Divided from the Outset: Memory, Power, and the Greco–Turkish War of 1897 in Transnational Perspective
Divided from the Outset: Memory, Power, and the Greco–Turkish War of 1897 in Transnational Perspective

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the Greco–Turkish War of 1897 as a formative moment in the immediate production of a divided memory across the Greek-speaking world(s) situated within an empire, a nation-state, and in the diaspora. Rather than treating memory as constructed in retrospective, it argues that divergence emerged in real time because of unequal regimes of narration shaped both by politics and censorship. Drawing from comparative analysis of Greek-language newspapers published in Athens, Constantinople, Izmir, Limassol, Alexandria, and New York, the study demonstrates how the same event generated distinct narrative trajectories depending on the political regime under which it was articulated. In the Greek kingdom, metropolitan newspapers rapidly moralized the military debacle, transforming thus military failure into ethical affirmation and national endurance. In the Ottoman Empire, the Greek-language newspapers adopted a strategy of self-censorship, refraining from interpretations and framing the conflict through administrative normalcy in order to mitigate political risk. While diasporic newspapers, operating at greater distance from political pressure, confronted defeat openly and included it within broader structural and diplomatic contexts. By reconstructing wartime journalism as a site of immediate meaning-making, this article shows that divided memories were not the product of later mythmaking but were embedded in the political geography of narration itself. The war of 1897 thus offers a transnational lens into how shared events fracture into unequal historical meanings under asymmetrical regimes of power.

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