Greece

THE MODERN HISTORY of Greece can be said to have begun with the revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Turks had ruled what is now called Greece since 1453, when their Sultan Mohammed II conquered Constantinople, now called Istanbul. The centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the heritage of which continues today in the friction between Muslim and Christian in Kosovo and Bosnia, had been harsh. Families had been compelled to convert from their native Greek Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism (especially among the Croats) to Islam. For those who remained Christian, the Ottomans imposed the hated devshirme system. Young Christian boys would be taken from their homes forcibly to join the elite Janissary (yeni cheri) army corps of the sultans, being raised as Muslims. Other less fortunate Christian youths would be castrated to serve as palace eunuchs. All Christians were subjected to a heavy tax as well to support the Ottoman State. According to Ira M. Lapidus in A History of Islamic Societies, this was called the jizya.

The revolution of 1821 had its origins in the Philhellene movement, or “the friends of Greece,” which began in the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. A great supporter was the British port George Gordon, Lord Byron, who would die in Greece while fighting for Greek independence in April 1824. The decisive battle of the Greek war for independence was the battle at Navarino Bay, on October 20, 1827. On that day a largely British fleet under Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington engaged the Turkish fleet, which was aided by ships sent by the ruler of Egypt, Mohammed Ali. As Andrew Lambert wrote, the issue of the battle was not long in doubt. “The Muslim fleets were more numerous, they had only four battleships and some frigates to face an allied fleet with ten battleships.”

According to the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C., “In 1828, a small, independent Greek state was formed with 800,000 inhabitants. It was a penniless state of extremely size, consisting of the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the Cyclades.” A more concrete foundation was laid at the Treaty of London in 1832 when Otho, the son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, instituted a rightist hereditary monarchy for the Hellenes, as the Greeks called themselves. Otho, however, went against the spirit of conservative liberalism of the times and refused to abide by the constitution of 1844 that was forced upon him. During his autocratic rule, Great Britain intervened again in Greek affairs.

In 1864, a new constitution was promulgated for Greece, while a royal scion of Denmark became the new king as George I. A veteran officer of the Danish Navy, George had been called to rule by a Greek National Assembly. He would reign until his tragic assassination in 1913. During this period, Greece was affected by the growing pan-Slav movement, in which Tzarist Russia, seeing itself as heir to the Byzantine Empire crushed by the Muslims in 1453 and as protector of all Greek Orthodox peoples and Slavs in the Balkans. While this was directed against the Turks, it inevitably led to clashes with the British as well. In fact, in the Crimean War (1854–56), the British had joined the Turks in their battle against Russia's Nicholas I.

...