Lepanto or Little Algiers? Public history and the cultural politics of commemoration in modern Greece

What can the Battle of Lepanto (1571) reveal about the interconnected politics of nationalism and racism in contemporary Europe? Linking memory studies, critical heritage and the history of European-Ottoman wars, this article uses the 450th anniversary of the historic battle as an entry point for rethinking the politics of commemoration in modern Greece. It takes a multi-scalar perspective which charts memory-making across different spatial and temporal scales and examines the role of mnemonic practices as articulations of Greek nationalism blended with dependence on Greece’s Euro-Atlantic patrons. The article situates the 450th anniversary of Lepanto within a larger commemorative tradition and long-term development of civic rituals and representational conventions. In doing so, it highlights the dynamics of voicing and silencing that shapes public history in ways that sanitise the past and obfuscate complex historical processes. Specifically, the article shows how the erasure of the Black history of Nafpaktos (the Greek town associated with Lepanto) and portrayals of the Greeks as an anti-Islamic nation have reinforced eurocentric civilisational narratives, occluding histories of colonialism and empire that continue to cast their shadows today.