For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about classical liberalism’s influence on the Greek Revolution.
March 25, 2021 will mark the bicentennial of the struggle for independence that led to the creation of modern Greece. Over the next two years, the Center for Liberal Studies – Markos Dragoumis (KEFiM), an Athens-based think tank, will undertake a multipart outreach campaign funded by the John Templeton Foundation that aims to shed new light on the classical liberal origins of the modern Greek nation-state.
Short videos, podcasts, workshops, books, and op-eds will be released during the two years leading up to the anniversary of the revolt that eventually ended centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule in Greece. The project’s goal is to re-familiarize modern Greeks with the importance of ideals of freedom that galvanized some of the Greek revolution’s key actors, including Anastasios Polyzoides (who co-wrote the Greek Declaration of Independence and produced the first Greek translation of the American Declaration of Independence), inaugural Greek prime minister Alexandros Mavrokordatos, and the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization formed in 1814 by Greek merchants who hoped to liberate Greece from the Ottomans.