En cette annee de commemoration du bicentenaire de la revolution d'Independance grecque, cette etude de Pascal M. Kitromilides consacree a la reception et a l'influence de la Revolution francaise sur les nationalismes balkaniques se devait d'etre mise a l'honneur. Ce travail, dans l'edition grecque de 1990, a accompagne les bouleversements recents de l'histoire europeenne, depuis les commemorations de la Revolution francaise en 1989 jusqu'aux evolutions des annees suivantes en Europe de l'Est et du Sud-Est. Son edition revisee, proposee ici en francais, invite encore a relire ce passe recent en interrogeant les croisements entre idees revolutionnaires et construction des nationalismes, tant l'analyse de l'historien est aussi le reflet des interrogations de son epoque.
Reinterroger ainsi la question des Lumieres, c'est porter un regard different, eclaire par d'autres contextes, decentrer le point de vue en prenant les Balkans pour point de depart. Il en ressort une image renouvelee de la reception des idees revolutionnaires francaises en Europe et des critiques dont elle fait l'objet dans la pensee liberale, mais aussi une vision approfondie de la place singuliere de l'hellenisme dans ce nouveau paysage qui emerge entre la fin du XVIIIe et le milieu du XIXe siecle. Les idees, eminemment revolutionnaires, de nation et de liberation nationale trouvent ainsi dans les Balkans et en Europe du Sud-Est un echo bien particulier.
As we commemorate the Bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, this study by Pascal Kitromilides of the reception of the French Revolution and the influence it had on the birth of nationalism in the Balkans is timely. The 1990 Greek edition was very much in tune with the events of the day, from the 1989 commemorations to mark the Bicentennial of the French Revolution to the upheaval in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the late eighties and early nineties. This revised edition in Frenchw invites us to take another look at this period of our recent European past by examining the links between revolutionary ideas and the construction of nationalisms, as the work of any historian as a rule tends to converse with the issues of their own era.
This re-examination of the politics of the Enlightenment brings a new perspective, in the light of other contexts and shifts the focus by using the Balkans as a starting point. It reveals a new vision of how French revolutionary ideas were received in Europe and how that reception was criticised by liberal thinkers, as well as providing a more thorough perspective on the specific role Hellenism played in the new landscape that emerged between the end of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century. The eminently revolutionary ideas of nationhood and freedom had a particular resonance in the Balkans and in South-Eastern Europe.
