Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Greece became independent in the early 1830s, after a prolonged war of liberation/secession from the Ottoman empire. Like the contemporaneous revolts of the Carbonari in Italy and France (1820, 1821) and the victorious uprising of the anti-monarchist Spaniards (1820–3), it was a war fueled by the ideas of the French Revolution, which the diaspora Greek merchants of the secret society Philiki Etairia (Association of Friends) had enthusiastically espoused in order to bring down the Ottoman ancien régime. It was a war carried out by the “damned of the earth” (mostly landless peasants) in the poor and inconspicuous southwestern corner of the sultans' possessions that had fired the imagination of liberals and radicals all over post-Napoleonic, counterrevolutionary Europe. An eight-year confrontation with the Porte (1821–9), with many ups and downs and considerable infighting, ended in the defeat of the radical elements that had started the revolt. Territorial expansion was the compensatory mirage offered by the new rulers, King Otto and his Bavarian army, since Greece, as the first Balkan nation to achieve statehood, was allowed to exist only as a monarchy, and it ventured into the modern world under the watchful eyes of the three Protecting Powers – England, France, and Russia – who carefully monitored the first steps of this energetic newcomer into the china shop of the Eastern Question.This ... log in or subscribe to read full text