Roderick Beaton Libros

"For many, 'Greece' is synonymous with 'ancient Greece,' the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization--sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas"--Back cover

The way we are governed. It all began on the mountains and islands of Europe's southeastern edge, more than 3,000 years ago. The Greeks is the story of a culture that has contributed more than any other to the way we live now in the West.

It has been called the age of revolution. The white heat of it came in the decades either side of the year 1800. But it lasted a full from the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the great national unifications of Germany and Italy during the 1860s. Right in the middle of this long age of revolution and, as it turns out, the pivotal point within it, comes the Greek Revolution that broke out in the spring of 1821. Historians have been slow to recognise the key role of the Greek uprising in 1821, and the international recognition of Greece as a sovereign, independent state nine years later, in 1830, in this process that did so much to shape the geopolitics of the European continent, and indeed of much of the world. This little book sets out to explain what happened during these nine years to bring about such far-reaching (and surely unanticipated) consequences, and why the full significance of these events is only now coming to be appreciated, two hundred years later.

Die Geschichte der Griechen von der Antike bis Heute Die Art und Weise, wie wir denken. Wie wir lernen. Wie wir regiert werden. Unsere Künste. All das hat seinen Ursprung vor mehr als 3000 Jahren am südöstlichen Rand Europas. Bis heute beruft die gesamte westliche Welt sich immer wieder auf Geistesgrößen wie Sokrates, Pythagoras, Sappho und Homer. Roderick Beaton legt auf eindrucksvolle Weise dar, welche Kontinuitäten die antike Welt um Athen und Sparta mit dem mittelalterlichen Byzanz, der griechischen Kultur im Osmanischen Reich und nicht zuletzt dem modernen Griechenland des 21. Jahrhunderts verbinden. Bis heute haben die späte Gründung des griechischen Staates und die damit verbundenen Identitätskonflikte Auswirkungen auf Europa. Doch auch Ideen der alten Griechen – wie das Alphabet und etliche wissenschaftliche Errungenschaften – haben wir uns über die Jahrhunderte hinweg immer wieder neu anverwandelt. Eine epochenübergreifende Meistererzählung und ein lehrreiches Lesevergnügen.