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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2019
How does a new state, born by way of revolution, produce its social and political institutions? This article explores this question by looking at the case of Greece after independence from the Ottomans (1830). It focuses on the Greek civil jurists and provides a history of a liberal political program that was manifested in Roman-law jurisprudence. As elsewhere in Europe, so too for jurists in Greece, Roman law was both a consistent method for lawmaking and a powerful political ideology, one that linked private property to personal liberty, and to equality of conditions. As in several other colonial and postimperial settings, it developed as a language of statehood and a “territorial” program that associated sovereignty with the reorganization of space within the state. As in a very few other cases, there it became a means of practical statecraft, which the jurists turned against other political programs, including that of the monarchy.
Research for this article was conducted as part of the Border Crossings: People and Ideas on the Move, and the Formation of Political Institutions in the Greek World during the 19th Century research project, funded by the Research Center for the Humanities (RCH) for the year 2019, with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. I would like to thank the editors and the anonymous readers of Modern Intellectual History for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions.
2 The Council of State was founded in 1833 as an institution serving both as an advisory body and as a supreme administrative court. From 1835 onwards it functioned as the King's Council (Conseil du roi), an important role in a regime with no representative assembly.
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24 Originally published in the journal Anamorphosis, Kalligas, Pavlos, ‘Periigisis eis Syron, Smyrni, Kon/li klp’ (1845), in Meletai Nomikai, klp. Pavlou Kalliga, ed. by Kalligas, G., 2 vols. (Athens, 1899), 2: 503Google Scholar.
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31 Ibid., 1: 3–4.
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33 Kalligas, Systima, 1: 3–4.
34 Ibid., 1: iv, 14–17. His references are Thibaut, Mackeldey, Muchlenbruch, Wening-Ingelheim, Goeschen, Puchta and Savigny. Ibid., i.
35 Ibid., 1, 13, 17–20 (for the historical-school criticism).
36 Pavlos Kalligas, “Peri Ethimon” 1 (Themis, supplement of 1847), in Kalligas, Meletai, 1: 266–305.
37 A good example is Kalligas, Pavlos, “Peri Tokou” (originally in Nomiki Melissa, xv (1861))Google Scholar, in Kalligas, Meletai, 1: 53–66, at 56. For the committee see Triantafyllopoulos, Konstantinos, “Istoria ton Shedion Ellinikou Astikou Kodika,” Arheio Idiotikou Dikaiou 4 (1937), 433–49Google Scholar.
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41 Stahl, Friedrich J., Philosophie des Rechts, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1846), 1: 106Google Scholar.
42 Kalligas, Systima, 1: 83.
43 Ibid., 72.
44 Kostis, Ta Kakomathimena, 248–54
45 Kalligas, “Peri Ethimon”; see also Argyropoulos, Periklis, I Dimotiki Diioikisi En Elladi, 2 vols. (Athens, 1846)Google Scholar; Angelopoulos, Georgios I., Peri Topikis Dioikiseos en Elladi en Sygkrisei pros tin en Gallia kai Agglia (Athens, 1879), 18–19Google Scholar; Petmezas, Socrates, “From Privileged Outcasts to Power Players: The ‘Romantic’ Redefinition of the Hellenic Nation in the Mid-19th Century”, in Beaton, Roderick and Ricks, David, eds., The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism and the Uses of the Past (1797–1896) (London, 2009), 126–39Google Scholar.
46 Kalligas, Systima, 1: 200.
47 Ibid, 200–30, for the rights of persons. He also argued that even persons who are not recognized by civil law have the right of security owing to their status as subjects of ius gentium.
48 National property included the lands and the personalty—moveable property (Ethnika ftharta ktimata)—that belonged to the Ottoman state, the Muslim Ottoman subjects who had left the country after the Revolution, and the confiscated land of the monasteries. Where a right of usufruct on the part of a tenant could be authenticated, ownership was split into two, and the state acquired half of the property (roughly around 60 percent of the arable land). See McGrew, William, Land and Revolution in Modern Greece, 1800–1881: The Transition in the Tenure and Exploitation of Land from Ottoman Rule to Independence (Kent, 1985)Google Scholar; Petmezas, Socrates, I Elliniki Agrotiki Oikonomia to 19o aiona: I Perifereiaki Diastasi (Irakleion, 2003), 25–6Google Scholar; Karouzou, Evi, “Thesmiko Plaisio kai Agrotiki Oikonomia,” in Kostis, Kostas and Petmezas, Socrates, eds., I Anaptyxi tis Ellinikis Oikonomias ton 19o aiona (Athens, 2006), 179–95, at 181–2Google Scholar.
49 As Friedrich Thiers observed, there was a “multitude of ill-founded and conflicting claims, usurpations and a paucity of valid documentation.” Quoted in McGrew, Land and Revolution, 115.
50 Ibid., 215.
51 Karouzou, “Thesmiko Plaisio,” 188–9; Zepos, Panagiotis, Modern Greek Law: Three Lectures Delivered at Cambridge and Oxford in 1946 (Athens, 1949), 57Google Scholar.
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53 Petmezas, I Elliniki Agrotiki, 28.
54 Finlay, George, “The Actual Condition of the Greek state,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 55 (1844), 785–96, at 793Google Scholar. See also Finlay, , “The Euthanasia of the Ottoman Empire,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 89 (1861), 571–94Google Scholar.
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56 James Q. Whitman, “The Moral Menace of Roman Law and the Making of Commerce: Some Dutch Evidence,” Yale Law School, Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 654 (1996), 1841–89, at 1846, at http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/65.
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58 Kalligas, Pavlos, “Peri Paragrafis,” Themis 1 (1846), 1–8, 94–117, 176–88Google Scholar; 2 (1846), 239–69. He made the same arguments in his Systima.
59 One example was the Law on the Endowments of Greek Families of 1835. On the law and its failure see Karouzou, “Thesmiko,” 184. See also Kalligas “Peri Katoikias,” Themis 6 (supplement) (1852), in Kalligas, Meletai, 280–92.
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62 Kalligas, Systima, 1: 18. This is something that permeated the thought of most jurists. For Guizot's influence on Kalligas see Masson-Vincourt, Marie, O Pavlos Kalligas ka iIdrysitouEllinikouKratous, 1814–1896 (Athens, 2009), 143–5Google Scholar.
63 Kalligas, Systima, 1: 137.
64 Ibid., 1: 13.
65 Ibid., 2: 742.
66 Efimeris tis Kyverniseos, 7 April 1856, “On Usucapion,” Article 60; Karouzou, “Thesmiko,” 181; and Petmezas, Agrotiki, 46.
67 McGrew, Land and Revolution, 216–17.
68 “Ellinikos Astikos Nomos,” Efimeris tis Kyverniseos 75 (15 Nov. 1856), 399–405Google Scholar; see also Zepos, Modern Greek Law, 57–58.
69 “Peri metagrafis tis kyriotititas ton akiniton kai ton allon ep’afton pragmatikon dikaiomaton”, Efimeris tis Kyverniseos 70 (6 Nov. 1856), 375–6Google Scholar; “Peri kidemonon”, Efimerida tis Kyverniseos 42 (23 Aug. 1856)Google Scholar; “Peri navagion kai navagiaireseon”, Efimeris tis Kyverniseos, 71 (7 Nov. 1856), 379–84; 67 (10 Aug. 1861)Google Scholar; all the way to the publication of the two important laws of 1871 on land distribution: “Peri dianomis kai diatheseos tiw ethnikis gis”, Efimeris tis Kyverniseos 25 (16 June 1871), 163–7Google Scholar and “Peri ton genomenon emfytefseon”, Efimeris tis Kyverniseos 29 (9 July 1871), 195–7Google Scholar.
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71 Bayly, Christopher, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004), 299Google Scholar.
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73 Koliopoulos, Listeia, 221–4; and Petmezas, I Elliniki Agrotiki, 28.
74 It was published in Pandora during 1855–6 and then republished as a book. It has remained in print ever since. Kalligas, Pavlos, ThanosVlekas (Athens, 1991)Google Scholar. For critical appreciations see Konidaris, Iioannis M., “O Thanos Vlekas tou Pavlou Kalliga: Mia IstorikonomikiT heorisi,” in Afieroma ston Andrea A. Gazi (Athens-Komotini, 1994), 291–312Google Scholar.
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76 Ibid., 115–16. Here Kalligas alluded to American policies (probably the Donation Land Act of 1850), comparing their effectiveness with the counterexample of Greece.
77 Ibid.
78 Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures.