Roderick Beaton, “From the Europe of empires to the Europe of nation-states: The Greek Revolution of 1821 in international context”
Roderick Beaton, “From the Europe of empires to the Europe of nation-states: The Greek Revolution of 1821 in international context”
Professor Roderick Beaton (King's College London), "From the Europe of empires to the Europe of nation-states: The Greek Revolution of 1821 in international context, 200 years on"
2021 will mark the bicentenary of the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, or War of Independence. As that anniversary approaches, this talk takes a long view, beginning with the European settlement reached at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, known as the ‘Concert of Europe’, and continuing with the disappearance of multi-national empires and their replacement throughout the continent by the nation states that we are familiar with today. International recognition for Greece as a sovereign nation-state, sealed by the Protocol of London in February 1830, according to Professor Beaton’s analysis, represents a pivotal point in this continent-wide transition, and one that has been unjustly overlooked by historians. The talk will focus on those aspects of the Greek Revolution that explain how events in Greece in the 1820s contributed to this far-reaching change, whose consequences are still being played out today as the UK leaves the European Union and its constituent nations contemplate separate futures for themselves.
This British School at Athens Virtual Lecture was recorded on 12 November 2020.
