The leading British historian here reconstructs one of the most dense and significant decades of modern Greek and European history: the time when the people of the villages, mountains, and plains in the Greek regions of the Ottoman Empire rose up in 1821 against the powerful forces of the sultan.

Against all odds, and despite the horrific reprisals they suffered as well as the relentless civil conflicts, they kept the revolution alive until the moment when the military intervention of the Great Powers finally allowed for the establishment of a new national state.

The book offers a thrilling panorama of this history, immersing us in the minds, hearts, and actions of the protagonists, as well as in the revealing experiences of the many. We thus see with new eyes the revolutionary plans of the conspirators of the Filiki Eteria, the ingenious guerrilla warfare of the local chieftains, and the feats of the fireboats, the contributions, dilemmas, and hesitations of armed men and thieves, dignitaries and ship captains, the constitutional visions and diplomatic maneuvers of the new political order, the practical support of Philhellenes and volunteers, the anxiety of the besieged cities, and the tragedy of defenseless women and children.

It thus becomes clear how pivotal the revolution of 1821 was in modern Greek history, determining the political formation of modern Greece; how central it was to the shaping of international trends such as romanticism, nationalism, or republicanism; and how it contributed to the emergence of a new kind of political confrontation between the iron mandates of the Holy Alliance, the unprecedented dynamics of international solidarity, and the faith, dreams, and actions of a people who struggled, often at a terrible cost, to "become the Rum."