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References:
1. Mitchell W. J. T. What is Visual Culture?//Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside/ed. I. Lavin. - Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study, 1995.
2. Seidma A. Steven. Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World. - 2008.
3. Library of Congress.//[Electronic resource]. - Available from: http://www.loc.gov/(date of access: 12.09.14).
4. Grachev G. V, Melnik I. K. Manipulation of a personality: organization, methods and technologies of information and psychological impact. - M., 1999.
5. Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. - M., 2003.
6. Schlesinger A. M. The cycles ofAmerican history. - M.: Progress-Akademia, 1992.
Hionidis Pandeleimon, Independent Researcher, PhD in International History (LSE, University of London) E-mail: hionidispl@hotmail.com
George Finlay and early-Victorian images of modern Greece, 1836-1845
Abstract: In the first decades of Greek independence George Finlay laid the foundations ofhis remarkable dominance of the British public debate on modern Greece in the nineteenth century. Finlay endeavoured to account for the “backwardness" of the Greek kingdom by vindicating the Greek peasant and charging foreign rule and, after the constitutional revolution of 1843, the selfish political elite with the failures of the state.
Keywords: Finlay, philhellenism, Victorian civilization, nineteenth-century journalism, King Otho.
INTRODUCTION
In 1868, when the London press was alarmed at the possibility of the resurgence of the Eastern Question due to the Cretan insurrection [1, 81-7], the Cobdenite Morning Star devoted a leading article in 10 February 1868 in an attempt to analyse the motives of the Times’s correspondent from Athens. The correspondent's attitude, the discrepancy between the fact that he “is one of the severest commentators on the national policy or no policy of Greece" and the recognition that “he is surely no foe of Greece, for he has cast in his lot with her" was imputed to his “sober and rigid" personality, which left him “absolutely without anything of what people call sentiment" [26, 4, columns de]. The man whose views on the crisis supplanted the combatants in the interest of the British public was George Finlay, the Scot philhellene. But the success in Britain of Finlay’s correspondence during the period 1866-1869 was mainly due to his earlier writings on Greek affairs that had earned him a name as an expert on modern Greece.
The importance of George Finlay as a link between Greece, ancient and modern, and the British public and his influence on British opinion on the East in general have long been recognized [18, 552-67; 23, 7-8]; yet “scholars have paid him little attention" [22, 14]. The apparent inconsistency is partly due to the tendency to impute Finlay’s critical approach to Greek affairs to traits of his character, which had turned the attention of historians to whether he was “a cold sardonic man" or simply “a Scot and a Romantic" [14, 142-4].
The tendency has been decidedly reversed recently. In an unpublished thesis Miliori has construed Finlay’s texts
on ancient and modern Greece in the light of early nineteenth-century political and historical thought [17, 160-75]. Moreover, the importance of Finlay’s thought and works was decisively highlighted by two papers presented at the 2006 conference on the British School of Athens, which traced “his intellectual inheritance... [in] the optimistic and pessimistic strains of Scottish thought" [22, 24] and acknowledged his influence on British scholars who were interested in Greek affairs [24, 37]. In these three studies the writings of George Finlay acquire great importance because they are examined as an integral part of a wider framework of ideas and attitudes towards national existence in the nineteenth century. This line of analysis disperses the “shadows" surrounding his “character" and motives and rescues the study of Finlay’s comments on Greece from its solitary existence.
But still the full extent of Finlay’s impact on the formation of British perceptions of modern Greece especially during the reign of King Otho has not been examined and evaluated. Historians have focused on Finlay’s works on Greece’s past rather than on its nineteenth-century present, on the origins of his ideas rather than on their actual influence on his contemporaries, on his well-known academic endeavours rather than on his writings on the day-to-day issues of the Greek kingdom. In the following pages the focal point will be Finlay’s early journalistic career, which is examined alongside his better known works and his function as an erudite guide for British travellers. The examination of these roles highlights the keystones of Finlay’s analysis of modern Greece, provides indications as to his influence on British public debate on Greek and Eastern affairs and explains to a considerable extent the
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George Finlay and early-Victorian images of modern Greece, 1836-1845
success and longevity in Britain of his assumptions on the problems and prospects of the Greek kingdom.
By adopting a new approach to George Finlay’s thought and works the study of his case would communicate with another field of historical inquiry, commentary and judgemental pronouncements on continental nationalities — on the Greek nation in particular — in nineteenth-century Britain, which as Parry has argued “turned on the purposes and values that Britain should assert, much more than on attitudes to specific overseas people” [21, 2]. Indeed, an inquiry into George Finlay, who wrote at great length about ancient and modern Greece mainly in English and for the British public, could prove extremely constructive to the study of the relation between the Greek kingdom and the formation of its image in Victorian Britain, which is still in a seminal state.
The case of George Finlay is ideal for rethinking the character of the commentators and the nature of comments on which a study of the position of the Greek kingdom in British public debate must focus. Throughout his life Finlay combined the roles of “a philhellene, a traveller, a scholar with diverse connections, a collector, an historian, a liberal” [22, 13-4]. Furthermore, in the years 1836-1845 Finlay combined the status of an emerging ‘expert’ on ancient, medieval, and modern Greece with the less known capacity of the Morning Herald’s correspondent from Athens. Were the philhellenic excitement of the 1820s, his well known literary endeavours, and his increasing interest in Greek history sufficient to explain Finlay’s comments on modern Greece as appeared in the columns of a London paper or Finlay’s reading of the subject should be related to contemporary notions of modernity in his birthplace, Britain, and to developments in the Greek kingdom?
The overall ambition of this article is to contribute to the study of British understanding of other nations and British self-images by showing how George Finlay’s criticism of modern Greece and his proposals regarding its future development during the period 1836-1845 reflected wider early-Victorian conceptions of civilization, politics and “character”, and the day-to-day developments in the Greek kingdom — not his “Romantic” or “sardonic” manners. I also hope that this article, with its emphasis on the interdependence of expressions of sympathy or antipathy to the Greeks and contemporary diplomatic and political necessities, will provide a useful background to students of other aspects ofAnglo-Greek contact in the first half of the nineteenth century.
This task involves a threefold process. The first step consists in presenting Finlay’s life and activities in Greece in the first decades of King Otho’s reign. Secondly, this article describes Finlay’s analysis on modern Greece attempted in pamphlets and long articles in British magazines, which will highlight elements of continuity and change in his works. The largest part of the article, however, describes in detail Finlay’s correspondence in the Morning Herald, which still remains unexploited by studies on Finlay and images of Greece in Britain.
GEORGE FINLAY IN KING OTHO’S GREECE
The 1830s and 1840s were the period of Finlay’s more active participation in the political and economic life of modern Greece [13; 22, 13]. Born in 1799 and raised in Scotland, Finlay in 1823 decided to join the Greek cause as a volunteer: “I resolved to terminate my university studies in the tented field” [6, 668]. It seems that during the war he developed a more permanent interest in Greece and in 1827 he returned, he bought lands and houses at Athens and lived in the country for the rest of his life [15, 32; 24, 30]. The presence of British warships in the Greek ports during the first years of the kingdom’s independence, as the “British government was lending support to the emerging state”, probably increased Finlay’s feeling of security and confirmed his decision to reside permanently in Athens [11, 199]. In the immediate years after the establishment of the independent kingdom he directed his activity to making his lands profitable and improving the conditions of life in the Greek capital; in 1836 Finlay donated money to the erection of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in the Greek capital and in 1841 he was elected member of the provincial council of Attica. In addition, in 1830 Finlay applied for employment under the British government in Greece and three years later he asked, again unsuccessfully, to be named officer of King Otho [19, 388-9].
In these early years Finlay became involved in party politics opposing the government of Armansperg, the Bavarian regent. Writing to a Greek, Louriottis, member of the “English” party, Finlay observed: “Shall we who crashed the lion (Capodistrias), shall we pay the wolf (Armansperg) homage!!!” [28, LE1/F].
The failure of his business plans, which was partly due to the confiscation of a part of his land for the building of the palace and the royal gardens, and a growing disillusionment with Greek politics gradually took Finlay away from the public life of the Greek kingdom. As early as 1835 Finlay complained that “if I was a beggar and not a Philhellene I would not have been treated as I have been” and in 1844 he asked for the assistance of the British Legation claiming that “the state of my pecuniary affairs no longer permit me to delay making every exertion in my power to obtain justice from King Otho and His Ministers” [28, LE71/F]. In August 1846 he wrote: “I have given up Greek politics; and so completely have I done it that I read no newspapers and rarely see those who occupy themselves exclusively with political business... My own resource is in study” [15, 128]. But even if he didn’t play an active part in the Greek political scene for the rest of his life, Finlay’s contribution to the formation of British images of Greece remained highly significant.
Therefore, in reference to Finlay’s early life in the Greek kingdom and the relations between Britain and Greece in the years 1836-1845 one element should be kept in mind. George Finlay in this early stage of his settlement in Athens was willing to take part not only in the public life but also in the party struggle and had formed a fixed opinion on Greek politics, contrary to the image of detachment that he cultivated in late life.
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GEORGE FINLAY’S ANALYSIS ON THE MODERN GREEK KINGDOM
The idea of a decentralized government, which would promote agriculture and derive its material and moral strength from the improvement of the local communities, ran through Finlay’s analysis of the condition of the Greek kingdom and his criticism of the political and economic arrangements during King Otho’s reign. Finlay believed that, when the Greek kingdom was established in 1832, the Greeks already possessed the prerequisite elements for their future government in the form of the local municipal institutions: “All Greece is, and always has been, divided into communities enjoying the right of choosing their own magistrates, and these magistrates decide a number of police and administrative questions not affecting crimes and rights of property” [7, 351]. His severe censure against the Bavarian officers and the Greek politicians originated from the perception that they were violating these institutions by imposing on the country laws alien to the habits of the people: “the institutions of a people can never be suddenly altered by legislative enactment, for they form a more important and influential part of national existence than laws themselves” [5, 32]. Finlay strongly criticized the absolute power of King Otho and the constitutional revolution of 1843 gratified at first his hope for a representative system of government [8, 785-96]. But the function of the new institutions did not come up to his expectations and after 1850 he returned to the notion of a decentralized system based on local communities:
The Greeks themselves think that their great political want is a good systematic central administration. We believe, on the contrary, that their great political deficiency is the want of municipal institutions that would admit of their making some exertions to improve their own condition [8, 785].
On the other hand, contrary to the perception of the Greeks as a commercial people Finlay believed that “the natural bias of their character is not as much inclined either to war or commerce, as to the rural occupations and agriculture” [9, 531]. In fact it was among the peasants that the moral virtues of the Greek nation were to be found. The Phanariotes, the members of the rich Greek families at Constantinople, and the high clergymen had lived under the corruptible influence of the Turkish rule and had brought into the new state the spirit of intrigue and idleness that characterized both classes [7, 351]. However, later Finlay became more sceptical towards the Greek character observing that “the Greeks alone have enjoyed the profits of the corruption which has reigned in the administration since the year 1838; they are consequently not entitled to throw the blame on foreigners” [10, 407].
The completion of the study of the main themes in Finlay’s writings and the assessment of their impact on influential statesmen and men-of-letters make necessary at this point an investigation into the intermediaries through which his opinions reached the British public. In a recent evaluation of
Finlay’s 'writings on contemporary Greek society and politics’, his contribution has been confined to the 1836 pamphlet and to a series of articles published in the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine [17, 162]. However, Finlay himself was aware of and concerned about the limited appeal of historical works and specialized pamphlets to the British public. Finlay described in his journal how he had to publish the pamphlet The Greek kingdom and the Greek Nation at his own expense obviously due to the reluctance of the publishers to undertake the publication of a work which had not much chance of attracting a wider interest [15, 114]. In addition, Finlay was facing serious problems in publishing even his historical works and in 1842 he addressed Wordsworth, whom he had met in Athens, on the subject [29, MS 2142, ff. 320-1]. Moreover, these channels did not satisfy Finlay’s desire to rouse British interest in Greek affairs. In his writings Finlay repeatedly stressed the right and indeed the duty of Britain to intervene directly in Greek political life to defend the “national interest of the Greek people” and strongly criticized Lyons’s tendency to equate British influence with the accession of the “English” party to power [17, 149-50].
«Ф» FOR FINLAY: GEORGE FINLAY AND THE LONDON PRESS, 1836-1845
George Finlay’s capacity as the “private correspondent” of the Morning Herald between 1836 and 1845 provided this necessary outlet for his energies as a British philhellene. William Miller in his article “George Finlay as AJournalist”, based on material in the Finlay papers, has mentioned «ten letters, signed Ф, “Phylax”, or else anonymous, which appeared in the Morning Herald in the period 1839-1845» [18, 552]. But in the columns of the Morning Herald 64 letters appeared signed «Ф» — the letter of the Greek alphabet equivalent to the Latin “F” - , one letter signed “Phylax” and another from “Your correspondent in Greece”. The dates of these letters coincide with Finlay’s presence in or absence from Athens. In September and October 1843, for example, when correspondents from Athens covered the revolution in Greece for the English papers, no letter appeared in the Morning Herald as Finlay was in Paris “thus missing the threatened rising in Greece when Otho was forced to concede a constitution”. Again the last letter signed «Ф» appeared on 4 November 1845 and was sent from Athens on 20 October 1845; Finlay “in late 1845... set out to explore Egypt, Palestine and Syria” [15, xxvi]. Through the columns of the Morning Herald George Finlay had the opportunity to bring forward to a wider public and at frequent intervals his views on Greek affairs for a period of ten years.
Moreover, Finlay’s letters to the Morning Herald displayed affinities regarding their structure and subjects discussed. Finlay was constant in his efforts to present the political situation in the Greek kingdom and, as a result, King Otho, the running of the government, and party rivalries constituted the main themes of his correspondence. Comments on Greece’s economy, public finances and brigandage were common, while the names of eminent British travellers
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George Finlay and early-Victorian images of modern Greece, 1836-1845
who visited Athens and rare reports on social, religious, and Eastern affairs also appeared in Finlay’s letters.
The first interesting aspect in Finlay’s correspondence is his persistent comments on the personal shortcomings of King Otho and his long reports on the party political rivalry in Greece. Of course, Finlay’s conviction that “unless a representative government be given to Greece, it is impossible that the country can be kept tranquil and the revenue improved" was a common topic in his analysis of Greek affairs [26, 2 April 1839 2c]. But the intensity of criticism and the violent language employed against Otho surpassed Finlay’s comments on the abilities of the king, which appeared in his pamphlet and articles in the periodical press. There is an assessment of Otho’s abilities in a list of “Characters” in the Finlay Papers: “King Otho possessed little talent but Sir Edmund Lyons only exposed his own rashness and ignorance in endeavouring to persuade the world that he was an idiot” [27, E54]. In his correspondence Finlay was less free with his assessment of the king’s abilities. Finlay at his most favourable criticized the king’s interference in the work of the government: “the king does not allow his ministers to decide the most trifling matter, be it the expenditure of a dollar, or the removal of a tide-waiter” [26, 17 January 1843 4f]. When he was getting to the question of Otho’s absolute power Finlay was becoming extremely critical with undeviating reports on the king’s mental abilities. “Otho is the most absolute of Sovereigns now reigning in Europe”, he was “a young tyrant”, a “modern Caesar Borgia”; even worse King Otho was “a half-witted Sovereign”, a judgement confirmed by his own physicians who in 1835 declared him «to be “morally and physically” incapable of governing» [26, 10 July 1838 5b; 16 September 1841 5b; 28 September 1841 5f; 17 July 1838 5a]. A king possessing such “credentials” was not only a burden to his subjects but also a serious threat to the European balance of power in the East: «King Otho is now devoted to France, and hopes to be crowned in St. Sophia’s fane by the help of the “grand nation”» [26, 31 December 1841 4f]. Gradually the British public was becoming acquainted with a monarch who “now does nothing but kill time in pistol firing, exercise, gossiping, and sleeping; not only his mind, but his body, is lost in the laby-rinthal masses of papers in his cabinet” [26, 5 January 1841 4f]. On the other hand, Finlay praised Mavrocordatos, the leader of the “English” or “constitutional party”, as a reformer in sharp contrast to the hesitation for the talents and character of the Phanariote politician privately expressed in his letters to Leake [15, 602]. Not surprisingly, Otho preferred the members of the “French” party for his government and Finlay declared that “the French care little about the means, if the end is attained, and the object of all her intrigues is paramount influence in Greece” [26, 17 January 1843 4f]. The most distinguished members of the “French” party, now to become ministers, were “coiners, forgers, and peculators, for which the French party are renowned” [26, September 1841 5b].
In dealing with the internal condition of the Greek kingdom Finlay laboured the points most likely to rouse public excitement and affirm his conclusion that “foreign interference
alone will bring him [Otho] to his senses” [26, 28July 1842 5c]. Finlay in particular persisted in describing vividly cases of brigandage and torture practised by the Greek authorities. When in 1839 a correspondent in a French paper challenged Finlay’s high-coloured reports on the condition of Greece, he passionately defended his reading of Greek affairs insisting on brigandage as a fitting indication of the “barbarous” and “unsettled” state of the country under King Otho: “why does Otho send into Rumelia and into the Morea moveable columns of troops to hunt down brigands, who oppress the peasantry, live in free quarters, and plunder them of their sustenance?” [26, 24 June 1839 5e]. Under these circumstances the growth of the resources of the country was neglected and the finances of the kingdom were steadily worsening. “The falling-off in the revenue, whilst no attempt is made to reduce the expenditure to a proper level” and the introduction of a new commercial law “which could hardly have been equalled in its provisions by the decrees of the middle ages” brought the Greek treasury to exhaustion [26, 17 July 1838 5a; 28 July 1842 5b].
Political corruption, governmental inefficiency and a feeling of general destitution emerged as the main features of modern Greece in Finlay’s letters to the Morning Herald. As Finlay came to believe that King Otho would adopt a “national” policy only under the pressure of the European powers, the columns of a daily newspaper and the brevity and regularity of journalistic contributions enabled him to access a wider section of the British public and offered him the means of discussing the day-to-day problems of the Greek kingdom. Finlay used various arguments in his effort to manipulate the British government and public against the absolute power of Otho. The ungrateful king and his government were insulting British and Ionian subjects, the latter being under British protection. In 5 November 1839 he wrote:
Will Englishmen look on tamely while their countrymen pine to death in loathsome dungeons, to which, in violation of all law and justice, they have been consigned at the capricious will of some upstart functionary, who hopes to gain favour with his superiors by heaping wrong upon British subjects? And will Englishmen submit to see the demands of their Sovereign for redress scornfully rejected? Gratitude is hopeless to expect from the despicable government which England has helped to impose upon this miserable country [26, 2c].
Russia, the greatest threat to British predominance in the eastern Mediterranean, was advancing in the region by reinforcing its influence in Greece with the connivance of Otho. The dilapidated condition of the Greek finances would never enable Greece to pay off its debt towards Britain and the measures of the government were hampering British commerce. Appealing to the moral indignation of his readers, Finlay recited sensational examples of the horrible practices of the Greek authorities, which were breaching every law of humanity. Finlay even presented Mavrocordatos as a reliable alternative solution for the problems of Greece, though he himself had
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many doubts as to the qualifications of the Greek politician and the Phanariote class that he represented [15, 602].
Finlay, moreover, abandoned his violent language when his political objective, namely the institution of a representative system in Greece, was achieved in 1843. This can be seen as further evidence that the primary motive of his commentary on Greek affairs was his ideological conviction rather than any personal bitterness. Otho, the “half-witted Sovereign” of 1838, became a popular and much loved king after he had accepted the demands for a constitution: “the King gains daily increased popularity as the belief in his sincerity acquires strength” [26, 25 December 1843 5a]. Perfect tranquillity prevailed where a few months ago brigands and irregular troops were daily committing cruelties. In addition, the Greeks proved themselves fit for self-government; during the elections for the national assembly “there has been no riotous assemblage of idle people, no drunkenness, nor broken heads” and the assembly itself was proceeding industriously in forming the constitution as “the moderate party, who are attached to English principles of government, have obtained a most triumphant majority” [26, 28 December 1843 4f].
But when Colettis, the leader of the ‘French’ party, replaced Mavrocordatos, Finlay was ready to revert once more to the well-known accusations against the Greek political establishment. In a sense Colettis assumed all the characteristics which before 1843 were ascribed to Otho. He was slow in making his mind, “the chambers have now been open more than seven months, and not one measure of public utility has yet been enacted”, and, moreover, Colettis had direct links with the outlaws and in fact his political power rested on “the brigands whom he has brought to Athens, and the savage bands of Grivas and Girgiotis — these ruffians are ever eager to anticipate his wishes” [26, 7 May 1845 11c].
In fact, in his evaluation of the Greek political system, the internal condition of the kingdom, and the British government’s position over these matters as expressed in his correspondence for the Morning Herald George Finlay agreed with the images of Greece presented to the British public by the correspondents of the Times and the Morning Chronicle from Athens in the same period — the correspondents of these papers, James Black and John Green, had close ties with the British Legation and Sir Edmund Lyons personally [12, 46-61].
Without departing from the core of his arguments, Finlay exploited in a totally different manner the columns of the daily paper than the pages of learned periodicals and books in the same period.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the period 1836-1845 George Finlay had already formed and presented the core arguments on the Greek kingdom and the Greek people that characterised his analysis throughout his long association with the London press and the British public. Finlay might have been considered the embodiment of three different elements of philhellenism, classical education, active participation in the Greek revolution and political liberalism, had his well-documented concerns
on ancient and medieval Greek history found expression in his public utterances about modern Greece. But this did not happen in the years 1836-1845. When Finlay championed the Greeks in the East or castigated the shortcomings of their kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century, he utilized the old liberal vocabulary of freedom from oppression and insisted on the salutary influence of fiscal reform and popular institutions and their universal applicability. His correspondence from Athens did not provide an outlet for his analysis on the glories of ancient Athens and the degradation of Byzantium. Equally, his ideas in these long letters did not result from his alleged “sober and rigid personality” or his “cold and sardonic” manner either. Finlay articulated convincingly and in a systematic way contemporary scholarly and popular conceptions of British nationhood examining the Greek case in terms of the suppression of the virtues and potentials of small rural communities by a highly centralized state.
Miliori has traced the origins of Finlay’s analysis to the revival of Anglo-Saxon studies in the first half of the nineteenth century, which underlined “the communal and popular origins of British freedom” [17, 169]. Indeed nineteenth-century historians contrasted “local initiative” with “brutal centralisation” in dealing with the history of the English people [2, 140]. But the celebration of the local institutions was also deep-rooted in English political tradition and found expression in the language of civic virtue and patriotism [22, 18-9]. In the eighteenth century the defence of the “ancient constitution”, which secured liberty to the “freeborn Englishman’ and ‘bred prosperity”, was invoked to justify opposition to the threat of tyranny [4, 59-60]. In the nineteenth century this notion evolved into an attack against the corrupting influences of centralization. As part of the radical tradition the defence of the ancient usages of the people against the pretensions of the central government emerged in the thought of radicals, of the young Disraeli, and became in the 1840s and 1850s a recurring theme in the arguments of the champions of continental nationalities in Britain [3, 225-9].
However, in the climate of apprehension or, at least, indifference towards the Greek case, which prevailed in Britain in the first decades of the reign of King Otho, Finlay’s coherent analysis of the problems of the Greek kingdom was less “popular” to contemporary readers than it is with nowadays scholars. In any case contemporaries, among them Englishmen who resided in the Greek kingdom, held the London press in high esteem and regarded its columns as an influential tribune for their views to be heard by the leading figures of the Foreign Office and the political world. Finlay was aware of the fact and he endeavoured to exploit the advantages of the daily press through the columns of the Morning Herald. His aim was to put pressure on King Otho’s successive governments, by exposing their perils to the “public opinion” of a great European power, to reshape Greek administration and economy according to Finlay’s proposals. A London paper and the anonymity of journalistic contributions allowed Finlay to comment on the day — to — day issues of the Greek kingdom, to describe with a fair
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George Finlay and early-Victorian images of modern Greece, 1836-1845
degree of excess individual cases of corruption, torture and brigandage, to use a vocabulary not suited for an historical essay or the pages of a learned magazine.
The state of the London press in the 1830s and 1840s seconded Finlay’s to take advantage of it. Although professionalism was rapidly progressing, in the case of continental developments only piecemeal information reached the public whose interest, nevertheless, on foreign affairs kept on increasing. Newspapers could maintain, and pay, their own correspondents at Paris or Rome but were subject to the readiness and the partiality of residents when publishing news from Athens. Deprived of the promptness with which modern mass media react to global developments, early-Victorian papers secured their leading role by the scarcity of information on distant lands. In this state of affairs a small number of “experts” from Greece could easily supervise the information that reached Britain and guide it to serve their interests. Lyons, the British representative in the Greek kingdom who systematically manipulated the press on Greek affairs, activated his consul and a close friend to become correspondents and furnished them with inside information which made their reports reliable [12, 52-60]. Finlay himself had earlier, in 1833, used the London press in order to vindicate his claims against the Greek authorities for the confiscation of part of his landed property [15, 476].
For Britons residing in Greece the great advantage when addressing their countrymen was their “Englishness” as they spoke the language, they knew the habits, they shared the notions of their readers. Subjects such as absolutism, free institutions, and material progress were keen to early-Victorian readership and often featured in correspondence from Greece alongside points of political and diplomatic interest. In Finlay’s case many elements of his subtle analysis on the present and future of the modern Greek state filtered through his letters published in the Morning Herald. But the success in Britain of Finlay’s correspondence during the period 1836-1845 was partly due to a misconception as to his interest in the internal progress of Greece, which presented him as a hostile observer and an uncompromising critic of the Greek kingdom.
In the first half of the nineteenth century the press was already acknowledged as an important element in shaping public opinion and influencing domestic and foreign policy. In the period 1836-1845 George Finlay took advantage of the situation, became a key figure in the discussion of the case of modern Greece in Britain and established his dominant role in shaping the image of the country and the people for the rest of the century. But he did pay the price for his success; most admirers and the few critics focused on Finlay’s exposition of the failures of Greece rather than on his explanation for the country’s condition and even less on his proposals for its future.
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Shavlokhova Elena Sergeyevna, Doctor of History, Professor, Pro-rector for scientific work of the Academy of Marketing and Social Technologies — IMSIT, city of Krasnodar
E-mail: 520637@mail.ru
Integration processes in the beginning of XX century in the ethnic environment of the North Caucasus
The publication of the article has been carried out with financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund in the project of undergoing scientific research "The development of the state administration of the national regions in Russia in the late 19th - 20th century (by the examples of the North Caucasus)", Project 14-11-23006
Abstract: This article discusses the integration issues in the early XX century in the ethnic environment of the North Caucasus such as elite integration of steppe and mountain peoples in a nationwide structure of the upper classes, consideration of regional, ethnic, religious and cultural differences. In this regard, Russia’s policy in relation to the small nations can hardly be called a colonial one, Russian state has never promulgated the laws aimed at suppressing their rights and national dignity.
Keywords: Integration processes, ethnic backgrounds, multi-ethnicity of individual regions, the North Caucasus, ethnic relations, small nations.
Шавлохова Елена Сергеевна, доктор исторических наук, профессор, проректор по научной работе Академии маркетинга и социально-информационных технологий — ИМСИТ, г. Краснодар
E-mail: 520637@mail.ru
Интеграционные процессы начала XX века в этнической среде Северного Кавказа
Издание статьи осуществлено при финансовой поддержке РГНФ в проекта проведения научных исследований «Развитие государственного управления национальными регионами в России в конце XIX - XX века (на
примерах Северного Кавказа)», проект № 14-11-23006
Аннотация: В данной статье рассматриваются интеграционные вопросы начала XX века в этнической среде Северного Кавказа. Интеграция элиты степных и горских народов в общероссийскую структуру высшего
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