When people of later generations talk about the Balkans, they will think of the endless ethnic contradictions and conflicts there. Guo Kang once felt that the special issues here needed to be seriously considered.
However, as he came into contact with more Greeks, he began to wonder how the originator of Balkan nationalism defined this kind of thing. Are they really as powerful as they boast?
The Greeks today are in disarray. And a few hundred years later, I'm afraid it will also be a mess. In his world, Greek nationalists have long been confused about who is Greek.
According to Paparigopoulos's theory, the foundation of Greece's continuous history is the continuous development of the Greek language. Therefore, Greeks should distinguish in Greek terms.
But, on the other hand, religion is equally important. The earliest idea of the Greeks when they restored their country was actually to establish a country similar to the Orthodox Federation. So, religion seems to be an element of differentiation as well.
The combination of the two factors has produced many permutations: there are Greek-speaking Tianfang Christians, and there are Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christians; there are tribes that use Greek letters but speak Turkic, and there are also tribes that use Turkic letters but speak Greek...
In Crete and Asia Minor, this kind of mixing is very common, and it is impossible to tell whether they are Hellenized Turks or Turkic Greeks. From the perspective of later generations, these two people are the same thing in terms of blood. The Greeks at that time were even more unable to verify clearly what they were.
This complicated situation finally succeeded in making the Greeks stupid.
In 1844, the Greeks who succeeded in independence finally began to formulate a constitution - this time it was not a scam, but the new country really needed it. At this time, the Greeks put forward a strategic goal known as the "Great Ideal", which was roughly to establish a country that included all Greeks.
In fact, this is a reskinned Eastern Rome. Maybe it didn’t dare to call it Rome directly, so it used this nationalist narrative technique to promote it.
However, the most important thing about Rome was the skin of the universal empire. Without the skin, no matter how much you imitate, it will not be possible. As expected, the Greeks soon encountered a problem: Should we grant citizenship to those "permutations" of unknown Greeks?
In Roman times, this was not a problem. But for Greece, it is a very troublesome issue related to the nature of the country. In the end, the Constituent Assembly refused to grant them full political power. The "Great Ideal" hasn't even started yet, and people are being fired...
Religion is just as bad. In accordance with the requirements of national independence, the Greeks established their own Greek church. But if you do it, others can do it too. The Bulgarians quickly followed suit and established an independent Bulgarian diocese, even forcing the Ottoman-controlled Ecumenical Patriarch to approve it. Then they resumed traditional arts: Who are the Greeks and who are the Bulgarians?
At the junction of the two regions, there is no clear boundary between the two groups of people. If you want to make a distinction, you have to look at the details of the ceremony. Both sides quickly reacted, and many armed men rushed here to force the locals to adopt their own side's rituals, thinking that this would expand their sphere of influence.
Under the pressure of thugs on both sides, local priests and residents became experts in religious law: when the Greek thugs arrived, they held ceremonies using Greek rituals and performed them for them. When the Greeks left and the Bulgarian thugs came again, they quickly changed to Bulgarian rituals. In the end, I didn't know how to divide this thing, so I could only use violent means and directly fight each other.
Therefore, the Greeks want their nationalism to take into account language and religion, but neither language nor religion has much influence on the outside world, and they are in an embarrassing situation.
So, is this theory valid internally?
Of course it's even more useless.
The internal strife among the Greeks never stopped, and it even affected more than just their own people. When the War of Independence broke out, there were enough European volunteers to organize a separate army, but these people were quickly sent out: in the first frontal battle with the Ottomans, the European volunteers formed a line in accordance with the military rules of the time. Formation. However, as soon as the fighting began, the Greek soldiers in charge of the two wings fired two shots and then ran away. The Greek nobles who commanded the entire army disappeared without giving any orders.
The European volunteers who were left on the spot were too regular. Before receiving the commander's order, even if they were hit, they continued to shoot, so it was too late to react. In the end, they failed to retreat in time and were almost wiped out by the Ottoman army. After this, European "Jingxi" did not dare to come. In the end, the great powers stopped playing and went straight to the exit. Russia sent troops into the Balkans and France sent troops to the Peloponnese to force the Ottomans to surrender.
The old nobles were unreliable, foreign volunteers were scared away, and the Greeks had to rely on bandits for their own army. However, these people are as cruel to outsiders as they are to their own people. Even after the founding of the country, they have always been disobedient. By 1870, bandits robbed a traveling group of British nobles just a few miles outside Athens, killing several nobles and causing a serious diplomatic problem.
But the bandits did play an important role in the founding of the Greek nation. They were "national heroes" and they were too late to praise and control. This banditry has also spread in the Greek army for a long time, causing their performance to be the same as that of the always brutal Ottoman.
Whether at home or abroad, some people question this trend and believe that tying Greek nationalism to brutal treatment of others is obviously harmful and will only undermine the realization of "great ideals." Unfortunately, this problem has become permanent.
Judging from the results, the Greeks ultimately failed to build an ideal single nation state - the Turks who were exiled to the Balkans by the Ottomans had a blood feud with the Ottoman regime. They fought against the Ottoman army more vigorously than the Greeks, so the Greeks had to accept them.
It stands to reason that there is more than one such person. The Turkic and Armenian tribes in Asia Minor also suffered hundreds of years of massacre and persecution by the Ottoman regime, and were fellow sufferers of the Greeks. Many people were willing to resist the Ottomans, but also took a wait-and-see attitude towards the Greek counterattack.
However, the Greek army followed the tradition of finding the wrong person for revenge, making no distinction at all, and treated these "outsiders" with indiscriminate violence and killing regardless of their stance. As a result, his own strength continued to weaken, but he forced the locals to the opposite side.
Finally, once the support from the great powers was cut off, the Greek army, which lacked a foundation, had no room for error at all. Instead, the new Turkish state gained a foothold under Kemal's command and was supported by the Soviet Union. The Greek army soon collapsed.
Therefore, Guo Kang feels that there is really nothing worth advocating in the Balkans. Their nationalist theory is somewhat more advanced than previous slogans, but in the final analysis it is just that, and has not reached the level of qualitative change that people expected.
The situation in the local area where various ethnic groups are constantly divided and vendetta against each other is not so much the power of the new theory as it is a group of Jies and Zhou who are fighting against each other. As long as a family is a little better behaved, it won't be like this.
The Greeks, after two hundred years of trouble, had to secretly "return to Rome" in the end. They accepted the Turks in the country, accepted the vernacular Greek, and began to fly the Eastern Roman flag everywhere. This is also where Guo Kang's confidence lies in making his judgment - the Greeks really can't do anything.
(End of chapter)
