Book Description

How did the Ottoman elite perceive the Greek Revolution? This book by Sophia Laiou and Marinos Sariyiannis is the first systematic effort to examine the impact of the Revolution on Ottoman political terminology and thought, with a close study of the development of Ottoman political thought and the interpretation of the events of the Greek Revolution by the historiographers of the Sublime Porte. Opposite to the texts of official Ottoman historiographers, the writers also present the unpublished testimony of Yusuf Bey, an official of the Sublime Porte and eyewitness of the events in the Peloponnese. Yusuf Bey, who was well-acquainted with the ongoing official Ottoman interpretation of the Revolution, left an original first-person narrative, where immediacy and excitement coexist with an Ottoman official’s perception of political power, and imperial political consciousness is confronted with national ideology.