The Renaissance of the Levant by Michael Kreutz

Author:Michael Kreutz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

3.4 After Disillusionment

Despite the authoritarian and xenophobic traits in Dragoumis’ thinking, he was a keen observer of the political situation. His 1904 remarks on the dysfunctionality of a situation in which Greece is run by tyrants is quite lucid and straight to the point.863 For example, he criticizes his compatriots heavily for being “oligarchic rather than democratic,”864 and deplores a complete lack of accountability in political matters – something that still sounds all too familiar in present-day Greece. This also holds true for the Greeks who are part of the diaspora, who would reportedly say, “You, those in Greece, should do this to save us,” while the homeland Greeks would say, “You, out there, you have great power; why don’t you fight this or that and not save yourselves?” Dragoumis concludes that everyone pins the blame for the lack of initiative on someone else.865

Georg Ludwig von Maurer already described in the nineteenth century the situation in Greece, where the captains (ocaks) and kocabasis ruled civil life, maintained their own courts, and were at loggerheads with each other. While serving their Ottoman occupiers and oppressing the Greek population, they were paranoid regarding their environment and feared its hostility. This might help explain the ill state of the Peloponnese.866 Namely, in the Greek case, as Fukuyama (2014) has called this a “modernization without progress.”867 Greece, however, never managed to reform its public sector as this was the case, for example, in Germany, Great Britain and the US.868 In this regard, Greece “fits a pattern more characteristic of many contemporary developing societies elsewhere in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa.”869

The Orthodox Church in Greece is officially recognized today as the “prevalent religion” of the country, and is generally understood as a state religion.870 This has a lasting effect on its self-image as being part of the Orthodox, non-Western world. This, in the words of Makrides (2000), adds to Greece’s being a “torn country,” insofar as “its political and economic elites are pro-Western, but its history, culture, religion and tradition are essentially non-Western.”871

A similar pattern emerged in the Arab-Islamic world. Starting out with the influence of French law in the Ottoman Empire, the Arab-Islamic world seemed at the beginning to be embarking on a path to modernity that was based on individual rights and the rule of law. While under British occupation (1882 – 1936), Egypt saw the civil rights and liberties of Egyptians being recognized officially, and suffrage being granted in 1883.872 Of course, Western powers never played an entirely progressive role in the formation of the modern Middle East, and we must keep in mind the bombing of Alexandria as well as other incidents so as not to fall into the trap of excusing colonialism.873 However, this is only part of a long history of violence in the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire has its own record of violence and oppression. In any case, the spirit of progress of the nineteenth and early twentieth century would not last too long.

While in Egypt

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