For almost four hundred years, between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Greek War of Independence, the history of Greece is shrouded in mystery: distorted by Greek writers and largely neglected by others. What was life really like for the Greeks under Ottoman rule? Was it a period of exploitation and enslavement for the Greeks until they were finally able to rise up against Turkish rule, as is the traditional, Greek nationalistic view? Or did the Greeks derive some benefit from Turkish rule? How did the Greeks and Turks co-exist for so long? And, why are Greek attitudes towards Venice, who also controlled much of Greece for many of these years, so different? In this wide-ranging yet concise history David Brewer explodes many of the myths about Turkish rule of Greece. He places the Greek story in its wider, international context and casts fresh light on the dynamics of power not only between Greeks and Ottomans but also between Muslims and Christians, both Orthodox and Catholic, throughout Europe. This absorbing and riveting account of a crucial period will ensure that the history of Greece under Turkish rule is no longer hidden. It will delight anyone with an interest in Greek and Turkish history and in how the past has shaped the Greece we know today.

K. E. Fleming's Greece--a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis. For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece--a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece--as deportees to Auschwitz or émigrés to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common.

Traces the history of ancient Greece from political, social, military, and economic perspectives and discusses the development of the Greek culture

"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

In this book, acclaimed history David Brewer investigates explores 1940s Greece -- one of the most tumultuous decades in Greece's modern history. Beginning in 1941, the occupation of Greece by Germany was intensely brutal: children starved on the streets of Athens; the Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust; heroic acts of resistance were met with vicious reprisals. When Greece was finally freed from Nazi rule in 1944, the fractured and embittered nation became engulfed in civil war, as conflict flared between the British and American-sponsored government and communist-led rebels. In Greece, The Decade of War, Brewer expertly analyses these events and in doing so provides a compelling military and political history.

When in 1821, the Greeks rose in violent revolution against the rule of the Ottoman Turks, waves of sympathy spread across Western Europe and the United States. More than a thousand volunteers set out to fight for the cause. The Philhellenes, whether they set out to recreate the Athens of Pericles, start a new crusade, or make money out of a war, all felt that Greece had unique claim on the sympathy of the world. As Byron wrote, 'I dreamed that Greece might Still be Free'; and he died at Missolonghi trying to translate that dream into reality. William St Clair's meticulously researched and highly readable account of their aspirations and experiences was hailed as definitive when it was first published. Long out of print, it remains the standard account of the Philhellenic movement and essential reading for any students of the Greek War of Independence, Byron, and European Romanticism. Its relevance to more modern ethnic and religious conflicts is becoming increasingly appreciated by scholars worldwide. This new and revised edition includes a new Introduction by Roderick Beaton, an updated Bibliography and many new illustrations.

This “fresh and compelling” study sheds light on the dramatic military, political, and cultural forces that led Greece to liberation in the 19th century (Wall Street Journal). In The Greek War of Independence, Oxford scholar David Brewer presents a vividly detailed and comprehensive study of one of history’s most heroic and bloody struggles for independence. This was the revolution of the Romantic Age, inspiring painters, poets, and patriots the world over, fired as much by Lord Byron's ringing words and Delacroix's brilliant paintings as by Greece's seemingly hopeless plight. For nearly four hundred years, the Ottoman Turks governed Greece, subjecting the country to crushing and arbitrary tax burdens and its peasants to serfdom. The glories of the ancient past were gone, and under Turkish rule Greece was poor and backward. But inspired by the examples of the American and French revolutions, Napoleon's victories, and the Latin American wars of liberation, the Greek people rose up against their Turkish masters in 1821. Over the course of twelve brutal years—a time of terrible violence and bloody massacre—the Greeks and the foreign volunteers who flocked to their cause fought until independence was won in 1833.