A Byzantine Republic Rather Than Tsargrad

After years of lofty promises that one day a “Blonde Race from the North” in shape of Russian intervention would deliver the Ottoman Christian Orthodox from the dominance of the Sultan disillusion sat in. Some would begin to opt for Napoleon’s new European order and its political foundation in the French Revolution and give up their hope in Catherine the Great’s “Greek Project.” My talk focuses on Rhigas Velestenlis’ 1797 plan to raise the Sultan’s subjects against the tyrant and create a republic of citizens out the subject people in the Ottoman Empire from Romania in the west to Asia Minor in the East. My aim is to discuss to which extent Rhigas Velestenlis’ plan should be seen as a “republican reformulation” of Catherine’s “Greek Project” in the context of Napoleon’s conquest of Italy and penetration of the Eastern Mediterranean and to which it should be seen as a response to new political possibilities in the large tracts of lands which Rhigas Velestenlis envisioned should constitute the domain of the new republic.