Greek War of Independence
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The Greek War of Independence (1821–1831), also known as the Greek Revolution, was a successful war waged by the Greeks and supporting nations to win independence for Greece from the Ottoman Empire. Independence was finally granted by the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832 when Greece (Hellas) was recognized as a free country. The Greeks were the first of the subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire to secure recognition as a sovereign power. Greeks celebrate their Independence day annually on March 25.
Background
The Ottoman Empire had ruled all of Greece, with the exception of the Ionian islands since its conquest of the Byzantine Empire over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries (see: History of Ottoman Greece). But in the 18th and 19th century, as revolutionary nationalism grew across Europe (due, in part, to the influence of the French Revolution), and the power of the Ottoman Empire declined, Greek nationalism began to assert itself and drew support from Western European "philhellenes".
One of the early writers who helped shape opinion among the Greek population in and out of the Ottoman Empire was Rigas Feraios (Ρήγας Φεραίος). Born in Thessaly and educated in Constantinople, Feraios published a Greek-language newspaper Ephimeris in Vienna in the 1790s. He was deeply influenced by the French Revolution and he published revolutionary tracts and proposed republican constitutions for Greek and pan-Balkan nations. He was arrested by Austrian officials in Trieste in 1797 when he was betrayed by a Greek merchant in that city. He was handed over to Ottoman officials and was transported to Belgrade with his co-conspirators. They were all strangled to death and their bodies dumped in the Danube River in June, 1798. Instead of diminishing support for Feraios' ideas, his death fanned the flames of Greek independence.
Beginning of the Revolution
-->In 1814, Greek nationalists formed a secret organization called the Friendly Society (Filiki Eteria) in Odessa. With the support of wealthy Greek exile communities in Britain and the United States, the aid of sympathizers in Western Europe and covert assistance from Russia, they planned a rebellion. John Capodistria, an official from the Ionian Islands who had become the Russian Foreign Minister, was secured as the leader of the planned revolt. The start of the uprising can be set in 1821 on March 6 when Alexander Ypsilanti accompanied by several other Greek officers of the Russian army crossed the river Prut in Romania, or on March 23 when rebels took control of Kalamata in Peloponnese. Simultaneous risings were planned across Greece, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus, or the declaration on March 25 (see Germanos of Patras).
The Revolution initially broke in the Peloponnese and Central Greece and quickly spread across the whole Aegean to Crete and Cyprus. In January 1822 the 1st National Assembly at Epidauros declared the independence of the Greek Nation and consolidated their position with remarkable victories on land and sea until 1823 when attempts by the revolutionaries to assert control beyond the Peloponnese ended in a stalemate.
The Ottomans retaliated violently in other parts of Greece and uprisings were suppressed by the Ottoman government, allegedly massacring the Greek population of Chios and other towns. These incidents, however, drew sympathy for the Greek cause in western Europe—although the British and French governments suspected that the uprising was a Russian plot to seize Greece and possibly Constantinople from the Ottomans. The Greeks were unable to establish a coherent government in the areas they controlled, and soon fell to fighting among themselves. Inconclusive fighting between Greeks and Ottomans continued until 1825, when the Sultan asked for help from his most powerful vassal, Egypt.
Egypt was then ruled by the Albanian Mehmet Ali Pasha who was eager to test his newly modernized armed forces. The Ottoman Sultan also promised Ali concessions in Syria if Egypt participated. The Egyptian force, under the command of Ali's son Ibrahim, was successful and quickly gained dominance of the seas and Aegean islands through the navy. Ibrahim was also successful in the Peloponnese, where he managed to recapture Tripolis, the administrative center of the area.
In Europe, the Greek revolt aroused widespread sympathy. Greece was viewed as the cradle of western civilization, and it was especially lauded by the spirit of romanticism that was current at the time. The sight of a Christian nation attempting to cast off the rule of a Muslim Empire also appealed to the western European public.
One of those who heard the call was the poet Lord Byron who spent time in Albania and Greece, organising funds and supplies, but died from fever at Messolonghi in 1824. Byron's death did even more to augment European sympathy for the Greek cause. This eventually led the western powers to intervene directly.
Foreign intervention
On 20 October 1827 the British, Russian and French fleets, on the initiative of local commanders but with the tacit approval of their governments, attacked and destroyed the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino (Πύλος). This was the decisive moment in the war of independence, although the British Admiral Edward Codrington nearly ruined his career, since he wasn't ordered to achieve such a victory or destroy completely the Turko/Egyptian fleet. In October 1828, the Greeks regrouped and formed a new government under Ioannis Kapodistrias (Καποδíστριας). They then advanced to seize as much territory as possible, including Athens and Thebes, before the western powers impose a ceasefire. The Greeks seized the last Turkish strongholds in the Peloponnese with the help of the French general, Nicolas Joseph Maison.
Diplomatic endgame
Capodistrias was assassinated in 1831 in Nafplion. As a state of confusion continued in the Greek peninsula, the Great Powers sought a formal end of the war and a recognized government in Greece. The Greek throne was initially offered to Léopold I of Belgium, but he refused, as he was not at all satisfied with the Aspropotamos-Zitouni borderline, which replaced the more favourable Arta-Volos line considered by the Great Powers earlier.
The withdrawal of Léopold as a candidate for the throne of Greece, and the July Revolution in France, delayed the final settlement of the frontiers of the new kingdom until a new government was formed in the United Kingdom. Lord Palmerston, who took over as British Foreign Secretary, agreed to the Arta-Volos borderline. However, the secret note on Crete, which the Bavarian plenipotentiary communicated to the Courts of the United Kingdom, France and Russia, bore no fruit.
In May 1832, Palmerston convened the London Conference of 1832. The three Great Powers (Great Britain, France and Russia) offered the throne to the Bavarian Prince, Otto Wittelsbach, without regard to Greek views on this. The line of succession was also established which would pass the crown to the heirs of Otto, or his younger brothers in succession, should he have no heirs. In no case would the crowns of Greece and Bavaria be joined. As co-guarantors of the monarchy, the Great Powers also empowered their Ambassadors in the Ottoman capital to secure the end of the war. Under the protocol signed on May 71832 between Bavaria and the protecting Powers, and basically dealing with the way in which the Regency was to be managed until Otto reached his majority (while also concluding the second Greek loan, for a sum of £2,400,000 sterling), Greece was defined as an independent kingdom, with the Arta-Volos line as its northern frontier. The Ottoman Empire was indemnified in the sum of 40,000,000 piastres for the loss of the territory.
On July 21,1832 British Ambassador Sir Stratford Canning and the other represenatives concluded the Treaty of Constantinople, which set the boundaries of the new Greek Kingdom at a line running from Arta (Αρτα) to Volos (Βολος). The borders of the Kingdom were reiterated in the London Protocol of August 301832, signed by the Great Powers, which ratified the terms of the Constantinople Arrangement. The new state, however, contained fewer than one third of the Greek inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire and for much of the next century the Greek state was to seek the liberation of the “unredeemed” Greeks of the Ottoman Empire.
The movement for independence
The reasons why the Greeks were the first to break away from the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire and secure recognition as a sovereign power are several. The fact that the Ottoman Empire was in manifest decline made such a revolt feasible. Some Greeks enjoyed a privileged position in the Ottoman state, and Ottoman Turks had always afforded a specific class of Greeks a degree of power. Since the Hellenisation of the Byzantine Empire they had controlled the affairs of the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Constantinople, and the higher clergy were always Greek. From the 18th century onwards Phanariot Greek notables (Turkish-appointed Greek administrators from the Phanar district of Constantinople) played an influential role in the governance of the Ottoman Empire.
A strong maritime tradition in the islands of the Aegean together with the emergence in the 18th century of an influential merchant class generated the wealth necessary to found schools and libraries and to pay for young Greeks to study in the universities of Western Europe. Here they came into contact with the radical ideas of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Rigas Velestinlis (Pheraios), aimed to overthrow Ottoman rule in an armed uprising, although Rigas was killed by the Turks before he could put his ideas into practice. In 1814 three young Greeks, much influenced by the martyrdom of Rigas, founded the Filiki Eteria, the secret "Friendly Society" which laid the organizational groundwork for the revolt. The society was founded in Odessa, an important centre of the Greek mercantile diaspora. The Greeks' success marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire, Moreover, the other peoples of the Balkan peninsula were to follow the Greek example in seeking their freedom from Ottoman rule.
Gallery of romantic paintings depicting the war
See also
- John Capodistria
- Theodoros Kolokotronis
- Georgios Karaiskakis
- Petros Mavromichalis
- Prince Alexander Mavrocordato
- Athanasios Diakos
- Markos Botsaris
- Demetrius Ypsilanti
- Alexander Ypsilanti
- Nikitaras
- Odysseas Androutsos
External links
- [A History of the Greek Revolution]
- [Greek Revolution]
- [Treaty of Constantinople]
- [Protocol of London, 1832]
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