How is a new state built? To what ideas, concepts and practices do authorities turn to produce and legitimise its legal and political system? And what if the state emerged through revolution, and sought to obliterate the legacy of the empire which preceded it? This book addresses these questions by looking at nineteenth-century Greek liberalism and the ways in which it engaged in reforms in the Greek state after independence from the Ottomans (c. 1830-1880). Liberalism after the Revolution offers an original perspective on this dynamic period in European history, and challenges the assumptions of Western-centric histories of nineteenth-century liberalism, and its relationship with the state. Michalis Sotiropoulos shows that, in this European periphery, liberals did not just transform liberalism into a practical mode of statecraft, they preserved liberalism's radical edge at a time when it was losing its appeal elsewhere in Europe.
By:
Michalis Sotiropoulos
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781009254687
ISBN 10: 1009254685
Series: Ideas in Context
Pages: 311
Publication Date: 23 May 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction; 1. Mind the legal gap (1832-44): the Polizeistaat, 'Enlightened reforms' and their liberal critics; 2. 'Romanist' jurisprudence: liberty, property and the merits of an agrarian society (1830s-1850s); 3. 'It's more than economics, stupid': political economy and the limits of 'industrial' economics (1840s-1860s); 4. Constitutional liberalism: rights, sovereignty and statehood (late 1840s-1860s; 5. The law of nations, sovereignty, and the international autonomy of the Greek state; 6. Ideas into practice: the 'lawful' revolution and the building of a new constitutional order (1860s-1870s); Conclusion. Placing Greek liberalism within a Europe-wide perspective.
Michalis Sotiropoulos is currently the 1821 Fellow in Modern Greek Studies at the British School at Athens. He is a historian of modern Europe specialising in the intellectual history of the Mediterranean and the Greek world in the long nineteenth century. His publications include studies of the Greek Revolution of 1821, on law and the formation of states, and on the historiography on the Age of Revolutions.
