Venizelos: The Making of a Greek Statesman, 1864–1914 by Michael Llewellyn-Smith (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Venizelos: The Making of a Greek Statesman, 1864–1914 by Michael Llewellyn-Smith Spyridon G. Ploumidis (bio) Michael Llewellyn-Smith, Venizelos: The Making of a Greek Statesman, 1864– 1914. London: Hurst, 2021. Pp. xx + 516. 50 illustrations, 4 maps. Cloth £30.00. Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936) was the outstanding Greek statesman of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Crete and summoned to Athens in 1910 by a group of military officers, Venizelos dominated the Greek political scene and led his country through a turbulent period of reforms and wars that doubled Greece’s territory and population. During the years of the First World War, however, Venizelos’s political career was overshadowed by a showdown with King Constantine, a political polarization known as the National Schism, and self-exile to Paris. After 1915 Venizelos became, for all his charisma, a contested figure and anathema to his monarchist fellow countrymen. Well versed in the teachings of the founders of the French Third Republic (1870–1940) and a profound admirer of French radical leaders Léon Gambetta and Georges Clemenceau, Venizelos attempted to reform Greek politics along the lines of French radicalism and republicanism. His uncompromising patriotism and fervent nationalism bore spectacular results in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which brought an end to the Ottoman Empire and shaped his glorified memory. [End Page 304] Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith, a former British Ambassador in Athens, examines Venizelos’s early years in Cretan politics, his entry onto the center stage of Greek politics, and his gradual development into a renowned statesman. As Llewellyn-Smith notes in the introduction (2–3), his special interest in Venizelos dates back to the late 1960s, when he wrote his widely cited study of Greece’s military campaign and debacle in Asia Minor (1919–1922) (Llewellyn Smith 1998). Llewellyn-Smith’s voluminous biography of Venizelos is well researched, relying on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and complements existing accounts of the life of the Greek statesman (e.g., Stefanou 1977; Papadakis 2017). The author highlights and offers valuable insights into Venizelos’s charisma and elevated standing on Europe’s political scene. Venizelos was not by any means an ordinary man. As Llewellyn-Smith stresses (6), he pushed Greece’s boat “up against the currents of history” and “without him Greece would be different” and very much worse off. To make this point, the book thoroughly illuminates Venizelos’s political thought and mastery and traces his fateful friendship with David Lloyd George, which stimulated his ambitious foreign policies. A second volume will complete his story with the Great War, the postwar peace settlement, Greece’s Asia Minor campaign, and Venizelos’s later years in the office of prime minister. The book is divided into three parts and forty-three chapters. Part 1 provides the historical background to Venizelos’s early career in Cretan politics. Venizelos’s family history, studies at the University of Athens, apprenticeships in law and journalism, love life, and marriage are the backdrop to his engagement in the political affairs of his native island, which became autonomous in 1898 under the rule of Prince George of Greece. Nationalist politics and the Enosis (union of Crete with Greece) movement were the main vehicles through which Venizelos built his public image and political vocation. His involvement in the Akrotiri and Therissos uprisings of 1897 and 1905 turned him into a first-rank national hero and champion of all Greeks. In addition to his violent confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, Venizelos’s fame was also greatly bolstered by his relentless anti-monarchism. The “revolution” at Therissos, the author notes, was not only a blow to the prince’s “despotism” but a diplomatic achievement, since it bound Crete’s protecting powers to a process that promoted union with Greece (161). The ousting of Prince George from Crete in September 1906 was another triumph of Venizelist radical policies. As Llewellyn-Smith notes, “[Venizelos] was becoming a hero to young radicals, and correspondingly an object of fear to the royals and their followers” (163). His feud with a prominent member of the Greek royal family (the second son of King George I) foreshadowed the...