An antidote to anarchy? Images of monarchy in Greece in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries

Abstract

Since Roman times the representation of monarchy as an antidote to anarchy was a strong form of legitimization for the monarchical institution. In modern Greece, this formula dates back to 1821. The Greek Revolution and its republican constitutions were identified by European statesmen with anarchy and demagogy. Thus, a foreign monarch, alien to Greece's internal factions, was deemed the ideal remedy for internecine strife, and the best guarantor of internal unity as well as stability in the Near East. This image of monarchy proved its usefulness again during the First World War, when a controversy between the premier Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine over foreign policy and constitutional issues led to the National Schism (1915–17).

‘The English despot’: Francis Noel-Baker and his support for the Colonels’ regime

“…104 This included the longstanding accusation that the Greeks were unfit for self-rule, which was successively levelled against the warlords who had fought for Independence, supporters of Venizelos in the 1920s, and populist politicians such as Andreas Papandreou. 105 Andreas' American-born wife, Margaret, bitterly observed from exile that the Greeks' political immaturity meant that 'Their concept of democracy was closer to the notion of anarchy: everyone should be free to do whatever he wanted.' 106 Noel-Baker's friend Frederica, the ousted Dowager Queen, refrained from referring to her people as 'kids' as Papandreou had, but instead more obliquely cautioned that 'Democracy in modern Greece is a little over a hundred years old' and 'We have not yet digested its fruits and dangers'.…”