The Chios Massacre (1822) and early British Christian-humanitarianism

Yianni John Charles Cartledge Flinders University Abstract This article explores early British Christian-humanitarianism towards the Greeks following the 1822 Chios Massacre. Scholars of the Greek revolution have previously acknowledged the massacre as a pivotal moment for British attitudes towards the Greeks, although few have elaborated significantly on this humanitarian shift. This article focuses on what the massacre was and public and political reactions to it in Britain. It also investigates how perceptions of ‘Christian’ Greeks, compared to ‘Islamic’ and ‘barbarian’ Ottomans, encouraged British sympathy. Essentially it argues that the massacre ‘humanized’ the Greeks to the British, leading to an early type of Christian-humanitarian intervention. In April 1822 the Ottoman Kapudan Ali Bey Pasha launched a large-scale invasion on to the Aegean island of Chios, culminating in the massacre, enslavement and displacement of the majority of the island’s population.1 The Chios Massacre was a defining moment in the Greek War of Independence and was the largest scale massacre of the war. As many as 100,000 inhabitants were either killed or enslaved,while 20,000 escaped as refugees.2 News of the massacre shocked Europe, and reports of ‘the distressed Greeks’ and ‘Turkish atrocities’ flooded British newspapers.3 Pamphlets began to circulate in Britain, seeking aid and financial support for the Greek revolutionary cause. One pamphleteer called for Britain to remember ‘what Greece has been’ and show their solidarity and generosity ‘as in that spirit of benevolence and philanthropy which has hitherto distinguished the British isles’.4 In British minds, the Greeks had transitioned during the previous Enlightenment era and early nineteenth century, from a ‘classical’ people to ‘fellow Christians’, worthy of humanitarian support.5These ideas were juxtaposed to perceptions of the Ottomans as ‘Islamic’ and ‘barbarian’.The Chios Massacre became a symbol of Ottoman ‘oppression’, and the religious distinction drove British ‘humanitarianism’. The ideas of Greeks as inherently ‘classical’ or ‘Christian’, and Ottomans as ‘Islamic’ or ‘barbarian’, stemmed from the nation-building agenda and ‘othering’ attitudes of the time. Utilizing Orientalist discourse, Stathis Gourgouris emphasized that the Ottomans were seen as the ‘other’ by nineteenth-century Europe, ‘embroiled in all kinds of excess and corruption’.6 At the same time, the British saw the Greeks as their own intellectual 1 H. Long, Greek Fire: the Massacres of Chios (Bristol, 1992), p. 81. Chios is usually written as ‘Scio’ in this period, which is the Italian form. 2 P. P. Argenti, The Massacres of Chios: Described in Contemporary Diplomatic Reports (London, 1932), p. xxxi; Long, Greek Fire, p. 88; D. Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815–1914 (Princeton, N.J., 2011), p. 69. 3 E.g., ‘The Distressed Greeks’, The Times, 11 March 1823, p. 3. 4 T. S. Hughes, An Address to the People of England in the Cause of the Greeks, occasioned by the late inhuman Massacres in the Isle of Scio, &c. (London, 1822), pp. 7–9. 5 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks (London, 1823), p. 1. 6 S. Gourgouris, Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece (Stanford, Calif., 1996), p. 55. © The Author(s) 2020. DOI:10.1093/hisres/htz004 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 The Chios Massacre (1822) and early British Christian-humanitarianism Early British Christian-humanitarianism 53 7 Miliori argued that British nationalism was linked to ancient Greek democracy: ‘In the 1820s, British nationalist rhetoric against the “democratic imperialism” of Napoleonic France still weighed heavily upon British perceptions of Greek antiquity … Greece was closely linked with the establishment of a distinct conceptual barrier between ancient and modern national politics’ (see M. Miliori, ‘Europe, the classical polis, and the Greek nation: Philhellenism and Hellenism in nineteenth-century Britain’, in The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797–1896), ed. R. Beaton and D. Ricks (Farnham, 2009), pp. 65–77, at p. 66). 8 N. Doumanis, A History of Greece (Basingstoke, 2010), p. 157. 9 M. Todorova, ‘The Balkans: from discovery to invention’, Slavic Review, liii (1994), 453–82, at p. 455. 10 A.Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878–1915: the Inconsequential Possession (Manchester, 2009), p. 25. 11 For the ‘Eastern Question’, see M. S. Anderson, The Eastern Question: 1774–1923 (London, 1966), pp. xi–xxi; C. W. Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence: a Study of British Policy in the Near East, 1821–33 (New York, 1973), pp. 1–2; Doumanis, A History of Greece, pp. 165–7; E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (Toronto and New York, 1962), p. 127; E. W. Said, Orientalism:Western Conceptions of the Orient (London, 1995), p. 191;Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, pp. 20–2. 12 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, pp. xxxi–xxxii. 13 C. M. Woodhouse, The Greek War of Independence, Its Historical Setting (London, 1952), pp. 87–8. 14 C. M. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes (London, 1969), pp. 73–4. 15 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 73. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 ancestors, especially in the Philhellenic movement; as Margarita Miliori has argued, British identity became intertwined with the idea of ‘Greece’, and the British nation became an ‘inheritor’ of classical Europe.7 Nicholas Doumanis developed this argument, noting that ‘The revived “Greece” therefore began largely as a European contrivance – or an aspect of European modernity’.8 Therefore, nineteenth-century British thought portrayed Greeks as the Occidental ‘self ’ and the Ottomans as the Oriental ‘other’. This ideology allowed ‘classical’, ‘Christian’, humanitarian and anti-Ottoman sentiments to flourish. Maria Todorova has explored the positioning of the Balkans between the Orient and Occident, concluding that ‘Geographically inextricable from Europe, yet culturally constructed as “the other”, the Balkans became … the object of a number of externalized political, ideological and cultural frustrations’.9 Todorova’s ‘Balkanisation’ model placed Greece as neither ‘East’ nor ‘West’, but a place where a variety of identities could be applied, which, in this case, were ‘Western’ classical and Christian.10 The Greeks could be ‘others’ yet ‘insiders’ at the same time. This question of Greek identity was exemplified by the wider ‘Eastern Question’ (1774–1923) in which Westerners pondered the national fate of Eastern Orthodox Christians and other minorities if the Ottoman empire fractured.11 Ultimately, ‘otherness’ and nation-building theory are an integral foundation for understanding and analysing the way in which Britain, a Western imperial power, and the British public, moulded and shifted their varying depictions of nineteenth-century Greeks and Ottomans. Historians have previously identified the Chios Massacre as significant in shifting British attitudes towards the Greeks during the 1820s. In 1932, Philip Argenti believed that ‘the events of Chios contributed much to bring about a change even in diplomatic opinion from the generally prevailing legitimism of the time’ and that the massacre ‘gave a fresh impetus to the growing wave of philhellenism throughout Europe’.12 He did not elaborate further, leaving these ideas open for discussion. Later, in The Greek War of Independence, C. M. Woodhouse maintained that the massacre ‘did more than any act of the war so far to commend the Greek cause to Europe’.13 However, in what ways and to what extent the massacre did this were not explored. In The Philhellenes, Woodhouse again discussed the Chios Massacre as a pivotal point in the war for, in this instance, uniquely Philhellenic involvement.14 British pamphlets and journals, usually written by Philhellenes, fostered ‘into anger against the Turks. Religious feeling strengthened human emotion’.15 This aligned the Greeks to other persecuted Christians, ‘for whom’, 54 Early British Christian-humanitarianism While the massacre on Chios was an immense tragedy, it represented a major turning point in the war. Until then the European powers had kept out of the conflict, declaring their neutrality … But the bloodbath on Chios disgusted the people and leaders of Europe … Across the continent sympathy for the Greek cause solidified.19 Lucia Patrizio Gunning, who investigated the British Consular Service in the Aegean, echoed this opinion: ‘In Europe, news of the massacre at Chios had increased support for the rebels’.20 In contrast, Davide Rodogno’s book Against Massacre discussed the incident from a humanitarian angle. Rodogno traced the outrage at the massacre in Britain to Philhellenes propagating early British Christian-humanitarianism.21 Jon Western agreed, adding that ‘The massacre of Chios transformed the disparate philhellenic movement into a more focused and coherent advocacy community’.22 The ‘early humanitarianism’ at play was distinct from modern interpretations of humanitarianism, according to Rodogno and Alexis Heraclides.23 It can better be described as an ‘intervention’ or ‘interference’ in opposition to ‘inhumanity’, as many Philhellenes emphasized, whether that was an armed, coercive or diplomatic intervention, as discussed by Rodogno and Heraclides, or a public humanitarian effort, such as Philhellenism, as is argued in this article. This humanitarianism draws on the idea of ‘humanity’ as a ‘guiding norm for societal behaviour’, in which humans have an ethical obligation to others.24 This is then coupled with an ‘imagined humanity’, where nations intervene for those who fall within their realm of identity, as can be seen between Britain and the Greeks. Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin described this ‘humanity’ as a ‘dividing line between those to whom politics and ethics pertained and those to whom they did not’.25 Of nineteenth-century 16 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 74. M. S. Anderson, when discussing the Chios Massacre in the context of the ‘Eastern Question’, agreed with Woodhouse (see Anderson, The Eastern Question, pp. 57–8). 17 R. E. Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, History Today, xx (1 Apr. 1970), 236–44, at p. 237. 18 W. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free; the Philhellenes in the War of Independence (2nd edn., Cambridge, 2008), pp. 58–9. 19 A. Brandt, ‘Tears of Chios: the slaughter of civilians on this Aegean island finally prompted Europe to help Greece throw off four centuries of Ottoman rule’, Military History, xxxiii (2016), 24–31, at pp. 29–30. 20 L. P. Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum (Farnham, 2009), p. 65. 21 Rodogno, Against Massacre, pp. 71–2. 22 J. Western, ‘Prudence or outrage? Public opinion and humanitarian intervention in historical and comparative perspective’, in The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, ed. F. Klose (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 165–84, at p. 176. 23 Rodogno, Against Massacre, p. 2; A. Heraclides, ‘Humanitarian intervention in the 19th century; the heyday of a controversial concept’, Global Society, xxvi (2012), 215–40, at pp. 219–20. 24 F. Klose and M. Thulin, ‘Introduction: European concepts and practices of humanity in historical perspective’, in Humanity: a History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present, ed. F. Klose and M. Thulin (Göttingen, 2016), pp. 14–16. 25 I. Feldman and M. Ticktin, ‘Introduction: government and humanity’, in In the Name of Humanity; the Government of Threat and Care, ed. I. Feldman and M. Ticktin (Durham and London, 2010), pp. 1–26, at p. 6. © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 Woodhouse suggested, ‘the British hearts should bleed’.16 Robert E. Zegger in 1970 similarly asserted that ‘sentiments in Britain … changed sharply following news of the [Chios] massacre’, and that pamphlets caused Quakers to organize relief and the formation of the London Greek Committee in 1823.17 William St. Clair also suggested that pamphlets arising from the Chios Massacre spurred on Philhellenism, but he did not believe that they were as effective as Philhellenes had hoped.18 Recent scholarship agrees with these earlier opinions. Anthony Brandt, for instance, wrote that: Early British Christian-humanitarianism 55 26 G. J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle; the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York, 2008), p. 27. See J. Murphy, ‘Religion, the state and education in England’, History of Education Quarterly, viii (1968), 8–21. 28 See H. D. Rack, ‘Wesley [Westley], John (1703–91)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) <https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29069> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]; The Long-Term Consequences of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, ed. M. van der Linden (Leiden and Boston, Mass., 2011), pp. 1–5. 29 See M. Grubb, ‘Tensions in the Religious Society of Friends in England in the nineteenth century’, The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, lvi (1990), 1–14. 30 See Argenti, The Massacres of Chios; Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean; T. C. Prousis, British Consular Reports from the Ottoman Levant in an Age of Upheaval, 1815–30 (Istanbul, 2010); T. C. Prousis, ‘British embassy reports on the Greek uprising in 1821–2: war of independence or war of religion?’, Archivum Ottomanicum, xxviii (2011), 171–222. 31 See V. Nemoianu, ‘“National Poets” in the Romantic age: emergence and importance’, in Romantic Poetry, ed. A. Esterhammer (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, Pa., 2002), pp. 249–55. 32 One such example is Thomas Barker of Bath’s fresco, which has had little attention from historians, and images are only available upon request from the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. 27 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 humanitarianism, Gary J. Bass concluded that it ‘can be seen as, at the least, the froth of that era’s cresting wave of nationalism’.26 Protestant Christianity was particularly integral to nineteenth-century British humanitarianism, especially the Anglican church and its role as state religion.27 However, other denominations were also influencial, such as the Methodists, stemming from the First Great Awakening led by John Wesley in the previous century, and other evangelicals, especially those involved in abolitionism and the Slave Trade Act of 1807, as well as other missionary activity internationally.28 The evangelical movement in Britain had also influenced Quaker thought during the nineteenth century, which aligned them with other Protestants in their interest for the Greek cause.29 Due to the Christian-led nature of humanitarianism towards the Greeks, the descriptive term ‘Christian-humanitarianism’ has been applied in this study. It is evident from existing literature that the massacre has been considered a pivotal moment for European involvement in the Greek War of Independence. However, most early and recent scholars have not examined the changes in how Greeks were portrayed in depth. To understand this further, a range of primary sources have been consulted, including Philhellenic pamphlets, diplomatic and consular reports, newspapers and poetry. Many diplomatic and consular reports are readily available in edited compilations, such as those by Philip Argenti, Lucio Patrizio Gunning and Theophilus Prousis, as the period is quite comprehensively documented and researched. The National Archives and the Library of the Society of Friends, U.K. also hold many records that are available upon request, such as the house of lords sessions, discussions of policy and Quaker monographs, all of which help to unravel official attitudes.30 Analyses of nineteenthcentury Romantic poetry was also paramount to this study due to the key role of poetry in both elite and general society during this era. Virgil Nemoianu emphasized that the idea of a ‘national poet’ was ‘instituted’ at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, and that their words were inextricably linked to national ‘myths’, such as histories and ideologies.31 Poems were also mobile and could be shared nationally and transnationally in a similar way to pamphlets, and most of the period’s poems are extant and accessible today. There was some difficulty, however, in locating many of the era’s Philhellenic pamphlets outside those that have been digitized and freely distributed. However, with much patience, all necessary pamphlets for this study were located, as original copies of these pamphlets are held in libraries globally. That said, there are undoubtedly many sources that remain undiscovered in the archives, which may spur on innovative projects in the future.32 By using a combination of the primary sources described and the existing 56 Early British Christian-humanitarianism scholarly literature, this article aims to unravel the shift in British attitudes, highlighting the Christian-Humanitarian shape that it took, and showing how Christian perceptions, rather than classical ones, drove British humanitarianism during the Greek War of Independence. The massacre, which took place in March 1822, was preceded by earlier mass violence on the part of Greek revolutionaries. According to Argenti, using the dispatches of Lord Strangford, British ambassador to the Porte, the leaders of the Greek revolution based in the Peloponnese and Hydra had been plotting an invasion to ‘liberate’ Chios from 28 December 1821.33 In 1822, revolutionaries from the nearby island of Samos, led by Lykourgos Logothetis and the Chiot Bournias, executed the plan to occupy Chios.34 The Samians defeated the small Ottoman resistance, set fire to the customs house and destroyed and defaced mosques and Muslim coffee-houses. Once done with the Muslim establishments in the main town, the Samians attacked Christians, Orthodox and Catholic alike. They stole from and raped local Christians, burned Venetian warehouses, robbed Orthodox churches and targeted and stole from wealthy Chiots.35 The Samians even looted the homes of the island’s small Catholic population.36 The violent behaviour of the Samian revolutionaries was reminiscent of many of the insurgents on the mainland. Rodogno noted that: In fact, Greek insurgents started by murdering Ottoman civil servants, especially tax officials, and when the context of the war exacerbated they rounded up, marched out of town to convenient places, and eventually slaughtered entire Muslim populations of the Ottoman provinces of the Morea and Thessaly.37 He also described massacres of Ottoman supporters, Muslim civilians and sometimes local Jews by Greek revolutionaries taking place in Kalavryta, Kalamata, Laconia, Missolonghi and Vrachori.38 The most notable of these massacres, that of thousands of Muslim men, women and children at Tripolitsa in 1821, is widely referenced as one of the motivating factors as to the scale of the Chios Massacre.39 In fact, Tripolitsa was so horrific that Scottish Philhellene Thomas Gordon abandoned the Philhellenic cause.40 However, Gordon would return to play an integral role in the expedition to Piraeus in 1827, and then compile the earliest history of the war, published at the end of 1832.41 The Greek aggression at Tripolitsa probably served as a model for later Ottoman aggression. Some Chiots, like Bournias, joined the Samian invasion of the island. Dimitrios Ypsilantis, one of the revolutionaries who instigated the attack on Chios, commissioned a wealthy Chiot Alexander Ralli to help gather support on the island for Logothetis’s 33 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xi. Long, Greek Fire, pp. 67–8. 35 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, pp. xx–xxi; Long, Greek Fire, pp. 70–1. 36 C. A. Frazee, ‘The Greek Catholic islanders and the revolution of 1821’, East European Quarterly, xiii (1979), 315–26, at p. 321. 37 Rodogno, Against Massacre, p. 65. 38 Rodogno, Against Massacre, p. 65. 39 Woodhouse, The Greek War of Independence, pp. 77–8, 87–8. 40 C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece: a Short History (5th edn., London, 1991), p. 136. 41 D. Brewer, The Flame of Freedom: the Greek War of Independence: 1821–33 (London, 2001), pp. 311–12; J. M. Hussey, ‘Gordon, Thomas (1788–1841), O.D.N.B. <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11084> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]; T. Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution (2 vols., London, 1832). 34 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 * Early British Christian-humanitarianism 57 the Catholic inhabitants had shut themselves up in their Convent. They have been protected by the Captain Pasha, who has stationed a Guard for their security, and who has received numbers of them on board of his fleet, where they are treated with the utmost kindness.54 Charles Frazee noted, however, that the Ottoman troops were only avoiding Catholic buildings which flew the French flag, and that the Latin cathedral of St. Nicholas was burned to the ground.55 The exact number of Chiots enslaved or massacred remains generally unknown, with different estimations given. Argenti stated that ‘before the massacre the total resident 42 Long, Greek Fire, p. 59. Long, Greek Fire, p. 59. 44 Long, Greek Fire, pp. 72–3. 45 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxii. 46 Long, Greek Fire, p. 81; Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxiii. 47 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxiv. 48 Long, Greek Fire, p. 81. 49 Long, Greek Fire, p. 81. 50 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxv. 51 Viscount Strangford to the Marquis of Londonderry, in Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. 12 (T.N.A., FO 78, vol. 107, no. 55 (Turkey, 25 Apr. 1822)). ‘Psara’ is commonly referred to as ‘Ipsara’ in this period. 52 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxv. 53 St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, pp. 80–1. 54 Strangford to Londonderry, no. 55, in Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, pp. 11–2. 55 Frazee, ‘The Greek Catholic islanders and the revolution of 1821’, pp. 321–2. 43 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 insurrection.42 However, many notable Chiots were opposed to this, such as members of the Mamoukas and Petrocochino families, who advised Ralli not to join Logothetis.43 It is unclear whether Ralli heeded their advice, but a Chiot traveller known as Dr. Glerakis, who was living in Corinth at the time, supported the Samian invasion, and had organized for Ralli to come and report on the island’s ‘mood’ to himself and Ypsilantis following the attack.44 The majority of the islanders, however, were against the Samians, and the more influential Chiots refused to offer Logothetis their support, especially in his efforts to set up Greek administration on the island.45 This might explain the attacks on local establishments. The Ottoman reclamation of Chios began as an effort to oust the revolutionaries, with the Samian insurgents being offered eight hours to surrender and accept a pardon on 11 April 1822.46 Argenti noted that on 11 April, many wealthy Chiot families began to flee to consulates or the west of the island to try and escape the island’s possible doom.47 The revolutionaries, however, rejected the pardon, and on 12 April Kapudan Pasha, the head of the Ottoman fleet, landed 7,000 men on to the island.48 Helen Long suggested that the troops were given orders ‘to kill and lay waste the land’.49 Argenti quoted Governor Vaïd Pasha, who allegedly exclaimed that ‘Every Chian deserves death’.50 Strangford’s dispatch on 25 April suggested that the Samians fled to the nearby island of Psara, and avoided resisting the Ottoman troops in combat, leaving the islanders vulnerable.51 These insurgents spread rumours on the mainland ‘that the Chians had behaved with cowardice, and ascribed their own failure to Chian faint-heartedness!’52 St. Clair has suggested that the massacre was part of a larger, religiously-motivated reaction to the uprising, with Muslims from mainland Anatolia crossing over in boats to join the recapturing of Chios, which was seen as a ‘holy war’, as well as Orthodox Chiots in Constantinople being imprisoned and tortured.53 This theory could explain the phenomenon of the Catholic Chiots, who, according to Lord Strangford, writing on 25 April 1822, were left untouched by the massacre: 58 Early British Christian-humanitarianism * Earlier in the nineteenth century, the Greeks had been an image of civilization, antiquity and academia. Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon marbles, using them as a testament for classical Greece’s connection to modern Britain, testifies to this. Fiona Rose-Greenland argued that the marbles ‘became emblems of British nationhood. They functioned as signifiers of particular as well as universal cultural identity. They belonged simultaneously to no nation, to every nation, and to Britain’.65 The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley demonstrated this idea in the preface to his 1821 poem Hellas, writing, ‘We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece’.66 From 1822, however, this ‘classical’ zeal for the Greeks declined sharply in Britain; a new ‘Christian’ perception prevailed. In wider Europe, questions surrounding Christian Ottoman subjects surfaced during the Enlightenment era, notably in the political sphere. The 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca saw the promise of Russian protection for Christians and their churches within the Ottoman empire, as well as the right to erect a new 56 Argenti, The Massacres of Chios, p. xxxi. Long, Greek Fire, p. 88. 58 St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, pp. 80–1; Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, p. 162; Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, i. 361. 59 Brandt, ‘Tears of Chios’, p. 29. 60 Rodogno, Against Massacre, p. 69. 61 ‘Massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and Scio’, The Times, 28 June 1822. 62 ‘German Papers’, Morning Chronicle, 6 Aug. 1822. 63 G. Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution (2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1861), i. 319–20. 64 Bass, Freedom’s Battle, p. 67. 65 F. Rose-Greenland, ‘The Parthenon Marbles as icons of nationalism in 19th-century Britain’, Nations and Nationalism, xix (2013), 654–73, at p. 656 (original emphasis). 66 P. B. Shelley, Hellas (London, 1822), pp. viii–ix. 57 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 population of Chios was 120,000, after the massacre it was but 30,000’.56 Long cited 41,000 Chiots being exported as slaves, which can be seen from the customs authority records, as well as 15,000 escapees from the island prior to the Kapudan Pasha’s arrival.57 The historians St. Clair and David Brewer echoed Long’s number of slaves being brought to Anatolia, as did the Philhellene Thomas Gordon, who estimated 45,000.58 Brandt suggested that ‘those slaughtered ran upward of 50,000, with an equal number enslaved’.59 Rodogno reasoned that ‘Before the massacre between 100,000 and 120,000 Greeks had been living on Chios; by the end of it there were 20,000; many had perished, others fled or became slaves’.60 The Times asked rhetorically: ‘Who can, without shuddering, read of the total ruin, the universal desolation of our famed and once happy isle (Scio); the destruction of all its inhabitants, nearly one hundred thousand?’61 The Morning Chronicle in London estimated that Chios ‘was now reduced to 20,000, so that 90,000 have vanished from the island; 45,000 of these are women and children who have been carried into slavery, 41,000 persons were already carried away … Twenty-five thousand persons have lost their lives’.62 In his 1861 history, the Philhellene George Finlay proposed that no more than 30,000 inhabitants were left, with many taking refuge in nearby Greek islands.63 Although these numbers are inconsistently reported, they do illustrate the scale of the event, as Bass emphasized, ‘It [Chios] was the worst atrocity of the war, and the defining moment of the conflict for most Europeans’.64 It can be concluded, therefore, that up to 100,000 Chiots were either killed or displaced due to the massacre. Early British Christian-humanitarianism 59 I might, indeed, endeavour to animate their enthusiasm, by recalling to their minds what Greece has been; that land, the fostering of civilization; where the spirit of antiquity still seems to linger amidst its olive groves … where Socrates taught the lessons of his incomparable ethics, and a still greater than Socrates disclosed the mysteries of the ‘unknown God’, to those that sat in darkness … I might inflame their ardour by apostrophizing the manes of a Miltiades and a Leonidas, and by dwelling upon the glories of Salamis and Thermopylæ; but I have a much more sacred cause to plead, and an infinitely higher name to invoke: the cause I plead is that of suffering Christians.69 This attitude is in contrast to the Hughes who joined the many antiquarian travellers in the previous decade and published two large volumes of his discoveries in ‘pagan’ Greece in 1820.70 Woodhouse even named Hughes as ‘The most assiduous collector of classical parallels’ prior to the Chios Massacre.71 Certainly Hughes’s love for Greek antiquity was superseded by the realities of Chios and ‘Christian suffering’. The Quakers similarly employed an urgency and empathetic Christian themes when discussing the massacre: This island, the central point in modern Greece, of civilization and refinement, the seat of reviving literature, the favourite abode of the most opulent families, is become a waste and nearly desolate spot … the blood of Christians flowed in torrents, dying the very soil of Scio.72 Jon Western noted that the massacre changed ‘the trajectory of the British and international response’.73 England’s well-established Chiot diaspora also recognized the change.The anonymous pamphlet Address in Behalf of the Greeks, Especially Those Who Have Survived the Late Massacres in Scio, published in Edinburgh in 1822, and containing letters from Chiot refugees, acknowledged that the classical idea was diminishing in the public sphere, being replaced by a Christian perception: Yet who can look, without mingled veneration and pity, on the descendants of that celebrated nation that excelled all others both in arts and in arms–the cradle of liberty–the nurse of genius–the patron of philosophy? And, in these associations, how distinguished the place held by that famous island [Chios] … once the favourite residence of the father of poetry [Homer] … Interesting, 67 National University of Singapore, ‘Treaty of Peace (Küçük Kaynarca), 1774’ <http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ hist/eia/documents_archive/kucuk-kaynarca.php> [accessed 31 Oct. 2019], articles VII, XIV. See also, Anderson, The Eastern Question, pp. xi–xxi. 68 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 31. 69 Hughes, An Address to the People of England in the Cause of the Greeks, p. 9. 70 T. S. Hughes, Travels in Sicily, Greece and Albania (2 vols., London, 1820). 71 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 26. 72 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 1. 73 Western, ‘Prudence or outrage?’, p. 175. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 Eastern Orthodox church in Constantinople.67 The treaty brought Orthodox Ottoman Christians into Europe’s gaze, adding a religious aspect to the question of Greek identity. In Britain, this Christian connection merged with the existing prominent classical idea, as can be seen through the multitude of Anglican clergymen travelling to Greece towards the end of the Enlightenment.68 However, the ‘Christian’ Greek perception did not become notably prominent in Britain until after the atrocities at Chios. Philhellenic pamphlets began to appeal to Christian convictions rather than classical nostalgia. One former travel writer and Anglican minister, Revd. T. S. Hughes, recognized the move away from classical perceptions in his pamphlet titled An Address to the People of England in the Cause of the Greeks, occasioned by the late inhuman Massacres in the Isle of Scio: 60 Early British Christian-humanitarianism however, as these recollections are, there are considerations still more affecting, because associated with the higher destinies of man, involved in the union of the Greek with the Christian name.74 From the 1770s to 1821, the economies of Russia, the Ottoman Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean became ever more tightly bound with the emerging Eurocentric world economy. Related to this phenomenon was the development of a vast Greek Diaspora trading network that literally spanned the globe from Southeast Asia to North America.76 Not only was Chios a central point in this trade network, but Phanariot families based in Chios who fled to Britain established themselves there, joining with earlier families, such as the Ralli brothers, John and Eustratio, who arrived in London in 1818 and spearheaded the community.77 In fact, many Chiot families had already been trading as part of the Levant Company prior to relocating to London, such as the Mavrocordatos, Ralli, Petrocochino, Negroponte, Scaramanga and Schinas families, who were already registered with the company by 1813.78 Of the Chiot diaspora, Elena Frangakis-Syrett noted: In the course of the nineteenth century the Ralli Brothers, continuing to associate with other Chio families, successfully expanded their activities to places like India, Persia and the United States.Their network of commercial houses were inter-connected in a complex system of agencies which were independent firms, although also linked to the principal house in London.79 Ralli descendant Lucas Eustratio Ralli would also receive a baronetcy due to the family’s notable role in British enterprise, granted by King George V on 9 February 1912.80 These families would ultimately play an integral role in Britain following the massacre. Later in the war, the massacre also inspired artwork and poetry in Britain. In 1825 Thomas Barker released his famous fresco to the public, titled The Massacre of the Sciotes painted on the walls of Doric House in Bath.81 The fresco was Britain’s first of such a large scale, measuring thirty feet by twelve feet, and was painted without a commission, attesting to the piece coming from Barker’s own convictions surrounding the massacre.82 The poet Felicia Hemans also contributed to the Chios-inspired creativity, with her poems The Voice of Scio and The Sisters of Scio both telling of the massacre.83 The Sisters 74 Address in Behalf of the Greeks, Especially Those Who Have Survived the Late Massacres in Scio (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 20–1 (original emphasis). 75 M. Hatzopoulos, ‘From resurrection to insurrection: “sacred” myths, motifts, and symbols in the Greek War of Independence’, in Beaton and Ricks, The Making of Modern Greece, p. 90. 76 T. W. Gallant, Modern Greece: from the War of Independence to the Present (2nd edn., London, 2016), p. 22. 77 Long, Greek Fire, p. 132. 78 K. Galani, British Shipping in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars; the Untold Story of a Successful Adaptation (Leiden, 2017), pp. 244–5. 79 E. Frangakis-Syrett, ‘Commerce in the eastern Mediterranean from the 18th to the early 20th centuries; the City-Port of Izmir and its hinterland’, International Journal of Maritime History, x (1998), 124–73, at p. 148. 80 ‘Whitehall, February 9, 1912’, The London Gazette, 9 Feb. 1912, pp. 972–3. 81 F. Shum, Reminiscences of the Late Thomas Barker: a Paper Read at the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (Bath, 1862), p. 8. 82 Shum, Reminiscences of the Late Thomas Barker, p. 8. 83 F. D. Browne Hemans, The Poems of Felicia Hemans (London and Edinburgh, 1875), pp. 243, 455–6. © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 The Christian attitude held by the diaspora stemmed from the Greek Enlightenment’s ‘rediscovery’ of ‘Greek’ identity, and as Mario Hatzopoulos argued, liberation of Christian Greeks from the Ottomans had become ‘God’s will’.75 The massacre itself also saw the Chiot diaspora in London grow from isolated merchant families into a thriving community.The importance of the diaspora in shaping this period can be seen through these Phanariot merchant families’ prominence. Gallant suggested that: Early British Christian-humanitarianism 61 84 F. Hemans, ‘The Sisters of Scio’, Belfast News-Letter, 4 Dec. 1829. J. Rock, ‘Robert Forrest (1789–1852) and his exhibition on the Calton Hill’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vii (2008), 127–38. 86 A. Devetzidis, ‘Revolution, death, transformation and art: Delacroix’s Scenes from the Massacres at Chios’, Journal of Moden Greek Studies, special issue (2013), 209–20, at pp. 209–10; Bass, Freedom’s Battle, p. 73. 87 Bass, Freedom’s Battle, pp. 72–3. 88 Said, Orientalism, pp. 56–7. 89 ‘To Greece on her recent successes over the barbarian’, Morning Chronicle, 29 Dec. 1823. 90 T. Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, on the Subject of the Greeks (4th edn., London, 1823), pp. 32–3. 91 T. S. Hughes, Considerations upon the Greek Revolution, with a vindication of the author’s “Address to the People of England” from the attack of Mr. C. B. Sheridan (London and Cambridge, 1823), pp. 2, 27–8. 92 R. Chatfield, An Appeal to the British Public, in the Cause of the Persecuted Greeks, and an Earnest Recommendation that an Immediate Subscription be Opened for their Support (London, 1822), p. 6. 93 G. G. Byron, On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year (Missolonghi, 22 Jan. 1824), in J. J. McGann, Lord Byron: the Complete Poetical Works, vii (Oxford, 1980), no. 402. 85 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 of Scio, written in 1829, was featured in The Belfast News-Letter that same year.84 The sculptor Robert Forrest produced an intriguing statue also titled Sisters of Scio, releasing it publicly after the war in 1839 as part of his exhibition at Calton Hill, Edinburgh.85 It is uncertain as to whether Forrest was inspired by Hemans’s poem, but both works represented the same theme of the oppressed Greeks. In wider Europe, the massacre was the subject of the French painter Eugène Delacroix’s famed oil on canvas Scenes from the Massacres at Chios (1824), which in turn influenced Victor Hugo’s poem L’enfant.86 Bass noted that Delacroix’s painting had blended both classical and oriental imagery, showing ‘a symbolic naked classical Greek woman in the ropes of slavery, but also a woman being raped by a Turk still wearing his fez’.87 Unlike the French, the British expressions were void of classical elements, focusing more on human depictions and emotions, with Barker’s fresco containing Chiot women wearing white Orthodox headveils. This emphasized that the massacre had moved minds away from the classical idea and had become a symbol of Christian oppression.The artwork it inspired demonstrated British and European solidarity with the Greeks. Classical imagery had not vanished completely, however, and there was still a small persistence during the 1820s, especially in reference to the Greco-Persian Wars, which ultimately served the ‘Christian’ representation. Edward Said, discussing Aeschylus’ The Persians, argued that he ‘portrays the sense of disaster overcoming the Persians when they learn that their armies, led by King Xerxes, have been destroyed by the Greeks … A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant’.88 Said’s observations are a useful analogy in understanding the continental line drawn between the Ottomans and the Greeks in this period. One poem of 1823, from the Morning Chronicle, likened Greece’s victories to ‘“LEONIDAS / And the THREE HUNDRED, resting from their toil’.89 That same year, Lord Erskine referenced the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis and Darius at Marathon, and connected the Ottomans to the ancient Persians: ‘Signal successes in war, under distinguished commanders, are as likely to overthrow the barbarians of the present day as the barbarians of former times’.90 Hughes also referenced the battle of Salamis, representing modern Greeks fighting the ‘Eastern’ Ottomans; as well as an ode combining both classical and Christian imagery, asking: ‘Is Marathon remember’d yet?’91 The Philhellenic Revd. Chatfield asked:‘Shall the children of Thebes, of Athens, of Sparta, in vain supplicate for aid … Shall a fleet of Scythian barbarians be allowed to hover around the shores, where Themistocles once fought?’92 Lord Byron also mentioned ‘The Spartan, borne upon his shield’ in his poem On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.93 These references to the Greco-Persian wars would remain frequent 62 Early British Christian-humanitarianism throughout the decade, ‘othering’ the Ottomans as a barbarous, ‘Eastern’ enemy, similar to the ancient Persians. This showed that the shift from ‘classical’ to ‘Christian’ was fluid, with classical imagery still being useful in serving the ‘Christian’ perception further. In 1824, the Bristol Mercury published a letter from British Philhellene Edward Blaquiere, asking ‘how is it possible for any person, professing the doctrines of Christianity, to withhold his sympathy from the ill-fated Greeks, without a dereliction of that sublime maxim which forms the very corner-stone of our faith?’94 Questions like this, appealing to ‘Christian empathy’, were posed to the public with progressive frequency following the massacre, forming the basis of an early humanitarianism born out of Christian representations of the Greeks. Lord Erskine appealed to many characteristics of Christianity in his 1822 pamphlet addressed as a letter to the earl of Liverpool.95 The pamphlet was quite extensive compared to others, being circulated in at least four editions between 1822 and 1823. Erskine opened his letter by announcing: ‘my object is to engage your Lordship’s earliest attention to the sufferings of the Greeks’.96 The emphasis on oppression formed a significant base for the Christian attitude during the Greek uprising and ultimately invoked readers’ and listeners’ empathy. Erskine alluded to evangelistic reasoning, criticizing the lack of intervention by the British government: ‘I maintain that our not exerting ourselves to deliver them [the Greeks] from the tyrannous dominion which so grievously oppresses them is not only the breach of a moral duty, but a dereliction of the sacred object of spreading the Gospel’.97 Byzantine imagery was also used, rather than classical, focusing on Constantinople’s fall and the destruction of Christian antiquities. Erskine reminded his audience: We ought to hold in vindictive remembrance that in the City of Constantinople, how the horrid theatre of unutterable crimes, the imperial standard of Christianity, after ages of persecution, was first triumphantly planted, and that her churches multiplied and flourished under it, until this assault of delusion and violence overthrew them.98 Erskine then asked readers: ‘what … is the destruction of the Arts when compared with the prophanation of Christian churches’; he proposed that Christian suffering was greater than the loss of antiquities, solidifying his Christian stance.99 Erskine delivered his Christian perceptions from the angles of oppression, morality, evangelism and Byzantine history. His representations are a useful snapshot of the period’s attitude shift. Erskine’s sentiments were shared by others.The Anglican Revd. Hughes noted in 1823 that ‘still the modern Greeks are men, who demand our sympathy by their calamities, they are Christians entitled to our assistance by a common faith’.100 Hughes also highlighted for readers and listeners the murders of the Ecumenical Patriarch and clergymen, as well as Greek peasants who had been sold ‘into Asiatic or African slavery’, due to the ‘systematic cruelty and oppression which the Ottoman Government exhibits’.101 Hughes’s 94 E. Blaquiere, ‘The Greek Cause’ (Bristol, 5 Dec. 1823), republished in Bristol Mercury, 5 Jan. 1824. This article quotes from the 4th edition, which was published in 1823, as opposed to the 1st, published in 1822. The main differences between editions are the prefaces. The 4th edition contains all prefaces from previous editions. 96 Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, p. 1. 97 Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, pp. 10–1. 98 Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, p. 4. 99 Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, p. 4. 100 Hughes, Considerations upon the Greek Revolution, p. 3 (original emphasis). 101 Hughes, Considerations upon the Greek Revolution, p. 5 (original emphasis). 95 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 * Early British Christian-humanitarianism 63 102 A Voice from Greece, Contained in an Address from a Society of Greek ladies to the Philhellens of Their Own Sex in the Rest of Europe, trans. G. Lee (London, 1826), p. 1. 103 Lee, A Voice from Greece, p. 5. 104 ‘The Greek Cause’, Liverpool Mercury, 12 March 1824. 105 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 26; G. G. Byron, Song (Athens, 1810), in J. J. McGann, Lord Byron; the Complete Poetical Works, i (Oxford, 1980), no. 141, pp. 280–1. 106 Lee, A Voice from Greece, p. 7. 107 Lee, A Voice from Greece, p. 7. 108 E. Blaquiere, Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation, and on its Claims to the Support of the Christian World (London, 1823), p. 9. 109 Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, p. 169. 110 Blaquiere, Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation, p. 32. 111 W. D. Wrigley, ‘Dissension in the Ionian Islands: Colonel Charles James Napier and the commissioners (1819–33)’, Balkan Studies, xvi (1975), 11–22, at p. 13; C. J. Napier, Greece in 1824 (London, 1824), p. 5. 112 A. T. Embree, ‘Napier, Sir Charles James (1782–1853)’, O.D.N.B. <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19748> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]; C.J. Napier, War in Greece (London, 1821), pp. 5–6. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 play on emotions appealed directly to the Christian attitude, overlooking the previously glorified classical idea. A pamphlet, supposedly written from Greece to female British Philhellenes, was similarly rife with representations of the Greeks as Christians and the Ottomans as oppressors.102 The image was painted of ‘mothers dying in the arms of their daughters, daughters yielding their last sighs near their expiring parents, infants still hanging at the breasts of their lifeless mothers’, appealing to a type of ‘maternal bond’ among its female target audience.103 Newspapers even named Greek women ‘the most beautiful daughters of Eve, with the exception of yourselves [British women]’.104 This contrasted with earlier British descriptions, such as Colonel Leake’s Homeric depiction of women in Mistra; or Byron’s ‘Maid of Athens ... Woo’d by each Ægean wind’.105 The ‘Greek ladies’ pamphlet likened Greece to Christians in a Roman amphitheatre, hinting at the pagan oppression during the early church.106 The Quran was even named as the most prominent force in igniting Ottoman oppression: ‘Who could have thought that the Koran would have more influence in rousing the Turks unanimously against us, than the voices of the Sages of Europe’.107 The Philhellenic volunteer Edward Blaquiere, one of the founders of the London Greek Committee, also adhered to the Christian depictions of Erskine, Hughes and others in a pamphlet of 1823. Blaquiere described the Greeks as ‘entitled to the support of the Christian world, without any reference to their imprescriptible claims as the victims of oppression and professors of a common faith’.108 This not only appealed for British support, but also portrayed the Orthodox and Anglican churches as members of a ‘common faith’, rather than opposing sects. This interesting connection foreshadowed the question of a union of the two churches proposed between the 1860s and 1880s.109 Perhaps the common schismatic nature of the Orthodox and Anglican churches helped British Philhellenes feel an affinity. Erskine’s letter of reply was attached to this pamphlet, concluding that, based on the evidence Blaquiere had given, ‘No people upon earth ever stood more in need of Divine assistance, nor ought to have greater confidence in the deliverance they pray for’.110 The 1824 pamphlet attributed to Colonel Charles James Napier, a Philhellene and supporter of Byron, did not have explicitly Christian language but anti-Ottoman imagery was still evident: ‘ignorance, cruelty, and disorganization, run riot through the ranks of their Mahomedan foes’.111 Napier, who was Military Resident at Cephalonia, started his earlier 1821 pamphlet War in Greece with an outline of the country’s classical history.112 By 1824, however, he was no longer using ancient imagery, focusing solely on 64 Early British Christian-humanitarianism The wild and confused cries of pain and death were mingled with the fierce shouts of ‘Mahomet and vengeance!’ … the stillness of the night was suddenly broken by the clash of arms and the dismal war cry of the Ottoman soldiery, ‘Death!–Death to the Greeks–to the enemies of the Prophet–Allah il Allah!’120 113 St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, p. 59. P. Mavromichalis, Appeal on Behalf of the Greeks (18 Apr. 1823), MS in Inv. No. IA 9/112, Gods, Myths & Mortals, The Hellenic Museum Melbourne (original emphasis). 115 J. Jouhki and H.-R. Pennanen, ‘The imagined West: exploring Occidentalism’, Suomen Antropologi, xli (2016), 1–10, at p. 4. 116 Cambridge Branch Committee, ‘The Greek Cause’, Derby Mercury, 24 Dec. 1823; Cambridge Branch Committee, ‘The Greek Cause’, The Times, 19 Dec. 1823, p. 3. The Cambridge Branch Committee was a Philhellenic committee at Cambridge University in support of ‘the Greek cause’ (see ‘Miscellaneous Home Intelligence’ (Cambridge, 20 Nov. 1823), in The Oriental Herald and Colonial Review, i, Jan.–Apr. 1824, p. 189). 117 H. Roche, ‘the peculiarities of German Philhellenism’, Historical Journal, lxi (2018), 541–60, at p. 558. 118 ‘Elegant extracts from the most eminent prose writers: Part VI. Descriptive’, ed. R. A. Davenport, New Elegant Extracts, iii (Chiswick, 1827), cover; Anon., ‘The massacre of the Greeks at Scio’, in Davenport, ‘Elegant extracts from the most eminent prose writers’, pp. 266–9. New Elegant Extracts was a compilation containing works ‘from the most eminent prose and epistolary writers’. 119 Anon., ‘The massacre of the Greeks at Scio’, in Davenport, ‘Elegant extracts from the most eminent prose writers’, p. 266. 120 Anon., ‘The massacre of the Greeks at Scio’, in Davenport, ‘Elegant extracts from the most eminent prose writers’, p. 268. 114 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 Ottoman aggression and making anti-Islamic sentiments the most prominent feature of his pamphlet. St. Clair noted that ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, in reading the English pamphlets, that the authors were more inspired by hatred of Turks and Moslems than by concern for the Greeks’.113 The Greek revolutionary Petrobey Mavromichalis played on these anti-Ottoman sentiments when addressing and appealing to the English: ‘It is death for a Greek to marry a Turkish woman; or to strike a Mussulman even in selfdefence. On the other hand, the Mussulman that kills a Christian generally escapes with a fine’.114 The ‘othering’ of the Ottomans during the war led to an ‘Occidentalist’ view of the Greeks. Jukka Jouhki and Henna-Riikka Pennanen described Occidentalism as ‘both the self-images of esterners and images of Western society as the Other’.115 This model was at play in the 1820s. An article of December 1823 originating from the Philhellenic Cambridge Branch Committee, which was published in both The Times and the Derby Mercury, certainly echoed this: ‘Greek against the Barbarian, for Liberty against Oppression, for the Cross against the Crescent’.116 This language was not just confined to Britain. In continental Europe, Philhellenes were also propagating the ‘barbarian Ottoman’ image, as, for example, the German Philhellene and poet Wilhelm Müller who considered, Hellene’s ‘hearts’ ‘at stake in the battle against the barbarian Ottoman Turks’.117 In essence, the further ‘East’ Britain and continental Europe pushed the Ottomans, the closer ‘West’ the Greeks came – that is, the more ‘Islamic’ Britain portrayed the Ottomans, the more ‘Christian’ the Greeks seemed. The memory of the Chios Massacre persisted throughout the later stages of the war. The 1827 prose piece ‘The Massacre of the Greeks at Scio’, written anonymously, was published in the compilation New Elegant Extracts.118 This short story described the massacre in terms calculated to endear the Chiots to readers: ‘The unfortunate Sciotes were the most effeminate and irresolute of all the Greeks’.119 The writer used highly emotive language and painted an image of the ‘oppressive Ottoman’ uttering stereotypical ‘Islamic’ phrases: Early British Christian-humanitarianism 65 The contest now pending offers, on one hand, the pleasing prospect of liberation from unexampled tyranny to the country of Homer and Plato, of Miltiades and Solon; on the other hand, if the Crescent be triumphant, either Christianity will be extirpated from those fair regions where the Gospel was first propagated, or its professors will be involved in calamities.123 Thus, while the idea of the ‘country of Homer’ still persisted, Christianity was now at stake and had become the Philhellenes’ main concern. In contrast to public discourse, British officials during the war were fairly neutral, maintaining Ottoman legitimacy, although this would change drastically by 1827 with European intervention at Navarino.124 British neutrality was in contrast to other European officials, such as the French consul Pouqueville, who publicly expressed ‘strong anti-Turkish sentiments and the idea of Christian solidarity’.125 However, some changes in British official discourse began not long after the massacre, as C. W. Crawley noted: ‘Diplomats who first referred to Philhellenism as the “clamour of a faction” were speaking by 1823 of the “sympathy shown by the whole of Europe”’.126 In fact, 1823 was the year that Greek blockades began to be recognized by Britain.127 Previously, in October 1822, Lord Strangford had expressed his efforts for Greek amnesty in a dispatch to Castlereagh, stating that ‘though the Porte refrains from publishing a new proclamation of amnesty, its future conduct towards the revolted Greeks will be conformable to the wishes of the allies, and to the interests of humanity’.128 Despite Strangford’s plea, Castlereagh would remain neutral. However, his successor, Canning, began to balance and entertain Greek support, as Brewer noted: With Castlereagh as foreign secretary the Tory government line was that neutrality meant not attempting to support the Greek cause with funds, men or equipment … Canning however … took the view that private subscriptions could go hand in hand with official neutrality.129 Crawley reasoned that British neutrality, especially from foreign secretaries Castlereagh and Canning, corresponded to the question of America’s recognition of Ireland, and that even a Turkish minister had made the simile in a meeting with Strangford.130 In an 121 Cambridge Branch Committee, ‘The Greek Cause’, The Times, p. 3. Cambridge Branch Committee, ‘The Greek Cause’, The Times, p. 3. 123 Cambridge Branch Committee, ‘The Greek Cause’, The Times, p. 3. 124 St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, pp. 263–4; Woodhouse, Modern Greece, pp. 146–7. 125 A. Massé, ‘French consuls and Philhellenism in the 1820s: official positions and personal sentiments’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, xli (2017), 103–18, at p. 114. 126 Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence, p. 14. 127 Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence, p. 27. 128 Viscount Strangford to Castlereagh, in Prousis, ‘British Embassy Reports on the Greek uprising in 1821– 1822’, pp. 20–1 (T.N.A., FO 78/110, no. 150, fos. 85–92 (5 Oct. 1822)). 129 Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, p. 140. 130 Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence, pp. 26–7. 122 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 This piece was an interesting example of British attitudes, portraying the Islamic Ottomans as the Eastern ‘other’ and the Christian Greeks as an extension of ‘the West’. The Cambridge Branch Committee shared similar sentiments, stating that ‘The inhuman treatment experienced by the wretched isles of Scio, Crete and Cyprus, together with the bloody massacres committed in the principal cities of the Turkish Empire, fully demonstrate how undiminished is the persecuting spirit of Mahometanism’.121 The article blamed Islam for the ‘bloody massacres committed’ and portrayed the Greeks as Christians by appealing ‘to those sentiments of humanity and religion which animate their fellow countrymen’, the British.122 The writer alluded to the classical past, but the main importance was placed on Christian representations of the Greeks: 66 Early British Christian-humanitarianism * Perhaps the most profound impact the Chios Massacre had on British opinion was the formation of the London Greek Committee in March 1823. The previous year had already seen the setting up of an Edinburgh committee and a Quaker relief committee.136 The result of the shock which followed the massacre, as Woodhouse has emphasized, was that ‘Religious feeling strengthened human emotion’, which stimulated the Committee’s founding.137 Zegger noted that out of all the committees set up following the massacre the London Greek Committee received ‘the most publicity as well as a later notoriety’.138 Within a year of its foundation, the Committee had over 400 members, including most of the notable Philhellenes and travellers of the past decade, including J. C. Hobhouse, Lord Erskine, Lord Byron and Revd. Chatfield, as well as less expected members, such as the politician Sir John Bowring, the evangelical Zachariah 131 Memoranda on policy towards Greece, The National Archives of the U.K. (T.N.A.), FO 800/230, 1824–6, p. 1. 132 T.N.A., FO 800/230, p. 2. Gash described Wellesley’s ‘Cabinet Minister’ role as a ‘slightly ambiguous position’ which included ‘the familiar role of general adviser to the government on all military matters’ (see N. Gash, ‘Wellesley [formerly Wesley], Arthur, first duke of Wellington (1769–1852)’, O.D.N.B. <https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29001> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]). 133 T.N.A., FO 800/230, p. 2. 134 Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean, p. 20; John Cartwright, FO 78/136, fo. 264 (10 July 1823), in Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean, pp. 70–1. 135 Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean, p. 70. 136 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 73. 137 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 73. 138 Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, p. 237. © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 abstract of the proceedings surrounding the Greek question, there was, however, some evidence of the Christian representation’s prevalence in policy. In 1822, Britain, along with other European powers, including Russia and Austria, suggested two alternatives for ‘the pacification of Greece’; the first being Greek submission in exchange for the ability to worship freely; and the second ‘that the Porte should evince, by a series of acts, its regard for the religion of the Greeks, and its readiness to establish tranquillity’.131 Certainly, in the minds of British officials, religion was a driving force behind modern Greek identity, Greek independence and the British self-identification with Greeks. That same year cabinet minister, and later prime minister, Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington ‘expressed the hope, that, as the Porte had announced its determination to protect the religion of the Christians … [it would also] extend its protection to such of its revolted subjects’.132 Wellesley had also ordered Canning and Lord Strangford to work towards amnesty for the Greeks.133 In July 1823, John Cartwright, the Levant Company’s consul general in Constantinople, expressed a similar attitude, warning that if Greek revolutionaries did attack Smyrna ‘the Christians in general will have everything to fear’.134 Were officials, like Strangford, Wellesley and Cartwright trying to balance policy with Christian-humanitarianism? It was noted by Gunning that up until 1825 ‘Turkish cruelty against the Greeks had dominated the consular reports for four years’.135 Although they did not explicitly support Greek independence, there was an underlying sympathy towards the Greeks as oppressed Christians among British officials following the massacre. British public opinion, however, exemplified a much clearer shift from neoclassicism to the idea of ‘oppressed fellow Christians’, which was then translated into an early form of humanitarian action. Early British Christian-humanitarianism 67 139 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, pp. 182–4; Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, p. 237. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, p. 140. 141 Rodogno, Against Massacre, p. 73. 142 Rodogno, Against Massacre, pp. 73–4; Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 75. 143 L. Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824; Being a Series of Letters, and Other Documents, on the Greek Revolution, Written during a Visit to that Country (Philadelphia, Pa., 1825); Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 71. 144 Colonel Stanhope to John Bowring, ‘Colonel Stanhope’s Report on the State of Greece’, report read to the Greek Committee (1824), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, pp. 196–8. 145 Stanhope to Bowring, ‘Colonel Stanhope’s Report on the State of Greece’, in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 203. 146 Stanhope to Bowring, ‘Colonel Stanhope’s Report on the State of Greece’, in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 208. 147 Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, p. 169. 148 Stanhope to Bowring, ‘Colonel Stanhope’s Report on the State of Greece’, in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 208. 149 Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean, pp. 20–4. 150 Said, Orientalism, p. 57. 140 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 Macauley, and many notable liberal whigs, such as Edward Ellice, Lord Russell and Lord Durham.139 St. Clair outlined the Committee’s goals as ‘The simple ideals about regenerating Ancient Greece and defending Christians against Infidels which had inspired the first philhellenic efforts on the Continent’.140 Rodogno noted that the London Greek Committee was influenced by the successful anti-slavery campaign in Britain, and used ‘pressure group’ tactics, which included the publishing of pamphlets and newspaper articles to stir public opinion.141 William Wilberforce, the renowned evangelical anti-slavery campaigner, offered his support to the Committee’s cause, and attacked Castlereagh’s neutrality policy, appealing for the Greeks to be freed from ‘bondage and destruction’.142 London Committee member Colonel Leicester Stanhope, who in 1825 published a compilation of his letters to the Committee, sent a report on the Greek uprising to Sir John Bowring, the Committee’s secretary.143 Interestingly Stanhope painted Greece as a place where ‘The Byzantine and parts of the Napoleon codes prevail’, where the Greek church had become ‘tawdry and irrational … [due] to their poverty and to the counteraction of the Mahommedan religion’, and he noted that ‘The peasantry of Greece possess a large share of rustic virtue’.144 Stanhope used this virtuous, yet oppressed and ‘fallen’ Christian depiction of the Greeks to justify the Committee’s financial and moral support of the cause, as the Greeks were ‘accused of a want of Christian charity’.145 Stanhope concluded that the Committee’s support of the Greeks could secure ‘their salvation’ from their seemingly ‘fallen’ state, which was blamed on poverty and Islamic oppression.146 This ‘salvation’ could be fulfilled, in British minds, by freeing the Greeks from Ottoman oppression and the beginning of Christian self-governance in the region. This again foreshadowed the later 1860s idea of an Anglican and Eastern Orthodox union.147 The final point Stanhope made in his report to Bowring was that ‘on their salvation depend the destinies of the Asiatic world’.148 Greece’s proximity to west Asia, from a British religious perspective, was important in maintaining a kind of ‘Christian influence’ over Turkey and the Levant. It was certainly in Britain’s interests to have a Christian stronghold and buffer close to the Islamic world, especially following the surrender of the Levant Company in 1825, opening Levant trade ‘to “all” British subjects’.149 Stanhope’s idea that Asia’s destiny depended on Western success in Greece combined Said’s continental line with humanitarianism.150 This humanitarian attitude, whether sincere or not, certainly began as the idea of reinstating classical civilization in Greece. However, ‘civilization’ 68 Early British Christian-humanitarianism was no longer seen as classical, but rather as a Christian endeavour. John MacKenzie, discussing British Romantics, argued that Byron, and other Philhellenes: Therefore, this fear of the ‘other’ led to a humanitarian ‘need’ to influence the ‘East’ and Eastern culture. The Greek uprising, in Philhellenic British minds, became the perfect springboard to fulfil this colonial ideal. The most active way in which the London Greek Committee achieved its humanitarian goals was through subscription funding. By June 1823, Bowring reported that £3,000 had been raised for the ‘Greek fund’, increasing to £7,000 by October.152 Stanhope himself, by June 1824, had subscribed £497 ‘to the Greek cause’, funding the Greek artillery corps; safe journey for fourteen refugees; a loan to a member of the Mavrocordato family; the supplying of presses and medicines; and paper for printing the Greek constitution. It also provided financial help for the Greek Telegraph, Greek Chronicle, Athens Free Press, Ami des Loix, Ipsara Gazette, the Philomuse Society, the Lancasterian Schools in Athens and Missolonghi, and for the establishment of a Greek postal service.153 Earlier in 1824, in a letter to Stanhope, Byron outlined his own desire to fund the Greek cause: ‘you may be very sure that P. M. [‘Prince’ Mavrocordato] will accept any proposition for the advantage of Greece … What can be spared will be sent’.154 Eastern Orthodox convert Lord Frederick North, the fifth earl of Guilford, although not an official member of the Committee, helped further its aims by financing the Ionian Academy, and raising money for the wider cause and for the ‘English Party’ in Greece, with the help of the Greek Spyridon Trikoupis, who would later befriend Byron.155 Jeremy Bentham agreed to provide accommodation and part of the yearly costs for some Greek boys who were being sent to study at Hazlewood School in England as part of a Committee initiative – covering between £15 and £20 out of a total of £65.156 Erskine, in a letter to Mavrocordato, boasted of the Committee’s support for the Greeks, stating: I have the more confidence in such a happy change in your condition, from the devout and affecting appeals to the Almighty God for succour and protection against your Infidel oppressors … you have organized your Government, as appears, by the Report of your Constitution which has been published by the Greek Committee. Such appeals, if upheld by a corresponding faithfulness, cannot be made in vain.157 The Committee was also involved in helping procure loans for the Greek provisional government.158 Two major loans were raised during the mid 1820s with the Committee’s help – the first loan of £800,000 being negotiated through Loughman, O’Brien, Ellis & 151 J. M. MacKenzie, Orientalism: History,Theory and the Arts (Manchester and New York, 1995), p. 31. Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, p. 237. 153 Colonel Stanhope to John Bowring, ‘Letter LXXXV’ (on board the Florida, 2 June 1824), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, pp. 186–7. 154 Lord Byron to Colonel Stanhope, no. 25 (Missolonghi, 19 March 1824), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 249. 155 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, p. 70; K. Ware, ‘The fifth earl of Guilford (1766–1827) and his secret conversion to the Orthodox Church’, Studies in Church History, xiii (1976), 247–56, at pp. 251–2. 156 Jeremy Bentham to Colonel Stanhope, no. 15 (Queen’s-Square-Palace, Westminster, 23 Sept. 1823), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, pp. 238–9. 157 Lord Erskine to Prince Mavrocordato (26 Sept. 1823), in Blaquiere, Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation, pp. 31–2. 158 Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, pp. 220–1. 152 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 … feared, and sought to overturn, the triumph of Asiatic over Hellenistic values, Turk over Greek, while still suggesting that Islam contained a powerful potential for revolution … Thus essentialism becomes a highly movable phenomenon in which Self and Other become absorbed in common objectives and fears, ideals and neuroses.151 Early British Christian-humanitarianism 69 If a liberal subscription should be raised, it will be easy to forward it to those who have the management of their affairs … it is only for a few spirited individuals to organise a Committee, call a public Meeting, and appoint some Bankers to receive contributions, and, the result will not disappoint the most sanguine expectation.165 In an Address in Behalf of the Greeks, readers and listeners were informed that ‘Any profit which may arise from this publication, will be devoted to the cause it advocates’.166 This pamphlet, published in Edinburgh by an unnamed author, used the massacre to appeal directly to the British people’s humanitarian feelings, calling for the formation of a Committee in Edinburgh: ‘to take charge of the distribution of the funds … to which all interested in the cause of the Greeks should be invited to attend…from the known humanity and liberality of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, it cannot be doubted that such a meeting, if called, will be numerous and respectable’.167 Similarly, an 1823 pamphlet published by the London Committee and filled with religiously charged language, argued that ‘The Greeks have now truly established their title to universal sympathy. The struggle has been humanized, and everything the Greek Committee have seen and heard has served to stimulate their exertions and to confirm their confidence in so holy a cause’.168 The Committee then appealed to the British public, asking that ‘we supplicate that generous and effective assistance which may honour the British nation’.169 Interestingly, this pamphlet was directly addressed to the ‘Friends of Religion’, 159 Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, pp. 222–3, 289–90. Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, p. 220. 161 Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, p. 240. 162 Zegger, ‘Greek independence and the London Committee’, p. 240. 163 Brewer, The Flame of Freedom, pp. 294–5. 164 Hughes, An Address to the People of England in the Cause of the Greeks, p. a. 165 Chatfield, An Appeal to the British Public, p. 2. 166 Address in Behalf of the Greeks, p. b. 167 Address in Behalf of the Greeks, pp. 23–4. 168 Greek Committee, Appeal: from the Greek Committee to the British Public in general, and especially to the Friends of Religion (London, 1823), pp. 2–3. 169 Greek Committee, Appeal, p. 2. 160 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 Co. and the second of £2,000,000 via the Ricardo banking firm.159 These loans were more important to the Greek cause’s success than any other method of financial support.160 There were criticisms, however, of the Committee’s intentions and management in forwarding such large amounts of money to the Greeks. Zegger noted that Count Alerino Palma, an Italian Philhellene, accused the Committee of ‘gross dishonesty in handling Greek funds’.161 According to Palma, the Committee had not made the expenditures public, and less than half of the first loan actually reached Greece, leading to accusations of fraud.162 The Committee members involved, particularly Bowring, Ellice and Hobhouse, were also criticized over the major depreciation of bonds for both loans, as well as for the inability of the British to deliver on time ships ordered by the Greeks.163 Despite mismanagement, however, the Committee was integral in propagating a humanitarian attitude towards the Greeks. Even prior to the London Committee’s formation many Philhellenes ‘crowdfunded’, using pamphlets. One of Revd. Hughes’s pamphlets opened with an ‘advertisement’, stating to the reader that its ‘principal object is to promote a subscription among the generous inhabitants of Great Britain, and if any profits should arise from its sale, they shall be religiously applied to that sacred cause’.164 Revd. Robert Chatfield claimed that a small donation would go far for the Greek cause: 70 Early British Christian-humanitarianism excited a strong feeling of sympathy and commiseration in the minds of those friends in the metropolis … and a Committee was immediately formed for the purpose of giving prompt attention to the subject … [and that the Greeks were] our fellow Christians … [needing] the brotherly hand of kindness.172 There is an interesting similarity between the Quakers and the Philhellenic committees, which seemed to be aligned in their cause. Perhaps the notion of ‘friends’ drew on a similar humanitarian spirit, as the Quakers were the ‘Religious Society of Friends’, the Philhellenes the ‘friends of the Greeks’, and the Greek revolutionary Neo-Hellenists members of the ‘Friendly Society’ (‘Filikí Etaireía’).173 However, the Quakers’ pacifist ideology was fundamentally different from the revolutionary ‘Friendly Society’, thus drawing a stark contrast between their motivations and efforts. The Quakers presented a plan to readers and listeners, claiming the money raised would go towards supplying clothing, food, ‘or the means of procuring them’.174 In an attached letter from ‘a Youth 16 years of age’, who was a Chiot refugee and the son of a merchant, stories of heroic escapes and tragic losses from the massacre aroused emotions.175 The youth’s letter noted the extent of loss due to the massacre, stating that ‘all in the greatest confusion, –some missing a father, some a brother, and all some dear friend. It was in this spot that we lost my poor little brother, who was four years old’.176 Another attached letter asked ‘Can any one in words give an adequate representation of this frightful and mournful scene! Such is the extreme misery that on many of both sexes, who had escaped the fury of the Turks, the violence of the shock has produced insanity and even death itself ’.177 Finally, the Quakers appealed for financial support, showing the current subscriptions from affluent figures, such as anti-slavery activists Wilberforce and the brothers Josiah and Robert Forster, and abolitionist and member for parliament T. F. Buxton, who donated £10, £5, £3 and £25 respectively.178 170 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 1. Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, pp. 1–3. 172 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 1. 173 The Neo-Hellenist society for Greek Independence, called Φιλική Εταιρεία (Filikí Etaireía), translates to ‘Friendly Society’ or ‘Society of Friends’ (see R. Clogg, ‘Korais and the movement for Greek independence’, History Today, xxxiii (Oct. 1983), 10–14, at p. 14; Doumanis, A History of Greece, p. 171. 174 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 1. 175 ‘Narrative of the escape of a Youth 16 years of age, the son of a respectable Greek Merchant resident in London [translated from the modern Greek]’, letter in Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, pp. 2–3. 176 ‘Narrative of the escape of a Youth 16 years of age’, in Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 2. 177 ‘Address of the Greeks resident at Trieste on behalf of their Suffering Countrymen who have taken refuge there and at Ancona [translated from the original in modern Greek]’, letter in Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 2. 178 Religious Society of Friends, Case of the Distressed Greeks, p. 4; O. M. Blouet, ‘Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 1st baronet (1786–1845)’, O.D.N.B. <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4247> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]; E. H. Milligan, ‘Forster, William (1784–1854)’, O.D.N.B. <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9925> [accessed 28 Oct. 2019]. 171 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 or ‘Quakers’, a Protestant society who had formed their own subscription funding initiatives for the Greek cause. An 1823 Quaker monograph, titled Case of the Distressed Greeks, contained a four-page appeal aimed at raising subscriptions ‘on behalf of the distressed Refugees from the Isle of Scio … and that of others of the Greek nation’.170 The address contained letters from Chiot refugees, members of the diaspora and a resident of Constantinople, and a letter to the secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society concerning the massacre.171 The address argued that the Chios Massacre: Early British Christian-humanitarianism 71 The bravery or cowardice of the Greeks, their cruel treatment retorted upon their cruel oppressors, or their boasted descent from Pericles or Demosthenes, move me far less than the affecting consideration, that as a nation of professing Christians, they are sunk in ignorance and superstition, which is the root of the evil.180 Forster appealed to the public’s Christian convictions and their idea of salvation as a final effort in lifting their apathy, arguing that funding Greek education would reintegrate ‘fallen Greece’ into the West. Forster’s argument is in a similar spirit to Stanhope’s ‘fallen’ Greek church motif, discussed above.181 The Quaker fund contained many notable subscribers, such as, unsurprisingly, Colonel Stanhope, ‘the lord mayor’, John Bowring and Revd. Chatfield, whose celebrity would have prompted readers and listeners to donate, as well as members of the London Chiot diaspora, such as J. Mavrogordato, N. Ralli, P. Ralli and M. Rodocanachi.182 Stanhope, discussing the Quakers, noted that by October 1823 they had raised above £8,000 ‘with their usual liberality’.183 Interestingly, however, he criticized how the Quakers were using their money, asking Bowring to ‘Pray urge the Quakers to send their money to me, instead of employing it in Italy … A school shall be established as soon as we can obtain a master. I beg of the Quakers to send out some one immediately to establish their system in all its purity’.184 Although Stanhope clearly valued the Quakers’ initiatives, he believed that they were not active or swift enough in delivering them to Greece. These kinds of internal qualms, just like the Committee’s mismanagement of funds, show that early humanitarianism was not always a one-directional focus between organizations and the ‘oppressed Greeks’. These organizations also had colonial overtones, focused on exerting influence and furthering ‘civilization’ in the region. Britain’s Chiot diaspora was also actively involved in the humanitarian effort. On arriving in London following the massacre, the Chiots became instantly intertwined economically into British society, and also into Mediterranean and global British trade. For example, the Baltic Club, which formed on 22 April 1823, only a year after 179 Robert Forster to the Religious Society of Friends (Tottenham, 30 Dec. 1825), in Religious Society of Friends, Education in Greece: Fund for Promoting Education in Greece (Belfast, 6 Jan. 1826), p. 1. 180 Forster to the Religious Society of Friends (1825), in Religious Society of Friends, Education in Greece, p. 1. 181 Colonel Stanhope to John Bowring, ‘Colonel Stanhope’s Report on the State of Greece’, report read to the Greek Committee (1824), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, pp. 196–8. 182 Religious Society of Friends, Education in Greece, p. 1. The ‘John Bouring, Esq.’ listed is most likely the ‘John Bowring, Esq.’ of the London Greek Committee. 183 Colonel Stanhope to John Bowring, ‘Letter III’ (Bern, 10 Oct. 1823), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 6. 184 Colonel Stanhope to John Bowring, ‘Letter XII’ (Missolonghi, 13 Dec. 1823), in Stanhope, Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 32. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) © The Author(s) 2020. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 This was not the only humanitarian effort of the Quakers. In 1826, they began a fund to support Greek education. The appeal Education in Greece contained a letter from Robert Forster, making the interesting points that 100 copies of the address had been sent to Dublin and Belfast; that ‘I [Forster] regret that the subject has not taken more hold of the feelings of the British public’; and that the humanitarian efforts should not be restricted to revolutionary Greece, but also to the Ionian Islands and the Greek populations of Russia and Anatolia, who were all part of ‘the wide field for the labour of christian benevolence’.179 The British public’s apparent lack of support for Quaker initiatives in Greece could explain why this fund was promoted so heavily in Ireland, and that the scope was widened to a larger region of Orthodox peoples. Forster also emphasized, similarly to Philhellenes like Hughes, that: 72 Early British Christian-humanitarianism that a respectable English house be selected in each of the above ports [Leghorn, Trieste, Ancona and Malta], to receive whatever quota of the contribution may fall to their share; that … one or two respectable Sciot residents may be joined to them to select those who are in the greatest distress, so as to divide the donations as equally and fairly as possible, according to the degree of want in the relieved.190 The culmination of the various Philhellenic committee efforts was essentially a natural progression from the shifting attitudes and language following the massacre. * Evidently Christianity propelled early British humanitarianism towards the Greeks. The Chios Massacre was a pivotal moment. It ‘humanized’ the Greeks to the British people, causing Christian-humanitarianism to surface, and shifted perceptions away from classical ideas to Christian representations, as can be seen from the change in public discourse, especially by Philhellenes and newspapers. This early British humanitarian intervention, which was notably a public effort, drew on the ideas of ‘fellow Christians’ and ‘charity’, shown by the formation of committees and relief funds, although intertwined with anti-Ottoman sentiments, Orientalist conceptions and an Occidentalist colonial agenda focused on the idea of recreating Greece’s glorious ancient and Byzantine past and aiding the Greek revolutionaries against an ‘oppressive Ottoman regime’. This early Christianhumanitarianism truly reflected the religiously focused mode of the nineteenth century. Rodogno concluded that ‘throughout the nineteenth century religion would remain an important and discriminating element determining when and on behalf of whom intervention could take place’.191 This was certainly true for the Greek uprising. 185 Long, Greek Fire, p. 134. Long, Greek Fire, p. 134. 187 Long, Greek Fire, p. 132. 188 M. C. Chatziioannou, ‘War, crisis and sovereign loans; the Greek War of Independence and British economic expansion in the 1820s’, The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, x (2013), 33–56, at pp. 34–5. 189 Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, pp. 182–4. 190 Address in Behalf of the Greeks, 1822, p. 19. 191 Rodogno, Against Massacre, pp. 89–90. 186 © The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 259 (February 2020) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article-abstract/93/259/52/5714875 by KERIS National Access user on 24 February 2020 the massacre, had Chiot refugee Michel E. Rodocanachi as a founding director.185 Rodocanachi would go on to be one of the club members who would later form the renowned Baltic Exchange.186 The already established Ralli brothers, John and Eustratio, saw the arrival of their three other brothers, Augustus, Thomas and Pandia, allowing the Rallis to expand their trading partnership further, with the opening of an office in Manchester in 1827, and in India in 1851.187 By the mid 1820s, the provisional administration of Greece turned to the wealthy Chiot merchants in London for loans to fund the War of Independence, those such as Pandia Ralli, who had a capital of £130,000 during the period.188 J. Mavrocordatos, N. Ralli and D. Schinas, all of Chiot origin, also sat on the London Greek Committee, alongside famous British Philhellenes such as Byron, Erskine and Hobhouse.189 Through this prominent societal position, the diaspora made the request for British people to house Chiot refugees, asking: