Introduction: Under the Flag of Insurgency: The Greek Revolution in International and Imperial History

Abstract

From their beginnings, the revolutionary events that shook the Greek lands of the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s were neither contained nor constrained by national or imperial borders. What Ottoman contemporaries termed the ‘Greek mischief’ ( fesad) and later historiography would call the Greek war of independence, became a protracted inter-imperial crisis as soon as it commenced. The present bicentennial of the Greek Revolution makes it all the more relevant to reassess and rethink this history from more than just a national perspective. Of course, a sizeable literature on the border-crossing dynamics of these events already exists. Historians have long debated the transnational appeal of the Greek cause. They have thoroughly unpacked the international involvement in the war of independence, whether it be with an emphasis on diplomatic or military events. The Greek revolutionaries, for their part, drew on crucial support networks that spanned the world and