Page 285 - Beholding Liberty!

paying attention to the representativeness of the new administrative institutions.
In this transition to a new, among other things, administrative regularity, the
first reflective response of the Revolted was to resort to already tested figures of the local administration in the time of Turkish dominance, the notables. Initially, local organizations were
set up, succeeding the institution of communities, a principal organizational structure in the period of Turkish dominance, and adopting, even if imperfectly, principles of political self-determination and individual freedoms. These local centres of authority (e.g. in the Peloponnese: Achaean Directorate, Messinian Senate, Chancellery of the Argolid et al.) merged to form peripheral organizations
(e.g. Peloponnesian Senate, Organization of Western Continental Greece and Legal Order of Eastern Continental Greece- Areus Pagus). In the islands, which
in the pre-revolution period enjoyed
a regime of expanded communal self-administration, pre-existing forms of communal organization continued
to be in place. An exception was Samos, with the local regime that was founded there by Lykourgos Logothetis, and Crete (Constitution of the Island of Crete). Gradually, on the chequerboard of public affairs administration, newly arrived Greeks from abroad, like the Phanariots, are introduced, who attempted to bring along their own political baggage, claiming a share in power. Conflicts among the competitive social groups about the possession of power functioned as an agent of interaction, but also
of destabilization regarding the effort
for the creation of state infrastructure.
In any case, despite whichever objections, the road that the Greeks traversed within a space of nine years, from 1821
to 1830, when the independent Greek state is founded, remains impressive.
In the course of almost a decade
the foundations of a contemporary
urban state were laid, which was
meant to be the first one in the Balkan Peninsula that would detach its fortune from the Ottoman Empire.
IΙ.7
The formation of the State
Η ΑΦΥΠΝΙΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΜΟΥ Από την αρχαιολατρία στον Φιλελληνισμό 285