Human liberties in the pre-revolutionary Greek community system
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Abstract
On the occasion of the second centenary of the French Revolution, it
is interesting to examine how far its declarations affected Greeks, in view of
the fact that human liberties—or those which we usually refer to as civil
rights—were born in Greece itself, a country which, at the end of the eighteenth century, was groaning beneath the boot-heel of the Ottoman conqueror.
One precondition of the exercise of human liberties is the possibility of
belonging to a group on an individual or a collective basis. This right was
recognised for the first time in the history of European civilisation by Solon,
whose legislation extended it—originally the exclusive prerogative of the
eupatrides (who were bound by common blood into phratries)—to other
classes of free individuals, who were connected by bonds of common space
(demes) and common interests (orgeones, thiasi, and sailors). It was thus that the beginning of the sixth century saw the establishment of the polity of conciliation, whose concensus processes made the concept of Democracy a reality; for every citizen had access to the public offices, and thus felt himself to be an organic part of the city-state. Since then human liberties have been in both theory and practice inseparably bound up with the democratic system. And when it declines or disappears, they suffer. Turning our investigation to the period of Turkish domination, we realise that even at this time of oppression, on the basis of the traditional common law of the privilege system, favourable conditions had been created for the development of human liberties. Each community was an autonomous taxation unit operating on the basis of the mutual interests of the conquerors and the conquered. Being jointly responsible for the payment of taxes, the members of each community soon developed systems of mutual dependency and self-administration, by which every member, in accordance with the representative system, had access to the governing processes of the communities as subsidiary power centres. He could be elected to community offices, elect those who handled the taxes, and above all check up on them, both in the exercise of their duties and, above all, when their year of service ended. Evidence from Serres (1614), Mykonos (1615 and 1659), Smyrna (1785), Hydra (1804-18), and Meleniko (1813), reveals that the enslaved rayahs had begun to enjoy civil rights in the form I have described, some 200 years before the French Revolution; yet in the Venetian dominated Ionian Islands, despite their direct contact with the West, only the nobility had civil rights before the nineteenth century. On the basis of the community experience in the period of Turkish domination, Rhigas Velestinlis came out firmly in favour of the declarations of the French Revolution. In his Constitution (1797), however, he surpassed them, for he accorded civil rights not only to individuals but also to groups, irrespective of racial, religious, or linguistic criteria. He thus anticipated articles 22, 23, and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, like Rhigas, grant civil liberties to societies and communities.
is interesting to examine how far its declarations affected Greeks, in view of
the fact that human liberties—or those which we usually refer to as civil
rights—were born in Greece itself, a country which, at the end of the eighteenth century, was groaning beneath the boot-heel of the Ottoman conqueror.
One precondition of the exercise of human liberties is the possibility of
belonging to a group on an individual or a collective basis. This right was
recognised for the first time in the history of European civilisation by Solon,
whose legislation extended it—originally the exclusive prerogative of the
eupatrides (who were bound by common blood into phratries)—to other
classes of free individuals, who were connected by bonds of common space
(demes) and common interests (orgeones, thiasi, and sailors). It was thus that the beginning of the sixth century saw the establishment of the polity of conciliation, whose concensus processes made the concept of Democracy a reality; for every citizen had access to the public offices, and thus felt himself to be an organic part of the city-state. Since then human liberties have been in both theory and practice inseparably bound up with the democratic system. And when it declines or disappears, they suffer. Turning our investigation to the period of Turkish domination, we realise that even at this time of oppression, on the basis of the traditional common law of the privilege system, favourable conditions had been created for the development of human liberties. Each community was an autonomous taxation unit operating on the basis of the mutual interests of the conquerors and the conquered. Being jointly responsible for the payment of taxes, the members of each community soon developed systems of mutual dependency and self-administration, by which every member, in accordance with the representative system, had access to the governing processes of the communities as subsidiary power centres. He could be elected to community offices, elect those who handled the taxes, and above all check up on them, both in the exercise of their duties and, above all, when their year of service ended. Evidence from Serres (1614), Mykonos (1615 and 1659), Smyrna (1785), Hydra (1804-18), and Meleniko (1813), reveals that the enslaved rayahs had begun to enjoy civil rights in the form I have described, some 200 years before the French Revolution; yet in the Venetian dominated Ionian Islands, despite their direct contact with the West, only the nobility had civil rights before the nineteenth century. On the basis of the community experience in the period of Turkish domination, Rhigas Velestinlis came out firmly in favour of the declarations of the French Revolution. In his Constitution (1797), however, he surpassed them, for he accorded civil rights not only to individuals but also to groups, irrespective of racial, religious, or linguistic criteria. He thus anticipated articles 22, 23, and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, like Rhigas, grant civil liberties to societies and communities.
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