Loyalty and Political Legitimacy in the Phanariots’ Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century
Loyalty and Political Legitimacy in the Phanariots’ Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: This article explains the ideological and practical reasons that the Phanariots, members of the Greek Orthodox community in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire, thought of their future as inseparable from that of the Empire. On this basis, the Phanariots continuously served their Ottoman rulers until as late as the first half of the nineteenth century. The political imagination of the Phanariots was shaped by travel and the development of personal and professional networks. These activities, a function of their service to the Ottoman administration, allowed the Phanariots to acquire wealth and prestige. The Phanariots emphasized human agency in their political and religious works and considered their activity in the Ottoman Empire to be essential to the preservation of their religious community’s privileges. In addition, they felt that their service certified their belonging, as Greek Orthodox, to the Ottoman political community.

• Details
• Contents