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The Messiah and the bourgeoisie: Venizelos and politics in Greece, 1909–1912*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

Mark Mazower
Mark Mazower
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Abstract

The mercurial rise of Venizelos, the most prominent Greek statesman of this century, has been a hotly debated issue of modern Greek history. The tendency until recently has been to explain his success in terms of social changes, and to see the rise of the Liberal party as the triumph of modernizing bourgeois forces in early twentieth-century Greece. This article, however, compares Venizelos both with the generation of politicians which preceded him, and with his leading contemporary, Gounaris. It argues that Venizelos's enormous popularity hinged upon his response to the nationalist, quasi-messianicfervour which gripped Greece after its humiliating defeat by Turkey in 1897. Parliamentary government came to be seen as passive and elitist, political parties as causes of national decline. Using his rhetorical skills and the press, Venizelos presented himself as the agent of national regeneration. His attitude towards class politics, and to the very idea of political parties, was complex and ambivalent. Hence, his rise should be interpreted, not in terms of a simple Marxist or whiggish schema, as the product of Greece's bourgeois revolution, but as the expression of a new more confident nationalism, which reinforced the personality-centred quality of Greek politics.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 885 - 904
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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2 Our knowledge of Venizelos has profited enormously from the remarkable expansion of historical research in Greece over the last decade. Essential recent studies are: Veremis, T. and Dimitrakopoulos, O. (ed.), Meletimata gyro ape ton Vtnizelo kai tin epochi tou (Athens, 1984)Google Scholar; Mavrogordatos, G. and Chadziiosif, C. (cds.), Venizelismos kai astikos eksynchronismos (Irakleion, 1988)Google Scholar; Veremis, T. and Goulimis, G. (cds.), Eletherrios Voniztlos: komonia, oikonomia, politiki stin epochi tou (Athens, 1989)Google Scholar; ELIA, Symposio yia ton Eleftherio Venizelo: praktika (Athens, 1988)Google Scholar.

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