Why did the local leaders rebel? What prompted people, most of whom were nearing sixty, to leave the security of their privileged positions and risk their lives by rushing to battle? Did they have a unified identity, were they a cohesive – sociologically, anthropologically, and politically – body with common aspirations?

This book examines the path of certain lesser-known leaders from the Peloponnese in the approximately ten years leading up to the Revolution (of Perroukian, Sotiris Charalambis, and Athanasios Kanakaris-Roufos), who worked closely together and around whom the stories of many more well-known families, such as the Deligiannis, Lontoi, and Zaimis, unfold.

All other questions posed in this volume revolve around the stories of these individuals and concern the relationships between the leaders, their alliances, their relationships with the Turkish ayans and agas, the Ottoman officials, the Pasha of the Peloponnese, the Sublime Porte, their economic and political activities, their difficulties in the last years before the Revolution, and the intensity of their rivalries.