Greek War Of Independence

Greek War Of Independence

• During the years following 1815, the fear of repression drove many liberal-nationalists underground.
• Secret societies sprang up in many European states to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas.
• To be revolutionary at this time meant a commitment to oppose monarchical forms that had been established after the Vienna Congress and to fight for liberty and freedom.

CONTRIBUTION OF MAZZINI:

•  One such individual was the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa in 1807, he became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
•  As a young man of 24, he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria.
•  He subsequently founded two more underground societies, first, Young Italy in Marseilles and then, Young Europe in Berne, whose members were like-minded young men from Poland, France, Italy and the German states.
•  Mazzini believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind. So Italy could not continue to be a patchwork of small states and kingdoms. It had to be forged into a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations.
•  This unification alone could be the basis of Italian liberty. Secret societies were set up in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland.
•  Mazzini’s relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republics frightened the conservatives. Metternich described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order’.

Giuseppe Mazzini and the founding of Young Europe in Berne, 1833.

AGE OF REVOLUTION 1830-1848:

As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism and nationalism came to be increasingly associated with revolution in many regions of Europe such as the Italian and German states, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ireland and Poland. These revolutions were led by the liberal-nationalists belonging to the educated middle-class elite, among whom were professors, schoolteachers, clerks and members of the commercial middle classes. The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830. The Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, were now overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head.