
The Bandit King: Lampioo of Brazil (Austin TX 1Y78), especially Ch. 13, .A Social
Bandit'. 238-47; and Linda Lcwin, 'The Oligarchical Limitations of Social Banditry
in Brazil: The Case of the "Good" Thief Antonio Silvino'. Past and Present, No. 82
(February 1979). 116-46. See also this author's 'Peri "koinonikon" kai allon liston
sti Neoteri Ellada' [On 'social' and other bandits in modern Greece]. Delrion ru
lstorikis kai Efhnologikic Efaireias ris Ellados. Vol. 23 (1980). 422-36.
4. See the author's 'Peri "koinonikon" kai allon liston sti Neoteri Ellada', op.
t i t . 'The Klephts'. wrote Finlay in 1871 with reference to brigandage in Greece,
'despite sentiment and ballads, were neither more nor less than brigands, who
habitually plundered Christians and accidentally murdered Mussulmans. It is a
mere euphemism to call them patriots, and an egregious error to supposc that they
had not a great share in perpetuating the barbarism which gave them birth'(Sarur-
day Review, 6 May 1871. article under the title 'Brigandage in Greece'). For the
development o f the klephtic ideal, see P.S. Spandonidis. 'Le Clefte'. L'HeNenisme
Contemprain. 2e d r . , Vol. b 9 (1954-5). 3-17. For a brief but useful analysis of the
process of glorification of the klephts and armatoles. see John C . Alexander, 'The
Klephts o f the Morea: An Historical Essay'. in Lily Makrakis and P. Nikiforos
Diamandouros, eds, New Trends in Modern Greek Historiography, in the Modern
Greek Studies Association Occasional Papers. Vol. 1 (1982), 32-3. For a contem-
porary romantic approach to the klephts and klephtic ballads, see Henry M. Baird.
Modern Greece: A Narrative of a Residence and Travels in rhar Country (New York
1856), 343-54. For a more serious contemporary analysis which, however, follows
the basic precepts o f Greek nationalist writing. see Henry F. Tozer, Researches in
the Highlands of Turkey (London 1869). Vol. 11. 4611.. 224ff. For references to
the klephts as national heroes, as distinct from common brigands, see Constantine
Paparigopoulos. lstoria rou eNinikou erhnous [History of the Greek nation]
(Athens 1970. reissue of the one-volume 1853 edition edited by K.T. Dimaras),
120; and Spyridon Trikoupis, Isloria cis ENinikis Epanasraseos [History of the
Greek revolution], 2nd edn (London 1860). Vol. 1. . 3 4 . See also a cullcction of the
heroic attributes in George N. Tsioustas. Apanrhisma iroikon poiimato~~ [Selection
of heroic poems] (Athens 1893). 3-8. For some modern variations on the same
theme, see Apostolos Vakalopoulos. T a eeNinika srralevnaara rou 1821 [The Greek
armies o f 18211. 2nd edn (Thessaloniki 1970). 63: and loannis K. Vasdrrvellis. 'Oi
polemikoi andres tis Makedonias kata tin proepanastatikin periodon' IWarriors of
Macedonia during the pre-revolutionary period]. Makedonika. Vol. 7 (1966-7).
For a Marxist variation. albeit of the less refined versions, see Leonidas Stringos.
I Epawstasi cou Eikosiena [The revolution of lX2lj (Athcns 1966). 24-66. For a
recent Marxist analysis of klephtism and armatolism, and the economic hasis of
the military class under consideration, see Asdrakhas. op. cit.. 97-1 12. and the
same author's review of a collection of klephtic ballads in Ellinika. Vol. 27 (1974).
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 99
427-31. For a similar analysis, distinguishing klephts from brigands and based on a
Marxist line of argument but essentially following the traditional nationalist hypoth-
esis. see George Kontogeorgis. 'Oi elladikes koinonikes kai politikes dynameis stin
ysteri Tourkokratia' [Mainland Greek social and political forces in late Ottoman
rule], in the collective work Koinonikes kai polirikes dynameir srin ENada ISocial
and political forces in Greece] edited by the same author (Athens 1977). 23-4.
32-8. In a recent analysis of klephtism in relation to nineteenth-century Greek
nationalist requirements. Michael Herzfeld (Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology
and the Making of Modern Greece [Austin TX 19821. 60-9) presents a number of
interesting points which, however, suffer from the uncritical assimilation of much
contemporary and later opinion on the subject, which can often be misleading.
5. lsrorikon Archeion Alexandrou Mavrokordacou [Historical archive of
Alexander Mavrocordatosl (hereafter Mavrocordaros Archive), Vol IV (Athens
1974), 1027-8.
6. For Peslis, see D . Papantonopoulos, Penrikonraeriris rir EIIiniku Epanas-
raseos rou crow 1821 [Fiftieth anniversary of the Greek revolution of the year 18211
(Athens 1873). 145-6. See also Mavrocordaros Archive. Vol. IV, 833.
7. George Waddington. Vuir to Greece in 1823 and 1824, 2nd edn (London
1825). 77.
8. Julius Millingen. Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece (London 1831). 34. See
also Constantine Paparigopoulos. George Karabkakir \in Greek] (Athens 1867).
33.
9. E.J. Trelawny. Recordc of Shelley, Byron and the Author (London 1878).
ii. 176-7; Millingen, op. cit.. 146-7; Philip J. Green. Sketches of the War in
Greece (London 1827). 208-10; Arhinai'kon Archeion [Athens Archive]. edited
by K.A. Diamantis (Athens 1971). 275. For an interesting portrait of Odysseus,
see N. Fyzentzides. Anekdoroi aurographoi episrolai ... [Unpublished autograph
letters ...I (Alexandr~a1893). 296300. For Karai'skakis's similar attitude, until
quite late in his rather shifting course of action, and his generally disdainful
references to the efforts to establish a free Greek state, see Millingen, op. cit..
37.
10. For the entangled relationships and overlapping authorities, see Mavro-
cordaros Archive. Vol. IV, 434, 6 4 6 9 . 69%700, 82%90, 9O.S-8. 917; and N.K.
Kasomoulis. Enrhymimara srrariorika ris epanasraseos ton Ellinon, 1821-1833
[Military reminiscenccs from the revolution of the Greeks. 1821-331, 402-3. See
also Paparigopoulos. Karakkakir, 29, 33.
11. Archeia ris ENfnikis Palingenesias [Archives of the Greek regeneration].
Vol. IX (Athens I976), 49, 200. See also Kostas Sardelis. Georgios Varnakioris: 0
prodomenos srracigos cou 1821 [George Varnakiotis: The betrayed general of 18211
(Athens 1980). 375.
12. For Siafakar's submission and appolntrnent to the armatolik of Lidoriki, see
Dimitrios Loukopoulos. 0 Roumelioci.~kaperanios rou 1821: Andritsos Safakas kui
ro archeio rou [The Rumeliot captain of 1821: Andritsos Siafakas and his archive]
(Athens 1931). 158-9. 186-7.
13. Millingen, op. c ~ t .35.
.
14. Kasomoulis, op. c ~ t .Vol
. 1. 221. See also Movrocordaros Archive. Vol. IV.
921, and Engraphu ror~Archriou Vurikanou peri cis Ellrnrkis Epanasraseos [Papers
from the Vatican Archive on the Greck revolution]. e d ~ t e dby G . Laios (Athens
1979).
 100 Narionalism and Narionality
15. Mavrocordaros Archive. Vol. IV, 3W70. The best study of submission and
collaboration in the Greek War of Independence is John A. Petropoulos's 'Forms
of Collaboration with the Enemy during the First Greek War of Liberation', in P.N.
Diamandoura. ed., Hellcnum and rhc First Grcck War of Liberation (1821-1830):
Conrinuiry and Change (Thessaloniki 1976), 131-43.
16. Kasomoulis, op. cit.. Vol. 1. 188-9.
17. An excellent source for the growth of this aspect of the Greek nationalist
movement are the newspapers Elpic and Acon of the period May 185fJanuary
1854.
18. See an article in Kathimcrini, 28 September. 5 and I2 October 1978, by E.C.
Papadimitrakopoulos on brigand popular literature. The case of Photis Yankoulas.
an outlaw of the early 1920s. reflected the grqwth of such literature. His death in
September 1925 in a clash with government forces triggered off incredible stories
about his exploits and qualities. See Karhimcrini, 1591122 September 1925 -
160416 October 1925, for a number of such stories. See also Skrip. 795W23
February 1925, for a real exploit. Yankoulas came from Rakhovo, a village in the
district of Sewia, and had a high price on his head. See Govcrnmrnr Gazerre. I2W
10 May, 134i22 May and 233120 August 1923. for Yankoulas and a number of
other outlaws of the period.
lo. In 1826 the Third National Assembly at Epidaurus approved a proposal to
empower the British ambassador at the Porte, Stratford Canning, to negotiate a
peace between the Greeks and the Porte. and particularly to see that 'the Greeks
and Turks would no longer live together', and that 'districts that took up arms and
suffered and shed blood for their liberty should not be cut off from the body of
Greece'. In February 1827 the same assembly passed an act to the effect that 'the
realm of Greece consists of all the districts that took up arms against the tyranny
and is indivisible'. Similarly, the Constitution of Troezen (1827) provided (Art. iv):
'Districts of Greece are considered the ones that took up arms against Ottoman
rule.' See Archives of the Grcck Rgmcration [footnote 11 above]. Vol. 111 (1971).
163, 575. 651. Using the same criterion, Kapodistria recommended. in his reply
to the representatives of the three Protecting Powers of Greece (26 August 1828
[n.s.]) on the boundaries of the new Greek state, a line that ran from the River
Aous in the west to Mount Olympus in the east which, in fact, left some territory
in the north-east outside the state so as to secure a defensible line (see Archives of
the Greek Regeneration, Vol. IV [1973]. 273-6). It is interesting, and perhaps not
without some significance, that the same boundaries were projected in 1852 by the
philorthodox newspaper Aeon (1303122 October 1852) in an article by Panayotis
Soutsos entitled 'On the Greek boundaries and the Diadoch'.
20. See Prakrika tis Ethnikis Synclcurcos rou 1843-1&4 [Minutes of the national
assembly of 1843-41. 190-4. session of 14 January 1844. See also K.T. Dimaras. Tis
mega& rautis idcar [That Great Idea], reprint from the journal Iarrologorcchniki
Slcghi (Spring 1970). 3S41.
2 1. Kleomenis Oikonomou. Logos en ri Vouli pcris ris ikanopoiwcos i polcmou
kata tic Tourkias [Speech in parliament on the need for satisfaction or war
against Turkey] (Athens 1848). In 1853 the newspaper Arhcna published a letter
which argued that the 'Greek' or 'Byzantine' nation consisted of the Greeks.
the Albanians and the Bulgarians (201114 September 1853). The 'connecting
bonds' were the 'Greek language' and the 'Greek race' (201413 Octoher
1853).
Koliopoulos, Brigandage and Irredentism 101
22. (Anon.). Pancllcnic [Pan-Hellen] (Hermoupolis 1855). For some variations
on the same theme. see Acon, 1368124 June 1853, 1426113 January 1854. and
A I ~ C M 201
, 114 September and 201413 October 1853.
23. See an anonymous pamphlet under the title To mcllon rou Ellinikou erhnou
ek rou parelrhonrar exagomcnou [The f u ~ r of e the Greek nation derived from the
past] (Zakynthos 1851). For some interesting references to the 'noble mission' and
'destiny' of the Greeks to civilize the East, see M.D. Seizanis, I polifiki ris Ellados
kai i rpanartaris IOU 1878 cn Makcdonia, lpciro kai Thcssalia [Greek policy and the
revolution of 1878 in Macedonia. Epirus and Thessaly] (Athens 1878). 1-6.
24. See, for instance, Elpic. 725113 June. 727125 June. and 749114 December
1853.
25. A. Souliotes-Nikolaides, 0 Makcdonikos Agon [The struggle for Macedo-
nia] ('lhessaloniki 1959). 9.
26. See Pharos tic Othryos. 1049110 May and 1 W 6 September 1880. and
Pharos rou Olympou (the same newspaper with a new title after the annexation of
Thessaly), IllYl May 1882.
27. For the Habsburg military border, see G.E. Rothenberg, The Military
Border in Croatia, 1740-1881 (Chicago and London 1966). See also Alan D.
Ferguson, 'Russian Landmilitia and Austrian Militargrenze', Sudosr Forschungcn,
Vol. 13 (1954), 139-58. as well as the classic work on the Austrian military
border by J.H. Schwicker, Gcschichre des bsrcrrcichischcn Milirdrgrrnze (Vienna
1883). For a general discussion of boundaries and frontiers, see J.R.V. Prescott,
Boundaries and Frot~ricrs(Totowa NJ 1978). particularly Ch.1. A similar military
border had developed in the eighteenth century in western continental Greece in
the frontier zone between the Turkish and the Venetian territories (Georgios A.
Siorokas, To Galliko Proxcneio ris Arrar [The French consulate of Arta] (Janina
1981). 158-61; and Eleni Giannakopoulou, 'I exegersi ton klephtarmatolon
(1731-1737) stin Aitoloakarnania kai Ipeiro' [The klephtarmatolic uprising 01
1731-7 in Aetolia-Acarnania and Epirus]. Mnimosini. Vol. 8 (198&1). 234-58. For
another military border, see C.W. Bracewell, 'Uskoks in Venetian Dalmatis before
the Venetiar+Ottoman War of 171&1718', in G.E. Rothenberg. B.K. Kiraly and
P.F. Sugar. eds, Eusr Ccnrral European Soriery and War in Prc-Revolurionary
Eighrccnrh Ccnrury (New York 1982). 43147.
28. See, for instance, an article in Ed~nophylax.24/28 May 1862, arguing
that in view of the lamentable state of the country, the absence of 'constitutional'
and 'parliamentary' government and the lack of regular armed forces, pressures
for the realization ol' national aspirations were premature and counter-productive.
On the occasion of the 1853 surge of nationalist feeling and debate on the courses
and content of national policy. another newspaper (Elpis. 725113 June and 7491
14 December 1853) came out strongly in favour of improvements and peaceful
I progress in Greece, ;nwell as among the Greeks of the Empire, before undertaking
I the incorporation of the unredeemed lands into the Greek state.
! 29. See C. Paparigopoulos. lsroria rou ellinikou erhnour. 1970edn (op. c i ~ . )120.
,
1 Paparigopoulos set the rules of analysis for both nationalist and Marxist historians
on this subject. For the traditional-nationalist distinction of post-revolutionary
brigands from pre-revolutionary klephts, see P . Karolidis, lsroria rou rllinikou
erhnouc [History of the Greek nation] (Athens, no date), Vol. 11. 12. 275. For
the Marxist distinction. see Y. Kordatos, 'To armatoliki tou Peliou' [The Pelion
armatolik], Thessalika Chronika. Vol. 1 (1930). 93.
102 Narionalism and Narionaliry
30. Palingenesia,404911 1 February 1878.
31. Paul Melac Iin Greek], edited by N.P. Mela (Athens 1964). 248.
32. See George T. Mavrogordatos, 'Pany and Society in Modern Greece', in
New Trendc in Modern Greek Historiography.
33. Ephimeric ton Syzilircon tu Voulis (Journal of parliamentary debates). tenth
period. second synod. session of 17 May 1886.
John S. Koliopoulos
is Professor of History at the University of
Thessaloniki. He is the author of Greece and
the British Connection 193541 (1977) and
Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and h e -
dentism in Modern Greece 1821-1912 (1987).
Evangelos Kofos
National Heritage and National Identity in
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Macedonia
Perhaps nowhere else in Europe has the heritage of the past
so triggered and stimulated political developments as in the
Balkans. During the period of the 'national awakening' and
emancipation of the Balkan pec.ples, from the last decades of the
eighteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth, historical
legacies helped create national awareness and shape national
ideology. he^ also sustained nations in their uphill drive toward
state-building, national unification and, possibly, the reincarnation
of long extinct empires.
Historical legacies constituted one of the chief factors moulding
national consciousness. In the peasant societies of the Ottoman
Empire, religion and language still constituted the basic ingredi-
ents for self-identification. ~istoricallegacy, an exoteric element,
had been preserved in ecclesiastical or monastic institutions and
in the diaspora, and gradually emerged in urban and semi-urban
centres of the Empire. Once, however, it was diffused among the
masses, it caught the imagination of the people, lifted the morale
of the raym (subject population) and generated a messianic zeal to
attain the goals of the 'imagined'' national mission ordained by the
legacy -or glory - of the past.
As one after the other the subject peoples of the Balkans
began to acquire the nucleus of their future national states -
which hardly encompassed the lands and peoples claimed by each
nation - the respective national ideologies, precursors of political
and even armed activity, began to spread from the national state
to the Ottoman provinces.2 Soon the respective national ideologies
began to converge on regions of mixed ethnological composition
and, more important, of overlapping historical claims. Under such
conditions, antagonistic national programmes hardened attitudes