The real-and-imagined spaces of philhellenic travel

Abstract

This article focuses on philhellenic travellers' perceptions and experiences of Greece in the early nineteenth century, especially during the War of Independence in the 1820s. The central argument is that philhellenes – that is to say, supporters of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire – understand Greece as a ‘real-and-imagined’ space. Greece is an ‘imagined’ location in the sense that philhellenic conception of it is shaped by certain rhetorical assumptions and priorities. But, evidently, it is also a ‘real’ space, not simply in the obvious sense that the landscape has a tangible existence, but also in that those rhetorical constructions have concrete consequences and expressions. These expressions are especially significant because philhellenic travellers conceive the region as both a literal and conceptual borderland on the edges of Europe. They consider Greece fundamental to European history, culture and self-definition, but because it is ruled by the Ottoman Empire, it is also an unfamiliar space at the margins of Europe. In other words, Greece is both within and outside European space, and its liminal position represents wider uncertainties about the conception of Europe in the early nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• philhellenism
• travel writing
• idea of Europe
• space

Notes

 1. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 1, 3, 6, 11, 31–3, 40–5.

 2. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 47–8.

 3. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 26–7.

 4. For an overview of these developments see Warf and Arias, Spatial Turn.

 5. Soja, Thirdspace, 8, 9–10, 1.

 6. Soja, Thirdspace, 6, 11–12, 22, 135. See also Said, Orientalism.

 7. Augustinos, French Odysseys, ix, 1–48; Tsigakou, Rediscovery of Greece, 11–20.

 8. Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, Greek Revival, 2–4.

 9. Rosen, “London Greek Committee.” See also St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free and Bass, Freedom's Battle, 76–87.

10. The London Greek Committee is not, of course, the only example of political engagement inspired by philhellenism. As Suzanne Marchand notes, for example, in the south-western German states: “The Greek war opened a new age of bourgeois-liberal political organisation, preparing its supporters for the more openly political battles of the 1830s and 1840s” (Olympus, 33).

11. Bulwer, Autumn, 62.

12. Wallace, Shelley and Greece, 10.

13. Byron to Andreas Londos, 30 January 1824, in Byron's Letters, 11: 103.

14. Richard Ryan, “Preface” to Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, vi–vii.

15. Wood, Palmyra, ii; Wood, Genius of Homer, i. For more on Wood's significance see Eisner, Antique Land, 72–3.

16. Browne, “Narrative,” 392.

17. Browne, “Narrative,” 400; Eton, Turkish Empire, 355.

18. Bulwer, Autumn, 116.

19. Blaquiere, Narrative, part one, 58; Blaquiere, Report, 13.

20. Leake, Historical Outline, 7–8.

21. Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, Greek Revival, 9–12.

22. Blaquiere, Narrative, part two, 117.

23. Chateaubriand, Itinéraire de Paris a Jérusalem et de Jérusalem a Paris (1811), in Oeuvres, 2: 701–2 (my translation).

24. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1: 314.

25. Parry, Last Days, 187–9. Parry's volume purports to record Byron's opinions and much of the text is presented as the poet's direct speech. It would be incautious to take this at face value so I treat the ideas presented in the book as Parry's and not as Byron's. Furthermore, the book was most likely ghost-written by Thomas Hodgskin (see St Clair, “Postscript,” 4–7).

26. Voutier, Mémoires. Voutier's exaggerations are the subject of an anecdote in Millingen, Memoires, 63.

27. Raffenel, Histoire, 11 (my translation).

28. Gilpin, Observations, 1; Gilpin, Essay, x.

29. For more on picturesque tourism see Andrews, Search for the Picturesque; Copley and Garside, The Politics of the Picturesque.

30. Stoneman, Luminous Land, 3–5; Tsigakou, Rediscovery of Greece, 19.

31. Williams, Travels, 2: 338–9.

32. Castellan, Lettres, 115–16, cited and translated in Tsigakou, Rediscovery of Greece, 26–7.

33. Stoneman, Luminous Land, 5–6.

34. Tsigakou, Rediscovery of Greece, 31.

35. See Spencer, Fair Greece, vii.

36. Güthenke, Placing Modern Greece, 4–7, 62.

37. Hobhouse, Journey, 544, 265, 540.

38. Güthenke, Placing Modern Greece, 241–2; Augustinos, French Odysseys, ix–xi, 61.

39. Hobhouse, Journey, 584, 542–4.

40. Thomson, Poetical Works, 413.

41. Levine, “Whig Progress,” 553–4.

42. Guthrie, Geographical Grammar, xxvi, xxxiii; Sitwell, Four Centuries, 273–84.

43. Quoted in St Clair, Lord Elgin, 260.

44. Byron, Child Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), in Poetical Works, canto 2, lines, 101, 130–1, 127.

45. Blaquiere, Greece and Her Claims, i; Roessel, In Byron's Shadow, 35.

46. “Address of the Greek Committee, 3 May 1823,” in Gordon, History, 2: 85–6.

47. For more details of how ideas about Europe, civilisation, Christianity, and politics intersect in the philhellenism of the 1820s see Stock, The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, esp. 175–97. Examples and materials discussed in this volume and redeployed in the present article are reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The full published version of Paul Stock, The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, 2010, Palgrave Macmillan, is available from: http://us.macmillan.com/theshelleybyroncircleandtheideaofeurope; and http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230106307

48. For a thorough discussion of republicanism's role in European political thought see Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism.

49. Byron to Edward Church, 21 June 1823, in Letters, 10: 202.

50. Blaquiere, The Greek Revolution, 17; Greece and Her Claims, 1; and Narrative, part 1, 43; Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 133.

51. St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 9.

52. Rosen, “London Greek Committee.”

53. Bentham, “To the Greek Legislators,” in Securities Against Misrule, 193.

54. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 96.

55. Blaquiere, Narrative, part 1, vi, ix; part 2, 67; Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, v, x–xi, 14–15, 22.

56. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 142.

57. Bass, Freedom's Battle, 48, 79.

58. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 169; see also Dimaras, “The Other British Philhellenes,” 210–12.

59. Blaquiere, Greece and Her Claims, 22; Parry, Last Days, 177.

60. Conservative governments – particularly in Britain and Austria – were also suspicious of Russian involvement in Greece: see Schroeder, Transformation, 638–41.

61. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1: 315; 2: 279.

62. Finlay, Greek Revolution, 2: 162.

63. For more about the conflict's effects on European politics see Schroeder, Transformation, 637–65.

64. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 234, xi, 137. See also 101, 142.

65. Parry, Last Days, 190, 243–6, 235, 276.

66. See Gamba, Byron's Last Journey, 102, 140.

67. Byron to Samuel Barff, 19 March 1824, in Letters, 11: 139.

68. Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 73–4.

69. Napier, War in Greece, 11–12.

70. Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 74.

71. Balibar, We, the People of Europe, 2. For another example of how marginal spaces are used to construct ideas of Europe see Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, esp. 1–16.