Chapter 5 - The Law of Nations, Sovereignty and the International Autonomy of the Greek State

Summary

Chapter 5 shows that the claim that the Greek Bavarian-led state was undermining the formation of the nation was further radicalised when scholars, and in particular Nikolaos Saripolos, took on international law and addressed directly the curtailed sovereignty that the Great Powers had imposed on Greece. The chapter argues that if we want to understand the Greek discussions on international law, we need to consider two things: first, the place of the Greek kingdom within the regional legal order that had been formed in the Eastern Mediterranean since the 1830s; and second, the ways in which from the late 1840s onwards (and especially during the Crimean War) this order was being redefined by European powers and in particular by Great Britain. In this context, a number of interventions in the domestic affairs of the state by the guarantor powers made people like Saripolos realise that the fictions on which the international position of Greece was based had to be revised. They also led to claims that the monarchical policies were jeopardising the already precarious place of Greece in the geography of civilisation, and possibly its very political existence.