Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 16 No.

1 March 2003
ISSN 0952-1909

The Enlightenment, Greek Civilization and

the Ottoman Empire: Reflections on
Thomas Hope’s Anastasius

REŞAT KASABA

Abstract This paper addresses the widespread belief in Europe in the late eigh-
teenth century that without a Greek revival in art, architecture, and philosophy,
the rejuvenation of European civilization would never be complete. This intellectual
tradition, which is commonly referred to as Philhellenism, sought to rescue the
Greek civilization from the Turkish rule. However, the Greeks turned out to be too
poor, too religious, and too well integrated into the Ottoman society to respond to
the call of the European intellectuals. This essay examines the source and impli-
cations of this clash between the enlightenment’s idealized Greeks and the real
Greeks of eastern Mediterranean through a close reading of Anastasius: Memoirs of
a Greek that was written by Thomas Hope at the close of the eighteenth century.

*****

There was a widespread belief among the European writers and

thinkers of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that
without a Greek revival in art, architecture, and philosophy, the
rejuvenation of European civilization would never be complete.1
This intellectual tradition, which is commonly referred to as
Philhellenism, had three main areas of concentration in Europe,
and each of these had a different emphasis. The French version
had its origins in the writings of the philosophes and developed
under the strong influence of liberal humanism; in Germany, Phil-
hellenes were more narrowly interested in finding parallels between
the Greek and the German cultures and using the former as a
justification in the early formulations of German romantic nation-
alism. The British version, on the other hand, represented the
uneasy alliance between the Romanticism of Byron and his fol-
lowers and the more pragmatic concerns of the British state and
her imperial interests in the near east, which, more often than not,
conflicted with the dream of a free Greece.2 Regardless of their
political persuasions or overall convictions, all Philhellens were
committed to the idea of rescuing the Greek civilization from the
oblivion into which it had fallen and reintegrating it into the
European mainstream. They were also united in their common
dislike of the Ottoman Empire. In a typical vein, Voltaire wrote to
Frederick of Prussia in 1769 that he wished “passionately that
the barbarous Turks be chased at once from the country of
Xenophon, Sophocles, Plato”3

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2 Reşat Kasaba

In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, waves of

European writers, archeologists, travelers and adventurers made
the trip to the territories controlled by the Ottoman Empire to
pursue these interests.4 In addition to establishing a contact with
“sad Greece” these visitors spent their time in physically retrieving
or “rescuing” the remnants of Greek civilization and transporting
them to European museums where they were displayed as part of
the continuum that was defined as European civilization. These
contacts, which became increasingly frequent and intense in the
nineteenth century also generated a large body of writings that
became part of the Orientalist canon.5 A close reading of some of
these writings reveals a problem that beset not only this particu-
lar body of literature but the enlightenment’s general approach to
Greek civilization. Even though an idealized vision of a reunified
and reintegrated European civilization that would include its Greek
progenitor was basic to the Enlightenment project, this dream
clashed repeatedly with the realities on the ground. The Greeks,
who had been under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for at least
five hundred years and within the Eastern Orthodox Church for
over a thousand, turned out to be too poor, too religious, and too
well-integrated into the Ottoman society to respond to the call of
the European intellectuals.6
This essay focuses on one of the earliest manifestations of this
clash. Anastasius: Memoirs of a Greek was written by Thomas Hope
at the close of the eighteenth century and published for the first
time in 1820. In three volumes, it recounts the adventures of a
fictitious Greek sailor in the eastern Mediterranean during the last
decades of the eighteenth century. Thomas Hope’s deep involve-
ment in the intellectual and artistic developments of his time
makes this book more than just a story of love, betrayal, and
adventure that unfolds in exotic places and among intriguing
people. At various points in the novel, Hope explores the historical
roots of European civilization; probes its links with classical antiq-
uity and Greek civilization, and most significantly, tries to recon-
cile his image of the ideal Greek as the liberator of himself and of
Europe, with the much-less exalted lives of the Greek communities
in the Ottoman Empire.
Hope’s book is particularly interesting when it tackles the ques-
tion of how the newly secularizing Europe should deal with the
Ottoman Empire, which had long been regarded as an alien
intruder representing a non-Christian civilization. On one level, the
enlightenment promised to bring about a Europe that would be
unified around universally applicable principles; one in which the
religiously ordained groupings and divisions would lose their
salience. Yet such universalist ideals did not fit well with the

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 3

particularistic beliefs and instincts of even some of enlightenment

writers, including Hope. This conflict provides not only one of the
key axes of the novel’s narrative but also represents a central con-
tradiction of the enlightenment thinking. The writers and thinkers
who were associated with this intellectual movement dreamed a
world where “only those divisions of men, and of territory will take
place which the common convenience requires,”7 while continuing
to believe that “nature had made an original distinction betwixt the
breeds of men” rendering some “naturally inferior”.8

Hope’s Anastasius
Anastasius, the Greek sailor whose adventures the book chroni-
cles, is born in the 1760s to a large and wealthy family on the
island of Chios. His father is an official interpreter (a dragoman) to
the French Consul and his mother an heiress to a sizable fortune.
After a a relatively comfortable childhood, Anastasius is forced to
leave his native island in the 1770s because of his love affair with
the daughter of the French Consul, who was also his father’s
employer. The volumes cover Anastasius’ travels and also include
detailed accounts of life in Izmir, Istanbul, Alexandria, Cairo, and
Baghdad where he spends long stretches of time between the 1770s
and the 1790s.
As he moves from one end of the Ottoman Empire to the other,
Anastasius works in a variety of jobs, some more reputable than
others. One of his first employers is the Dragoman for the Ottoman
Admiralty, Mavroyeni. Anastasius then assists an itinerant Jewish
physician in Istanbul, interprets for and guides European mer-
chants in Galata, collects taxes on behalf of several tax farmers
(mültezims) on the Aegean islands and in Egypt, and works as an
aide to the governor of Baghdad. In between, he also becomes a
bandit which, according to Hope, is a legitimate occupation that
consists only of “transferring to the needy the superfluities of the
rich.”9
Anastasius spends several months in an Istanbul prison, has
relationships with at least eight different women, and fathers three
children but though only one lives past infancy. The linear narra-
tive of Anastasius is frequently punctuated with seemingly impos-
sible situations from all of which Anastasius manages to escape
unscathed. At one such point, Anastasius is pinned between the
wealthy husband of a Moslem woman with whom he was having
an affair and a mob who is angry with him for desecrating a mosque
by entering it. To escape this mortally dangerous situation, Anas-
tasius converts to Islam and takes the name Selim. Even though
Anastasius describes his conversion as being only “skin deep”10 he

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4 Reşat Kasaba

uses it cunningly to penetrate those parts of Ottoman society which

would have been barred to him as a Christian. In time, he even
becomes an ardent supporter of his new faith; joins the conserva-
tive Wahabi order in Iraq and goes on to marry the daughter of a
powerful Mamluk Bey in Cairo. In short, and in his own words,
Anastasius is “such a daring and dexterous fellow that, happen
what might, I was always sure to come down upon my legs.”11
Throughout the three volumes, it is hard not to be impressed by
Hope’s detailed and evocative descriptions of the places Anastasius
visits. Here are his impressions of Smyrna/Izmir the port city that
was already a major commercial hub of the eastern Mediterranean
at the end of the eighteenth century:

In that trucking, trafficking city, people’s ideas run upon nothing but merchandise:
their discourse only varies between the exchange and the markets: their heads are
full figs and raisins, and their whole hearts wrapped up in cotton and broad cloths.
They suppose man created for nothing but to buy and sell; and whoever makes not
these occupations the sole business of his life, seems to them to neglect the end of
his existence. I verily believe that they marry for no other purpose but to keep up
the race of merchants.12

On seeing Istanbul for the first time, Anastasius is so moved that

he can barely express his feelings:

Entranced by the magnificent spectacle, I felt as if all the faculties of my soul were
insufficient fully to embrace its glories: I hardly retained power to breathe; and
almost apprehended that in doing so, I might dispel the gorgeous vision and find
its whole vast fabric only a delusive dream.13

Upon entering the city, however, Anastasius experiences not only

its magical beauty but also some of its darkest corners. Especially
striking is the lengthy description of the prison where he is incar-
cerated for a short while:

Here, as in the infernal regions, are mingled natives of every country-Turks, Greeks,
Armenians, Jews, and Gipsies; . . . From morning till night, and from night till
morning, the ear is stunned with the clang of chains, which the galley slaves wear
while confined in their cells, and which they still drag about when toiling at their
tasks. Linked together two and two for life, should they sink under their sufferings,
they still continue unsevered after death; and the man doomed to live on, drags
after him the corpse of his dead companion.14

In reading Anastasius, one also gets a sense of how people

managed their lives, and especially how foreigners navigated the
social maze of large urban centers such as Istanbul:

To a youth like me it was highly desirable to possess a paper [berat], through whose
magic power a native might, in the very capital of his natural sovereign, outstep

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 5

the limits of his jurisdiction, brave his authority, put himself on the footing of a
stranger, and, from being heretofore an Armenian or a Greek, at once find himself
transformed into a reputed Italian or German, or Frenchman, wear the gaudiest
colours in competition with the Turks themselves, and strut about the streets in
that summum bonum, a pair of yellow papooshes.15

Anastasius’ short and peripatetic life coincides with some of the

most difficult years in the history of the Ottoman Empire. It was
during these years that the fortunes of the empire reversed deci-
sively. The authority of the Ottoman state was challenged from
outside, especially by Russia, and from inside, by rural and urban
notables (ayan) in the west and by various tribal and religious
groupings such as the Kurds and the Wahabis in the east.16
Hope also uses his novel to reflect on some of these conflicts that
engulfed the Ottoman Empire. For example, in 1779, Anastasius
is detained in Morea by Ottoman troops who were chasing
Albanian bandits in the area. While in captivity, Anastasius finds
out that the Albanians who were now rebelling against the Ottoman
state had originally been dispatched there by the Porte in order to
suppress an earlier uprising by the Greeks. Anastasius also dis-
covers that the Greek insurgency itself had been a ruse staged by
local Greek leaders in order to attract Russia’s help and sympa-
thy. Hence, finding no means of supporting themselves, and no
real uprising to suppress, Albanians had taken to banditry and
rebellion and the new troops were sent by Istanbul to punish
the Albanians.17
Later on, while traveling from Iskenderun (Alexandretta) to
Belen in the south of Asia Minor, Anastasius is robbed by Kurdish
tribes even though there were “guards stationed in the narrow
passages of the mountains, to protect the travellers, and to awe
the banditti.” Much to Anastasius’ consternation, however, the
guards appear to be collaborating with the Kurds and informing
them of the approaching travelers, instead of protecting the
travelers.18
In the midst of these confusing circumstances, Anastasius
finds the areas controlled by the local potentate surprisingly
peaceful and orderly. He describes Süleyman Paşa, the Governor
of Baghdad, as someone who sustained “with unexampled dignity
the weight of his manifold honors. His warlike talents kept in
awe the fierce hordes of tributary Koords and Arabs at the two
opposite extremities of his vast province, while his justice and
moderation endeared him to the milder inhabitants of intervening
districts.”19
Anastasius is particularly impressed by Karaosmano g̃lu Hacı
Pulat whose family had been ruling semi-autonomously in the large
area around the city of Manisa in western Anatolia. He describes

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6 Reşat Kasaba

the piles of cotton, the strings of camels, the goods loading and
unloading, and the guides coming and going on every side of
Karaosmanoğlu’s domain. Anastasius observes that this wealthy
and generous ayan was giving refuge also to a group of Albanians
fleeing “from the oppression of some Rumeliote paşa.”20 Upon pre-
senting Haci Pulat with a pair of pistols made in England but “ren-
dered ornamental in Smyrna,” Anastasius compliments his host:
“Accept these arms,” he says, “as the homage of a grateful trav-
eller, who has found them useless, amid the security which you
have established in your wide domains.”21 In thanking Anastasius,
Pulat says that he maintains peace by always being prepared
for war. He says, “at a day’s notice we can bring into the field
twenty thousand sturdy horsemen, as well mounted as armed, for
the defence of the empire-or for our own.”22 Pulat also explains to
Anastasius that the security of his roads is obtained “not by
watching my subjects but by giving them work. When people toil
in mind and in body to improve their property, they have not leisure
to covet that of others.”23 Among the other notable personalities of
the era, Anastasius comments sardonically on the French am-
bassador “Monsieur de Choiseul-Gouffier-a very great man in
little things; . . . his antagonist in taste, politics, and country, the
English envoy Sir Robert Ainslie,” and the envoy of Sweden,
Mouradgea d’Ohson, an “Armenian by birth, who writes in French
a history of Turkey.”24
In parts Anastasius reads like a travel book with very colorful
and perceptive accounts of the places and people its hero encoun-
ters. Even though it is hard to vouch for the complete accuracy of
a work of fiction, Anastasius’ information is confirmed by other
historical studies. For example, the Karaosmanoğlu family is well
known as having played a pivotal role in the organization and
transformation of the rural structures in a large part of western
Anatolia. Formally and informally this family held a series of impor-
tant posts in the region between the seventeenth and the twenti-
eth centuries.25 Anastasius’ host, Karaosmanoğlu Hacı Pulat is one
of the more celebrated members of this dynasty. Historical sources
credit him with building one fountain, two bridges, two paved
roads, and seven wells around Manisa. He also endowed 75 pieces
of property and reserved the income of these endowments for the
upkeep of those structures. As part of its policy of co-opting
the local notables, the Ottoman government appointed Pulat as the
voyvoda of Menemen in 1780 and Turgutlu in 1802; both in
western Anatolia. When he died in 1806 Pulat’s estate included
numerous articles from all around the empire with a particularly
impressive collection of arms that included 23 rifles with silver

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 7

ornaments from Istanbul, Albania, Belgrade, Poland, Venice, and

Austria.26
Historians also agree with Anastasius on the peaceful and pros-
perous reign of Süleyman who was the governor of Baghdad from
1780 to 1802. Hanna Batatu writes, “in 1794, when the Paşalık of
Baghdad was in the hands of the great Suleiman Paşa, trade was
under fewer burdens or restraints than at any other period of
Mamluk hegemony, and people were nowhere else in the Ottoman
lands as little oppressed as they were in Iraq.”27 As for the diplo-
mats Anastasius meets, d’Ohson’s book is well known as an
original source for the history of the Ottoman Empire28 and
Choiseul-Gouffier, who was the last envoy of the ancien regime in
Istanbul (1784–1792), was an enthusiastic Philhellen himself. Prior
to his appointment to his post in Istanbul, he had traveled in the
western provinces of the empire and published his sketches and
writings on antiquities.29
None of this should be surprising since Thomas Hope himself had
spent eight years traveling in the Ottoman Empire and southern
Europe between 1787 and 1795. Obviously, he made good use of
the large quantity of information and first hand observations he had
gathered. Hope says that “the historical and statistical parts” of his
work “are strictly correct” and that “the fictitious superstructure-
founded on personal observation- is as comfortable as I could make
it to the manners of the nations whom it was my aim to describe.”30
Elsewhere he writes, “in the course of my long and various travels I
resided nearly a twelvemonth at Constantinople; visited the arsenal
and bagnio frequently . . . was in Egypt, in Syria, and in every other
place which I have attempted to describe minutely.”31
Hence, as with many other travel books of the time, it is pos-
sible to mine Anastasius for many details of everyday life in the
territories it describes; information that is often impossible to get
from more conventional sources. Moreover, the factual accuracy of
Anastasius also helps expose the fundamental incompatibility
between the idealism of the European Enlightenment and the
reality of the Greek society of the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth century. In some ways, Anastasius is a record of its author’s
realization that the relations between the Greek communities and
the Ottoman state were far more complex than these authors had
initially imagined and that rescuing the Greeks from under the
Ottoman rule and resurrecting their civilization was a formidable
if not impossible task to achieve. To understand the sources of
these expectations and the disappointments, I will turn to Thomas
Hope and his place in the fast changing intellectual environment
of late eighteenth-century Europe.

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Anastasius’ Hope
Thomas Hope was born in 1769 in Amsterdam where his family
had moved from Scotland in the seventeenth century.32 In 1794,
as French armies occupied Holland, the Hope family moved again,
this time to England, where they joined London’s high society. Hope
was a student of architecture, and in time would become a major
art patron, collector of Greek and Egyptian art, an accomplished
furniture designer, and a writer.33 However, despite their substan-
tial wealth (among other things, the family owned the fabled Hope
diamond34), the Hopes never really made it to the inner sanctums
of this privileged circle because of their status as recent immi-
grants. Thomas Hope and his wife, in particular, were roundly criti-
cized and even ridiculed for their nouveau riche ways of flaunting
their wealth and art collection. “Mr. Hope has a foolish manner and
a very disagreeable voice,” wrote a contemporary journalist, adding
that, “[he] says little silly nothings that make people disbelieve his
having written Anastasius.”35 On Christmas Day 1823 guests at a
party were amused to see Mrs. Hope as having dressed “in solid
gold, with rare birds flying in different directions out of her head.”36
In 1804, when Hope attempted to charge admission from the
members of the Royal Academy whom he had invited to show off
his collection, an anonymous writer penned a satirical poem and
circulated it among the members of the Academy. The poem reads,
in part,

Lo! Tommy Hope, beyond conjecture,

Sits judge Supreme of Architecture,
Contracts his brows, and with a fiat
Blights the fair fame of classic Wyatt,
And gravely proves himself alone is able
To form a palace very like a stable
...
Tommy a Child, Vitruvius noted
Transcrib’d Pausania, Euclid quoted
Maturer grown, sustain’d privations;
Scan’d men and Kings and distant nations
In Flanders skated when the sky was murky
And bared his Limb, and whiskers wore in Turkey 37

Initially, his marginal status pushed Hope to flirt with extreme

forms of libertarianism and fraternize with dissident Whig groups
in England such as the Malignants. Even though his wealth and
patronage would eventually accord him some acceptance into
English high society, Hope would never reach his ultimate goal of
purchasing a peerage for himself. In his zeal, he even attempted to
bribe Duke Wellington to intercede on his behalf. Needles to say,

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 9

this did not improve Hope’s chances with the Duke who was not
favorably disposed to the idea in the first place.38
Despite the embarrassments the family endured, Hope pursued
his passion for art and architecture with abandon. By the early
years of the nineteenth century, he had become one of the main
supporters of the idea that Greek and Ionic elements had to be
reintegrated into the interior and exterior designs of buildings in
Europe. His own art work, his writings, the art he collected, and
the architects he sponsored all shared this common goal of reviv-
ing the classical tradition. For Hope and his colleagues, Greek art
was part of a continuum that stretched back to Egyptian civiliza-
tion and continued into their own time. Hence they were interested
in Egyptian as well as Greek art and were concerned with the
Ottoman Empire’s position in these lands.
Hope’s closest circle and influence was the group of architects
and architectural historians affiliated with Cambridge University.
Together, they formed a loose group of intellectuals referred to as
“the Cambridge Hellenists” and made Cambridge the center of their
studies and experiments in design at the end of the eighteenth
century. For example, William Wilkins, who was known as the
“darling of Cambridge Hellenists” and who would design Downing
College, one of the earliest buildings in the classical style at
Cambridge, was mentored by Thomas Hope.39 At the end of the
eighteenth century, when traveling in the Near East, Cambridge
Hellenists were hosted at the British Embassy in Istanbul by John
Spencer Smythe, who was sympathetic to their ideas. They partici-
pated in the meetings and discussions at the embassy and ben-
efited from the services of Smythe’s “Ottoman Club,” which had
been formed in order to assist the British scholars and travelers
in Ottoman lands.40
Cambridge Hellenists and those who were influenced by them
were not interested merely in the formal aspects of Greek revival-
ism in architecture. An equally central element in their thinking
was educational reform and re-introduction of classical Greek lan-
guage, history, and philosophy in the curricula of higher education
in Europe. Charles Kensall, who was one of the Cambridge
Hellenists, did a massive study of education and published it in
1814 under the title of Phantasm of an University. One of the con-
cerns of Kensall’s work, which he described as the “Nurse of Uni-
versal Science,” was to reconcile liberty with equality.41 On this
point, which was also central to the European enlightenment,
Cambridge Hellenists found an enthusiastic ally in Thomas Jeffer-
son who would take Kelsall’s work as the model for the University
of Virginia which he established in 1817.42 The impact of Greek
revivalism on European education found another prominent

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10 Reşat Kasaba

manifestation in the development of Prussian and German educa-

tion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the idea of
classical education in the Gymnasium would become a prerequi-
site for admission to universities.43
Hope and his friends were well aware of the importance of the
Ottoman context within which the works of the Greek civilization
existed in the eighteenth century. David Watkin points out that the
title page of Hope’s Household Furniture was framed by an elabo-
rate border of Turkish ornamentation and argues that for Hope,
“the life and culture of the Turkish empire was in every sense the
gateway to the antique past.”44 Watkin also mentions the portrait
of Hope in Ottoman costume which was commissioned upon his
return from the Near East and displayed prominently at the
entrance to Hope’s Duchess Street home.45 In time, the question of
how the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic Civilization would fit in
their universal schema became a topic of serious concern for the
writers of the late eighteenth century. There are signs that some
of the earlier admiration the Renaissance writers had expressed for
the Ottoman Empire was carried over into this period, and some
writers seriously contemplated a thoroughly universal outlook that
included the Ottomans.46
Over time, however, the initial ambivalence of the early en-
lightenment writers towards non-European cultures gave way to
a growing conviction that Islamic art in particular could not be
seen as part of the continuum that had linked Greek art to its
Egyptian predecessor. The view that the Islamic civilization was
more like an alien intruder that had formed a barrier between the
Greek civilization and Europe and in so doing, stunted the full and
continuous growth of the Greek civilization, gained currency over
alternative perspectives. As was common in the Philhellenic liter-
ature of the time, Anastasius brims with a deep sense of regret that
the lands of classical Hellenism were now occupied by the Ottoman
Empire. There are plenty of passages in the book referring to
regions “once adorned by Greeks, and now defaced by the Turks”.47
Hope was so powerful in expressing this sentiment that Lord
Byron, the most famous of the mourners of this state of affairs,
accused him of plagiarizing his descriptions of the Ottoman Empire
and Greece from Byron’s own writings. Byron wrote in 1821,

Mr. Hope is a very respectable and decorous gentleman,-he can write, with some
endeavor, passably about chests of drawers, paper hangings, and cushions as soft
as his own or any other brains, but that he has either the courage or the power to
compile such a work as Anastasius, I utterly deny.48

Byron went on to list “strong proofs that Anastasius is the pro-

duction of Byron,”49 but later, upon realizing that Anastasius was

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 11

indeed written by Hope, he reportedly wept bitterly over its many

pages for the reason that he had not written it.50

Anastasius: An Independent Greek

Even though Hope and his neo-classicist friends shared the anti-
Ottoman attitudes of the late-eighteenth century European writers,
what really interested them was not so much the fate of the
Ottoman Empire but the contribution a free Greece could make to
Europe’s liberation from tyranny. In their eyes, Greeks were des-
tined to provide the missing link for the rejuvenation of European
civilization. But to attain the kind of freedom they were writing
about, it was not sufficient for the Greeks to jettison the Ottoman
rule. They also had to act responsibly and fulfill their historical
mission. In his hero Anastasius, Hope creates an ideal Greek,
whom Byron, in a different context had described as liberal, licen-
tious, learned, brave, impassioned, and misanthropic.
Indeed, Anastasius is the perfect embodiment of Byron’s ideal.
He is a free-spirited character who hops from island to island,
travels across the empire, and with cunning and skill, manages to
use to his advantage the intricacies of the society he is living in.
Above all, Anastasius makes a point of always putting his personal
freedom before everything regardless of the circumstances. In a
passage that shows how unfettered he was, Anastasius describes
his decision to follow his employer Mavroyeni to Istanbul in 1779
in the following words: “Not going would be to prefer to the des-
tinies of the eagle, soaring from region to region, those of the worm,
content to die in the same clod of clay in which he was born, and
perhaps crushed to death before its time by the more bold and
aspiring.”51 Later, when he decides to leave his hometown for the
second time in 1780s, Anastasius chooses Cairo and Alexandria
because “Egypt always welcomed wanderers who had no pre-
dilection for any particular soil, or attachment to any particular
home.”52 He describes Alexandria’s inhabitants as being “ready to
assume any hue or form at will,” and, as “human chameleons”.53
This sense of not belonging to a place, not wanting to submit to
an authority and above all, the fear of being rendered immobile
recurs over and over in the book. The same questions come up also
in relation Anastasius’ affairs of the heart, of which he has many.
When he is married to the jealous daughter of a tax farmer (mül-
tezim) in Egypt who tries to confine him in her palace,54 or when
he is forced to carry on an illicit affair with a rich woman that
makes it difficult for him to meet and be seen with her in public,
Anastasius makes known his displeasure and complains about
feeling like a “captive woman in a harem”.55

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But, ironically, the very qualities that make Anastasius so heroic

also make him less than well-suited to take part in the historical
drama Hope was predicting and hoping for because, after all, lib-
erating Greece would most likely require Anastasius to sacrifice his
own interests. Just as it is in Anastasius that Hope places his
hopes for the awakening of the Greek nation, it is also through
Anastasius that Hope lays bare the contradiction between indi-
vidual liberties and public good which was central to Enlighten-
ment thinking. One of the clearest expressions of this conflict
occurs in 1792, in Izmir, when Anastasius encounters an Italian
who lectures him about the coming universal revolution and urges
him to awake from his “long slumber, emancipate your oppressed
spirits, and join the noble cause.” He says to Anastasius,

Leave this worn-out empire of despotism and slavery, this den of tigers doomed to
speedy destruction; and seek on the yellow banks of the Seine the blessed dawn of
the approaching revolution . . . Your part on this grand theatre already is marked
for you. All that you have to do is to present yourself in the august assembly of the
great nation, as the representative of oppressed and mourning Greece.56

After reflecting on this “rhapsody,” which makes him “laugh,”57

Anastasius decides to look after his own interests rather than
becoming a revolutionary for the Greek cause. He chooses to head
not west to Paris but east to Baghdad. He says, “I bade mourning
Greece to wipe away her tears without me, and, instead of jour-
neying in behalf of universal liberty to Paris, I resumed the plan of
my predatory expedition to Baghdad,”58 a trip which he finances
by banditry on route.
In Anastasius Hope suggests several reasons why the Greeks
could not participate in the European-wide revolution in the eigh-
teenth century and claim their rightful place in history. Firstly
and most importantly, the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were
not unified either as a community or around a political ideal or a
project. The most important line that divided this community was
the one that separated the Fener aristocracy in Istanbul from most
of the rest of the Greeks in the empire. The former group, known
as the Phanariots, lived in the Fener district of Istanbul and served
as the agents of the Ottoman state, administering not only the
Greek community but all the Orthodox subjects of the empire. This
division becomes obvious to Anastasius and disturbs him deeply
as soon as he arrives in Istanbul in 1779 in tow of his em-
ployer Mavroyeni, the Dragoman of the Ottoman Navy. Anastasius
expresses his dismay to his master, who happens to be one of the
most distinguished members of the Fener aristocracy. Anastasius
says, “My countrymen so gay so light hearted at Chios seems at

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 13

the Fanar at once dull and important.”59 Mavroyeni disagrees,

saying: “our nation is everywhere the same. The same at
Petersburg as at Cairo; the same now that it was twenty centuries
ago . . . Credulity, versatility, and thirst of distinctions, from the
earliest periods formed, still form, ever will continue to form the
basis of the Greek character”60 Anastasius demurs and says that
it matters little to him whether the modern Greek resembles the
ancient or not, as long as an ordinary Greek is not accepted by
the Fanariots or by Ottoman society to be on an equal footing with
this privileged segment of the Greek society.61
Hope places part of the blame for the split between the Fener
aristocracy and the Greek commoners on the policies of the
Ottoman rulers. Not only were the Greeks as a whole elevated by
the Ottoman state to a position of authority within the Orthodox
community at large, some among them held very high posts within
the Ottoman bureaucracy. Anastsius’ employer, Nikolas Mavroyeni,
was one such privileged Greek. Following his post in the Admiralty,
he was appointed the Hospodar of Wallachia and served there from
1786 until his death in 1790. He is generally recognized as an able
administrator who emphasized the importance of education for
social development in this region. Among his achievements is
listed the printing of one of the earliest Romanian grammars in
1787.62 Members of the Mavroyeni family continued to play
prominent roles in Ottoman Foreign Service in the generations
that succeeded Nikolas. One of his grandsons, Spyridon Mavroyeni,
was Sultan Abdulhamid’s chief physician and was appointed
as senator in the 1877–78 assembly. His son, Alexander, was
first, the Sultan’s private secretary, and then represented the
Ottoman Empire in Washington and Vienna in the late-nineteenth
century.63
In all of this, however, Hope also sees an intricate plan by
the Ottoman state to subvert the cohesion of the Greek commu-
nity. In the novel, Mavroyeni asks Anastasius rhetorically, “For
what purpose do you think has the Porte made, in my favor, the
hitherto unexampled exception to its rules of joining the rank of a
Turkish serasker? . . . For what purpose has the Porte allowed me
to command in the field several thousands of Moslem soldiers?”64
Eventually, Mavroyeni found out that the position of power ac-
corded to him by the state actually made him more vulnerable
because it exposed him to attacks from all sides. Greeks saw him
as a collaborator, Wallachians as an obstacle to their cause of
joining with the Austrians, and the Turks never more than an
infidel servant. The only party who comes out as the winner in
this multilateral relationship is the Ottoman state. Given the pre-
cariousness of his position, Mavroyeni was sure to fight; not

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necessarily out of his loyalty to his sovereign, but in order to defend

himself against all the elements that were arrayed against him.
None of this, however, altered the fact that the Muslim rulers of
the Ottoman Empire held absolute power over all of their subject
peoples. At all times, these subjects, especially the non-Muslims,
had to be very cautious and not even appear to take part in any
activity that could be deemed seditious by the Porte. They could
not ride horses or carry weapons, and had to wear certain colors.
Just as it was common for the least significant members of this
group to receive the favors of the Palace and rise to prominence, it
was equally conceivable for them to lose their position suddenly
and be punished in the most severe ways. As a result of one
of these sudden shifts of fortune, Anastasius’ employer, Nikolas
Mavroyeni, was executed in 1790 by the orders of the Sultan for
no apparent reason, despite the fact that he was serving loyally
during the Ottoman Russian War of 1787–1792. Similarly, during
the Greek War of Independence, the Ottomans executed the Greek
Dragoman, Stavraki Aristarchi, and Gregory V, the Patriarch of the
Orthodox Church, and displayed the Patriarch’s body in public.
They did not do so because the Patriarch or the majority of the
Greeks in the Ottoman Empire supported the rebellion. The Porte
knew very well that the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire showed little
or no support or sympathy for the rebels and that the clergy was
fearful of the enlightenment in both its European and neo-Hellenic
disguises. In 1802, a monk warned the youth of Greece not to study
in the west, which he described as a “chaos of destruction” where
“the most atheistical lackeys of the arch-atheist Voltaire spew up
from the foul-smelling gorges the most irreligious insults and
blasphemies against the Divine Majesty.”65 In an encyclical that
was issued in 1819, the Patriarch Gregory V expressed his
hostility to new sciences by saying that “an obsessional devotion
to mathematics and the natural sciences had led to an increasing
scorn for grammatical learning, the arts of logic and rhetoric,
and the teaching of sacred theology.”66 The patriarch had even
issued a pronouncement denouncing the revolutionaries, but the
Ottomans, nevertheless, carried out their punitive measures
because Gregory and other prominent Greeks had failed to prevent
the insurrection.67 Against this background, Hope portrays Anas-
tasius, as chafing under the Ottoman rule most of the time.
Anastasius says, at one point,

In my fits of heroism, I swore to treat the Turks as [Achilles] had done the Trojans,
and for a time dreamt nothing but putting to the sword the whole Seraglio-dwarfs,
eunuchs, and all. These dreams, my parents highly admired but adviced me not to
disclose in common. ‘Just rancour’ they said, ‘gathers strength by being depressed’.68

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 15

Yet such noble spirit notwithstanding, neither Anastasius nor the

Greeks Hope met in his travels devoted themselves to the historic
mission the Enlightenment thinkers had assigned to them. In
Hope’s eyes the divisions within the Greek community, and the
policies of the Ottoman state were the primary culprits of this sit-
uation. But Hope expresses his special contempt toward the Fener
aristocracy for becoming a willing instrument of the Ottoman state.
At one point, Anastasius says, “The filth of the Fanar now displayed
to me all its lustre: it was like the contents of a sewer.”69 But the
author’s anger does not stop with this community. The book also
conveys a general sense of impatience and anger not just with the
Fener aristocracy but also with the Greek subjects of the Ottoman
Empire in general. At times, it sounds as if Hope holds the Greeks
themselves responsible for failing to live upto their historic call and
contributing to the spread of universal liberty that was ushered by
the enlightenment and carried on by the French Revolution. Even
though he embodies many of these contradictions, Anastasius,
explains his own choices by saying that he is “equally disgusted
with the brutal stupidity of the rulers, as with the servile apathy
of the ruled, and seeing in every system, whether of conquered or
of conquerors, equal disorganization and ruin, I at last resolved to
resume my rights of nature, and the primeval state of warfare
against all worth attacking.”70
Many travel writers from this period were similarly distressed at
discovering the discrepancies between their imaginations of the
Near East and their people and the actual conditions they wit-
nessed. In particular, the “real” Greeks Hope and other Europeans
came across in their travels refused to act according to the script
that history had written for them. The Greeks appeared to be safely
ensconced in the interstices of the Ottoman society and were not
particularly bothered by the blatant injustices of their situation.
As sailors, farmers, tax farmers, voyvodas, dragomans, or even as
bandits, they were integrated as well (or as poorly) as anybody else
in the fast-changing Ottoman society of the late eighteenth century.
Worse, whenever they had a choice, they appeared to be always
preferring their own freedom over the independence of the Greek
nation. At one point, no less a Philhellen than Byron described
Greeks as “plausible rascals with all the Turkish vices without their
courage.”71
Ultimately, the only Greeks who agreed with the European
Philhellens and worked for the big dream of completing European
freedom by liberating the Greek civilization came from among intel-
lectuals, most of whom lived outside of the Ottoman Empire. These
people were already a part of the European cultural and intellec-
tual milieu and were striving to keep themselves at a distance from

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both the Orthodox Church and the Ottoman rulers.72 One of the
most prominent of this group of intellectuals was Adamantios
Korais (1748–1833) who was originally from Izmir but was in self-
imposed exile in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century. Korais
became the leader of the intellectual movement referred to as the
neo-Hellenic Enlightenment consisting of writers and educators
who saw the future of the Greek nation not in its Eastern, Byzan-
tine past but in its absorption in the European-wide revolution. In
1811, Korais expressed his enthusiasm for such a future by
writing, “either it is true that a renaissance is under way in Greece
or nothing in the world is true.”73 Another Greek writer who shared
similar sentiments was the poet Velestinli Regas (1757–1798) who
wrote revolutionary poetry, translated Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit de
lois and even tried to contact Napoleon Bonaparte and urged him
to bring freedom to southeastern Europe.74
In this connection, it has long been noted that the initial stir-
rings for the Greek Revolution came not from within Morea or
Thessaly but from Odessa and under the leadership of a Greek in
Russian service, Alexander Ypsilanti in 1814.75 In its second phase,
the movement for Greek independence became centered in Morea;
but this time, the European enthusiasts stripped it of all of its local
characteristics and determinants and rushed to reinterpret it as
part of the European revolution.76 In 1830s, when Greece finally
became independent, this result was not deemed satisfactory
either, and was seen more as an interruption in that Europe-wide
process.77

Conclusion
Some interpretations of enlightenment literature criticize this body
of thought for having a surprisingly narrow outlook on history. It
is argued that in their zeal for breaking the religious dogma in
Europe, the writers and thinkers of the late-eighteenth century
neglected to consider the broader implications of their discussions
on freedom. Their universalistic pronouncements notwithstanding,
these thinkers are routinely blamed for making Eurocentricism the
standard framework for studying world history.
Some of this criticism has merit. Among other things, the key
texts of the enlightenment included reflections on how Europe and
Europeans were to perceive themselves and define their place and
role in the world as Europe was going through an exceptionally
intense period of transition and transformation. That these ques-
tions were posed, however, does not mean that this literature auto-
matically accorded a privileged status to European civilization. The
sentiments that shaped early enlightenment thinking were consid-

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 17

erably more cosmopolitan than their latter day detractors make

them out to be. As early as in 1754, no less an authority than
Rousseau argued that colonialism was a mechanism for the per-
petuation of inequality in human society and acted as a perpetual
barrier to the realization of Enlightenment.78
If there was one outlook that united especially the humanist
thinkers of the Enlightenment, it was their belief that the period of
liberalization and progress that was upon Europe was part of a
universal movement that was bound to influence other places and
peoples. Hence in most European countries, Philhellenism came to
be closely associated with the liberal wing of the political spectrum,
especially in its early phases. For example, those who opposed the
Bourbon Restoration in France rallied to the cause of the Greeks
between 1815 and 1830, seeing in the Greek War the ideological
progeny of the French Revolution.79 It is not surprising that as a
displaced Dutchman with Scottish background, Thomas Hope was
an early and passionate defender of these liberal principles. His
status of not quite belonging anywhere had inculcated in him a
deep distrust of the newly solidifying borders and expanding
powers of the state. Nowhere is Anastasius more fiery than when
he denounces such barriers. He says, to his friend, “Far as that
society has spread its insidious snares, has it so much as left a
single small spot on earth, where those yet unborn, who should
dislike its partial regulations, may find room to retire to the enjoy-
ment of their birthright? Has not society . . . so monopolized all the
means of disentangling oneself from its mazes, as to render the
gaining if these blissful modes next to impossible? They cut our
claws, they clip our wings, and then they cry out with a smile of
derision: ‘poor pinioned eagle, fly if thou list!’ ”80
The sweeping changes that came with the industrial transfor-
mation of England, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era
undermined some of the earlier, more optimistic projections of
the Enlightenment. Not only did these developments create a deep
wedge in Europe, but they also forced the Europeans to ponder
whether and under what conditions it could be permissible to
usher in progress by force without waiting for the natural and uni-
versal unfolding of human development. Those who were involved
in politics and those who were writing about these changes were
trying to understand and shape the transformations that were
affecting their societies and themselves.
Hence, the inconsistencies we find in writings such as Anasta-
sius reflect, above all, the uncertainties of the period in which they
were written. Looking back after two hundred years, we know that
the universalist ideals that underlie these works did not end up
determining the shape of Europe and European relations with the

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18 Reşat Kasaba

rest of the world in the nineteenth century, when Greece, the

Balkans, the rest of Europe, and eventually the whole world
became engulfed in the fervor of narrowly circumscribed national-
ist movements.81 It appeared that a loosely integrated world with
fluid boundaries was not conducive to the advancement of the
interests of people and their communities in the modern world. It
is perhaps an ominous ploy that Hope kills all the main charac-
ters by the end of his novel, including all of Anastasius’ wives,
mistresses, children, and friends and that the story ends with
Anastasius’ own sad demise. Although the question of why
European history ultimately took the turn toward parochialism
is not a topic we can deal with here, it is certainly instructive to
reflect on this period of transition through the lenses provided by
Anastasius.

Notes
1
See Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization,
and the Institution of Modern Greece, Stanford; Stanford University
Press, 1996; Suzanne Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archeology and
Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996. See also the essays in Byron Raizis ed., Lord Byron:
Byronism, Liberalism, Philhellenism, Proceedings of the 14th International
Byron Symposium, Athens: Graphic Arts, 1988. Olga Augustinos, French
Odysseys, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994; Richard Stoneman,
Land of Lost Gods, London: Hutchinson, 1987; Terence Spencer, Fair
Greece Sad Relic, Literary Philhellenism from Shakespeare to Byron,
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.
2
Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1998.
3
Cited in Olga Augustinos, French Odysseys, p. 142.
4
See Helen Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, The Eve of the Greek Revival:
British Travellers’ Perceptions of Early Nineteenth-Century Greece, London:
Routledge, 1990; Robert Eisner, Travels to an Antique Land: The History
and Literature of Travel to Greece, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, 1991.
5
The crucial role this literature played in reinforcing the power
relations between Europe and the Near East has been very influentially
demonstrated by Edward Said (Orientalism, New York: Pantheon, 1978).
In his widely discussed Black Athena, Martin Bernal accuses the
European archeology and classical education of deliberately ignoring the
African and Asian origins of western civilization. Martin Bernal, Black
Athena, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
6
In the words of a recent writer, “even before its existence as a nation,
Greece found itself designated as the representation of civilization in a pre-
determined confrontation with (Ottoman) barbarism.” Stathis Gourgouris,
Dream Nation, p. 72.
7
From a lecture by Jason Priestly presented to Edmund Burke in
1791. Cited in Isaac Kramnick ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader,
London: Penguin Books, 1995, p. 670.

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 19

8
Hume, Essays, vol. I, p. 252, cited in Michael Adas, Machines as the
Measure of Men, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989, p. 117.
9
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol III, p. 96.
10
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol I, p. 190.
11
Thomas Hope, AnastasiusVol I, p. 92.
12
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol III, p. 1.
13
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol I, p. 68.
14
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol I, pp. 109–111.
15
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol I, p. 167.
16
The literature on ayans is considerable. Among the classics are, Halil
Inalcik, “Centralization, Decentralization in Ottoman Administration,” T.
Naff and Roger Owen eds., Studies in Eighteenth century Islamic History,
Carbondale:
. Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 27–52; Yücel Özkaya,
Osmanlı I mparatorluğ unda Ayanlık, Ankara: A.Ü.D.T.C.F. Yayınları, 1977;
1977; Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” W.
Polk and R. Chambers eds, Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle
East, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. Bruce McGowan,
Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, 1600–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1981. For some of the relevant documents, see Çağatay
Uluçay, “Karaosmanoğularına Dair Bazı Vesikalar,” Tarih Vesikaları,
1942–44, II: 193–207; 300–308; 434–440; III: 117–126; Necdet Sakaoğlu
Anadolu Derebeyi Ocaklarından Köse Paşa Hanedanı, Ankara: Yurt, 1984;
For some recent interpretation and discussion, see the essays in Ç. Keyder
& F. Tabak eds., Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle
East, Albany: SUNY Press, 1991; Fikret Adanır, “Tradition and Rural
Change in Southeastern Europe During Ottoman Rule,” D. Chirot ed., The
Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989, pp. 131–176; Ariel Salzmann, “An Ancien Régime
Revisited: ‘Privatization and Political Economy in the Eighteenth century
Ottoman Empire,” Politics and Society, 21, 1993, pp. 393–423; Dina
Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul
1540–1834, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; Karen Barkey,
Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoman Route to State Centralization, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1994; Yuzo Nagata, Tarihte Ayanlar: Karaos-
manoğulları Üzerine Bi Inceleme, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997.
17
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 27.
18
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, pp. 106–107.
19
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 122.
20
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 5.
21
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 3.
22
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 5.
23
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 6.
24
Thomas Hope, Anastasius Vol I, 153.
25
See the works by Uluçay and Nagata cited in note 16.
26
Nagata, Tarihte Ayanlar, op.cit., pp. 36, 175.
27
Hanna Batatu, Old Social Classes, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978, p. 230.
28
Mouradgea d’Ohson, Tableau géneral de l’Empire othoman, 7
volumes, Paris, 1788–1824. See Carter V. Findley, “Mouradgea d’Ohsson
(1740–1807): Liminality and Cosmopolitanism in the Author of the Tableau
Général del’empire Othoman,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 22,
1, Spring 1998, pp. 21–35.
29
After the revolution in France, Choiseul-Gouffier fled to Russia where
he worked for Catherine II and his son Paul before returning to France in

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20 Reşat Kasaba

1802 to resume his writing on the antiquities. See Olga Augustinos, French
Odysseys, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 157–173.
See also Virginia Aksan, “Choiseul-Gouffier at the Sublime Porte, 1784–
1792,” Sinan Kuneralp ed., Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History, IV,
1990, pp. 27–34.
30
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. vi.
31
Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 10, October 1821, p. 310.
32
Hope’s life story is based on David Watkin’s Thomas Hope and the
Neoclassical Idea, London: John Murray, 1968.
33
In adition to Anastasius, Hope also wrote the following books: House-
hold Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807), The Costumes of the Ancients,
Designs of Modern Costume (1812), An Essay on the Origins And Prospects
of Man (1831), An Historical Essay on Architecture (1835).
34
The reference to Hope Diamond is from Wall Street Journal, Jul 28,
1989.
35
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 23.
36
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 11.
37
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 11.
38
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 25.
39
David Watkin, Thomas Hope pp. 61–62.
40
David Watkin, Thomas Hope p. 64.
41
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 72.
42
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 72.
43
Susan Marchand, Down from Olympus, p. 27.
44
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 65.
45
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 65.
46
For example, in Joseph Andrews, Fielding has one of his characters
say that “a good virtuous Turk, or heathen, are more acceptable in
the sight of the Creator than a vicious and wicked Christian”. Cited in
Norman Hampson, “The Enlightenment,” in Euan Cameron, Early Modern
Europe: An Oxford History, New York; Oxford University Press, 1999, p.
271.
47
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. vi.
48
Byron, “On Anastasius,” Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 10,
September 1821, p. 201.
49
Ibid.
50
David Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 6.
51
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, pp. 67–68.
52
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 280.
53
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 287.
54
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. II, p. 63.
55
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 180.
56
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 99.
57
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. III, p. 100.
58
Ibid.
59
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 78.
60
Ibid.
61
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, p. 80.
62
Denis Deletant, “Romanian Society in the Danubian Principalities in
The Early 19th Century,” Richard Clogg ed. Baltan Society in the Age of
Greek Independence. London: Macmillan, 1981, p. 229.
63
Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek Turkish
Relations, 1918–1974, Athens; Center for Asia Minor Studies, pp. 27, 30.
64
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. II, pp. 290–91.

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 Reflections on Thomas Hope’s Anastasius 21

65
Quoted in Richard Clogg, “Elite and Popular Culture in Greece Under
Turkish Rule,” Indiana Social Studies Quarterly, 32, 1979, p. 69.
66
Ibid., p. 79.
67
Richard Clogg, “The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire”, Christians
and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, I, The
Central Lands, Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis eds., New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1982, pp. 192–93.
68
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. I, pp. 9–10.
69
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol. II, p. 363.
70
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol II, p. 189.
71
Leslie A. Marchand, “The Development of Byron’s Philhellenism,”
Byron Raizis ed., Lord Byron: Byronism, Liberalism, Philhellenism,
Proceedings of the 14th International Byron Symposium, Athens: Graphic
Arts, 1988, p. 121. Part of Byron’s disappointment had to do with the
atrocities Greeks committed against their captives during their war of
independence. Ann Barton, “Not an Ideal Husband,” The New York Review
of Books, November 18, 1999, p. 49.
72
See G.P. Henderson, The Revival of Greek Thought, 1620–1830,
Edinburgh, 1971.
73
Quoted in Richard Clogg, “Elite and Popular culture in Greece Under
Turkish Rule,” Indiana Social Studies Quarterly, 32, 1979, . p. 69.
74
Herkül Milas, Yunan Ulusunun Doğuşu, Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları,
1994,. pp. 87–116. .
75
Ilber Ortaylı, Imparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı, Istanbul: Hil, 1983, p.
53; Barbara and Charles Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan
National States, 1804–1920, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
76
Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation, p. 74.
77
Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation, p. 49.
78
Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, Cambridge; Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995, p. 72. In 1776 Adam Smith argued that the “establish-
ment of the European colonies in America and the West Indies arose from
no necessity.” According to him, by encouraging monopolistic practices,
the possession of colonies led either to the long term impoverishment of
their possessors, as in the case of Spain and Portugal, or to the distortion
of the balance among several branches of industries as in the case of Great
Britain. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993, pp. 340, 352–57.
79
Nina M. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, French Images from the Greek War
of Independence, 1821–1830, New Haven; Yale University Press, 1989.
80
Thomas Hope, Anastasius, Vol II, p. 190.
81
See Daniel Chirot, “Herder’s Multicultural Theory of Nationalism and
its Consequences,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol 10, 1, Winter
1996, pp. 1–15. See also Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation, p. 51.

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