Michael Tositsas

   Michael Tositsas                                                         ΜΙΧΑΗΛ ΤΟΣΙΤΣΑΣ                                                                                       

     Born in Metsovo in 1789                                      Died in Athens in 1856 

 Section Two, Number T

Michael Tositsas lived in Athens for only the last two years of his life. Still, he is one of the first and greatest of modern Greece’s benefactors. In Egypt he managed to keep the Greek community safe during Greece’s long struggle for independence and helped them to prosper after that war ended, all the  while becoming one of the richest Greeks in Ottoman Egypt, -  in fact, one of the richest Greeks of his era.

 

His Life

It is quite a story, and a long one. It all began in Metsovo in Epirus where his father was a successful fur merchant with interests in many parts of the Ottoman world. (1) His family were of Vlach origin. Michael lived in Metsovo until the age of 10, and was then schooled in Thessaloniki before joining his father’s business back in Metsovo. He had three younger brothers and a sister. (Having a large family was always a help in Greek mercantile families.) With business booming, he sent his brother Theodoros to Alexandria in Egypt to open a branch of the business there and, at the same time, opened branches in Malta and Livorno in Italy.

The All Important Egyptian Connection

Theodoros was well received by Egypt’s leader Mehmet Ali whom he had known in Kavala where Mehmet’s father had been a tobacco merchant.  Mehmet Ali, of Albanian descent, had taken advantage of the vacuum caused by Napoleon’s ouster from Egypt to take control. (2) The Porte was unhappy about it but not powerful enough at the time to stop him either. 

 Mehmet in 1840

Mehmet Ali was something of a reformer (at least by the standards of the day) and had managed to drag a moribund Egypt into the modern era while lining his own pockets at the same time. He wanted a modern army and, to finance it, appropriated all of Egypt’s lands for the state. He could, therefore, not only collect taxes, but was able to offer riches to those whom he trusted to manage his holdings.

And Mehmet trusted the Tositsas clan. 

Michael joined his brother in Alexandra and, in a short time, the Tositsas family had acquired lands to cultivate cotton, became managers of Ali’s vast properties and Michael, himself, would become director of Egypt’s first national bank.  The Tositsas brothers not only grew the cotton, a relatively new crop for Egypt at the time, but improved its quality and started the production of cooking oil from cotton seeds.

 Given any business opportunity, they proved to have the Midas touch.

The Greek War of Independence

The Tositsas’ successes happened at the same time the Greeks in the Peloponnese and elsewhere were involved in the prolonged and bloody War of Independence.  Mehmet’s own son, Ibrahim Pasha, following his father’s orders, would terrorize the Peloponnese before being defeated after the battle of  Navarino in 1827.

So, what did the Greek freedom fighters on the fields of battle think of Michael Tositsas?

 

According to one source (3), the Filiki Etairia , especially Athanasios Tsakalov,  one of its founders, considered Michael Tositsas no better than  a collaborator. A certain  Antonios Pelopidas was sent to Alexandria with orders to murder him.

 Apparently Michael Tositsas received him politely and somehow convinced him that he did, in fact, have the interests of Greece and the interests of the Greek community in Egypt at heart and that Ali was, in essence, an enemy of the Porte and therefore a friend to Greeks. He pointed out that Ali had already shown special favour to the Greek community in Egypt and would do so again after the war was over. A convinced Pelopidas then showed him knife that was meant to kill him, a souvenir that Tositisas is said to have kept for the rest of his life.

   

The Greek community in Alexandria did thrive after the war. Tositsas managed to ransom back those Greeks who had been captured by Ibrahim and sold as slaves. At the same time, he sent promising Greek students to study in Europe, and made sure that the houses of the Greek community were not threatened.

 History has vindicated Michael’s position. He became the first General consul of the Greek state in Alexandria, and is today regarded as the undisputed father of Hellenism in Egypt.

  Mehmet Ali also came through. He released all Greek captives after the war and, by 1836,  ships flying the Greek flag were entrusted with all of his goods. Michael Tositsas continued to proper as well. The impressive Tositsas mansion in the center of Alexandria (torn down in 1930) was the center of Greek life. Tositsas, for his part, never stopped wearing a Fez …

and apparently was wont to have  two Albanian bodyguards dressed in lavish costumes in his outer office –just in case, one assumes.

He donated a great deal of money to the Greek community in Alexandria even buying the land for a Greek cemetery there. His largesse went also to Thessaloniki and his home town of Metsovo(4).

 Athens benefited greatly from his generosity as well: the University of Athens, the Polytechnic, hospitals, the Arsakeio (Αρσάκειο) a school for girls, orphanages, and  even avenues such as Stadiou, Aeolou, and Ermou. He would became one of Greece’s celebrated National Benefactors.

Tositsas on a stamp with the Athens Polytechnic in the background.

When he died in Athens in 1856, his funeral was attended by the Archbishop of Greece, the entire Greek parliament, foreign ambassadors, and thousands of ordinary Athenians. 

His grave monument is one of the biggest in Greece and has a place of honour  beside the Agios Lazarus Church.

 It is interesting that this monument shows him more in the stance of an ancient Greek philosopher than as a 19^th century merchant with a fez.

The monument harkens back to ancient Greece, in shape and in its details. Like many buried of those buried in the Athens first cemetery, symbols of ancient glory have been chosen over contemporary symbols or even those of Christian piety.

 An Egyptian touch

His tomb is in Section 2, Number7

Footnotes

(1)Metsova had been a rich town for generations, Sultan Murat II had first given privileges to Metsovites to guard the Katara Pass in 1430 and they prospered for generations. It wasn’t until Ali Pasha, the Governor of Epirus cut off many of their privileges that Metsovites like the Tositsas clan left for greener pastures in Egypt and Europe.

(2) Ali’s dynasty would rule in Egypt until 1952. 

 (3)See: From: http://www.reporter.gr/Apopseis/Istories/261909-Tositsas-Michahl-%C2%ABO-Eyergeths-toy-Ellhnismoy%C2%BB

(4)The Michael Tositsas family mansion in Metsovo is now a museum, and one of the finest examples of Ottoman housing still in existence in Europe, all thanks to Baron Michael Tositsas (1885-1950) the last of the line. He was the grandson of Michael’s brother Constantine. Born in Paris, extremely rich, and titled because of his grandfather’s sojourn in Livorno, he neither became a Greek citizen or ever visited. At the behest of Evangelos Averoff, a scion of George Averoff (see text), he left his money to Metsovo, providing that the  Averoff family would add his name to theirs, thus giving the Tositsas name a new lease on life.