Ion Dragoumis and “Machiavelli”: Armed struggle, Propaganda, and Hellenization in Macedonia and Thrace (1903–1908)

Abstract

Dragoumis was baptized, politically and ideologically, in the waters of one of the most violent nationalist conflicts in the modern history of the Balkans. During the Macedonian struggle, he adopted an aggressive and uncompromising nationalism with a dominant, in principle, anti-democratic and anti-Western character. Armed struggle, forcible or peaceful Hellenization, boycotting, propaganda, total mobilization of the state machine and “civil society,” conquest, and the complete sanctioning of power politics were the main features that formed Dragoumis’s political ideas and suggestions with regard to the accomplishment of Greek claims in Macedonia and Thrace. The legitimizing criteria and arguments he suggested varied according to the audience and the particular moment of their formulation. Overall, they reflected the inconsistent, irrational, and anachronistic character of Greek nationalism, which, owing to the unfavorable ethnographic, political, and diplomatic position of the Greek side, could only resort to an invented past, to the “superiority” of the Greek culture, and, finally, to social Darwinism, in order to justify its claims.