The Choice of Terms

Abstract

After the End of the Cretan crisis and the Paris Conference Greeks were forced to re-examine the heart of their identity. Amid the reforms and the efforts of the Ottoman government, Greek nationalists for years had emphasized to Westerners that no amount of reform or constitutional change could develop the characteristics of a Christian civilization in an Islamic world. Consequently, as long as the East remained under Islamic rule and tradition, no real progress could take place. In response to Western beliefs that religious conversion and the dissemination of the Roman alphabet in the East were sufficient for its cultural rebirth, Greeks accompanied their claims to Greek sovereignty in the East with an appeal to history and the argument that all European civilization was founded on the Hellenismos principles of language and literature and thus, their own nation possessed the unique talent of educating and the unique mission of the dissemination of Greek letters to Kath’ imas Anatoli.¹ Greeks hence emerged from this period with moderate optimism, reluctantly advising Europe that its efforts to influence the East were futile and that any Oriental adoption of European civilization and culture was in vain. In short, the East should be developed through its own efforts, or, as Greeks summarized it: I Anatoli dia tis Anatolis (East through the East).²