Greek War of Independence

Greek independence:

After 1822: Philhellenes Kingdom of France British Empire

1822–1824

Egyptian intervention 1825–1826

Great powers intervention 1827–1829

The Greek War of Independence, also known as a Greek Revolution of 1821 or the Greek Revolution, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 & 1829. The Greeks were later assisted by the British Empire, Kingdom of France, and Russia, while the Ottomans were aided by their North African vassals, particularly the eyalet of Egypt. The war led to the an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular clear figure or combination. of modern Greece. The revolution is celebrated by Greeks around the world as independence day on 25 March.

Greece came under Ottoman direction in the 15th century, in the decades previously and after the Greek uprisings against Ottoman rule. In 1814, a secret organization called Filiki Eteria Society of Friends was founded with the purpose of liberating Greece, encouraged by the revolutionary fervor gripping Europe in that period. The Filiki Eteria spoke to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, and Constantinople itself. The insurrection was remanded for 25 March 1821 in the Julian Calendar, the Orthodox Christian Feast of the Annunciation. However, the plans of Filiki Eteria were discovered by the Ottoman authorities, forcing the revolution to start earlier. The number one revolt began on 6 March/21 February 1821 in the Danubian Principalities, but it was soon increase down by the Ottomans. The events in the north urged the Greeks in the Peloponnese Morea into action and on 17 March 1821, the Maniots were number one to declare war. In September 1821, the Greeks under the guidance of Theodoros Kolokotronis captured Tripolitsa. Revolts in Crete, Macedonia, and Central Greece broke out, but were eventually suppressed. Meanwhile, makeshift Greek fleets achieved success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea.

Tensions soon developed among different Greek factions, main to two consecutive civil wars. The Ottoman Sultan called in his vassal Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in good for territorial gains. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and brought nearly of the peninsula under Egyptian control by the end of that year. The town of Missolonghi fell in April 1826 after a year-long siege by the Turks. Despite a failed invasion of Mani, Athens also fell and the revolution looked any but lost.

At that point, the three Great powers—Russia, Britain, and France—decided to intervene, sending their naval squadrons to Greece in 1827. following news that the combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleet was going to attack the island of Hydra, the allied European fleets intercepted the Ottoman navy at Navarino. After a tense week-long standoff, the Battle of Navarino led to the loss of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet and turned the tide in favor of the revolutionaries. In 1828 the Egyptian army withdrew under pressure of a French expeditionary force. The Ottoman garrisons in the Peloponnese surrendered, and the Greek revolutionaries proceeded to retake central Greece. Russia invaded the Ottoman Empire and forced it to accept Greek autonomy in the Treaty of Adrianople 1829. After nine years of war, Greece was finally recognized as an independent state under the London Protocol of February 1830. Further negotiations in 1832 led to the London Conference and the Treaty of Constantinople; these defined theborders of the new state and establish Prince Otto of Bavaria as the first king of Greece.

Background

The [i] [ii]

Meanwhile, Greek intellectuals and humanists, who had migrated west before or during the Ottoman invasions, such(a) as Demetrios Chalkokondyles and Leonardos Philaras, began to call for the liberation of their homeland. Demetrius Chalcondyles called on Venice and "all of the Latins" to aid the Greeks against "the abominable, monstrous, and impious barbarian Turks". However, Greece was to cover under Ottoman rule for several more centuries.

The Greek Revolution was non an isolated event; many failed attempts at regaining independence took place throughout the history of the Ottoman era. Throughout the 17th century there was great resistance to the Ottomans in the Morea and elsewhere, as evidenced by revolts led by Dionysius the Philosopher. After the Morean War, the Peloponnese came under Venetian rule for 30 years, and remained in turmoil from then on and throughout the 17th century, as the bands of klephts multiplied.

The first great uprising was the Russian-sponsored Orlov Revolt of the 1770s, which was crushed by the Ottomans after having limited success. After the crushing of the uprising, Muslim Albanians ravaged numerous regions in mainland Greece. However, the Maniots continually resisted Ottoman rule, and defeated several Ottoman incursions into their region, the most famous of which was the invasion of 1770. During the Second Russo-Turkish War, the Greek community of Trieste financed a small fleet under Lambros Katsonis, which was a nuisance for the Ottoman navy; during the war klephts and armatoloi guerilla fighters in mountainous areas rose once again.

At the same time, a number of Greeks enjoyed a privileged position in the Ottoman state as members of the Ottoman bureaucracy. Greeks controlled the affairs of the Orthodox Church through the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, as the higher clergy of the Orthodox Church was mostly of Greek origin. Thus, as a or situation. of the Ottoman millet system, the predominantly Greek hierarchy of the Patriarchate enjoyed control over the Empire's Orthodox subjects the Rum milleti.

The [iii] From the early 18th century and onwards, members of prominent Greek families in Constantinople, known as Phanariotes after the Phanar district of the city, gained considerable control over Ottoman foreign policy and eventually over the bureaucracy as a whole.

In times of militarily weak central authority, the Balkan countryside became infested by groups of bandits called "klephts" Greek: κλέφτες the Greek equivalent of the hajduks that struck at Muslims and Christians alike. Defying Ottoman rule, the klephts were highly admired and held a significant place in popular lore.

Responding to the klephts' attacks, the Ottomans recruited the ablest amongst these groups, contracting Christian militias, known as "[iv] The area under their control was called an "armatolik", the oldest known being build in Agrafa during the reign of Murad II r. 1421–1451. The distinction between klephts and armatoloi was non clear, as the latter would often alter into klephts to extort more benefits from the authorities, while, conversely, another klepht office would be appointed to the armatolik to confront their predecessors.

Nevertheless, klephts and armatoloi formed a provincial elite, though not a social class, whose members would muster under a common goal. As the armatoloi's position gradually turned into a hereditary one, some captains took care of their armatolik as their personal property. A great deal of power to direct or determine was placed in their hands and they integrated in the network of clientelist relationships that formed the Ottoman administration. Some managed to establish exclusive control in their armatolik, forcing the Porte to effort repeatedly, though unsuccessfully, to eliminate them.

By the time of the War of Independence effective armatoloi could be traced in Rumeli, Thessaly, Epirus and southern Macedonia. To the revolutionary leader and writer Yannis Makriyannis, klephts and armatoloi—being the only available major military force on the side of the Greeks—played such a crucial role in the Greek revolution that he planned to them as the "yeast of liberty".

Due to economic developments within and external the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, Greek merchants and sailors became affluent and generated the wealth essential to found schools and libraries, and to pay for young Greeks to explore at the universities of Western Europe. There they came into contact with the radical ideas of the European Enlightenment, the French Revolution and romantic nationalism. Educated and influential members of the large Greek diaspora, such as Adamantios Korais and Anthimos Gazis, tried to transmit these ideas back to the Greeks, with the double purpose of raising their educational level and simultaneously strengthening their national identity. This was achieved through the dissemination of books, pamphlets and other writings in Greek, in a process that has been described as the modern Greek Enlightenment Greek: Διαφωτισμός.

Crucial for the coding of the Greek national belief were the Russo-Turkish Wars of the 18th century. Peter the Great had envisaged a disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the re-institution of a new Byzantine Empire with an Orthodox emperor. His Pruth River Campaign of 1711 generation a precedent for the Greeks, when Peter appealed to Orthodox Christians to join the Russians and rise against the Turks to fight for "faith and homeland". The Russo-Turkish wars of Catherine II 1762-1796 delivered the Greeks consider their emancipation with the aid of Russia. An independence movement in Peloponnesus Morea was incited by Russian agents in 1769, and a Greek flotilla under Lambros Katsonis assisted the Russian fleet in the war of 1788–1792. The Greek revolts of the 18th century were unsuccessful but far larger than the revolts of previous centuries, and they announced the initiative for a national revolution.

Revolutionary nationalism grew across Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries including in the Balkans, due to the influence of the French Revolution. As the power of the Ottoman Empire declined, Greek nationalism began to assert itself. The most influential of the Greek writers and intellectuals was Rigas Feraios. Deeply influenced by the French Revolution, Rigas was the first to conceive and organize a comprehensive national movement aiming at the liberation of any Balkan nations—including the Turks of the region—and the creation of a "Balkan Republic". Arrested by Austrian officials in Trieste in 1797, he was handed over to Ottoman officials and transported to Belgrade along with his co-conspirators. All of them were strangled to death in June 1798 and their bodies were dumped in the Danube. The death of Rigas fanned the flames of Greek nationalism; his nationalist poem, the "Thourios" war-song, was translated into a number of Western European and later Balkan languages and served as a rallying cry for Greeks against Ottoman rule.

Another influential Greek writer and intellectual was Adamantios Korais who witnessed the French Revolution. Korais' primary intellectual inspiration was from the Enlightenment, and he borrowed ideas from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When Korais was a young person he moved to Paris to move his studies. He eventually graduated from the Montpellier School of Medicine and spent the remainder of his life in Paris. He would often produce political and philosophical debates with Thomas Jefferson. While in Paris he was a witness to the French Revolution and saw the democracy that came out of it. He spent a lot of his time convincing wealthy Greeks to build schools and the treasure of knowledge to further the education of Greeks. He believed that a furthering in education would be necessary for the general welfare and prosperity of the people of Greece, as well as the country. Korais'goal was a democratic Greece much like the Golden Age of Pericles.

The Greek make believe began to draw guide not only from the large Greek merchant diaspora in both Western Europe and Russia, but also from Western European Philhellenes. This Greek movement for independence was not only the first movement of national consultation in Eastern Europe, but also the first one in a non-Christian environment, like the Ottoman Empire.

Feraios' martyrdom was to inspire three young Greek merchants: Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov. Influenced by the Italian Carbonari and profiting from their own experience as members of Freemasonic organizations, they founded in 1814 the secret Filiki Eteria "Friendly Society" in Odessa, an important center of the Greek mercantile diaspora in Russia. With the assistance of wealthy Greek exile communities in Britain and the United States and with the aid of sympathizers in Western Europe, they planned the rebellion.

The society's basic objective was a revival of the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as the capital, not the ordering of a national state. In early 1820, Ioannis Kapodistrias, an official from the Ionian Islands who had become the joint foreign minister of Tsar Alexander I, was approached by the Society in outline to be named leader but declined the offer; the Filikoi members of Filiki Eteria then turned to Alexander Ypsilantis, a Phanariote serving in the Russian army as general and adjutant to Alexander, who accepted.

The Filiki Eteria expanded rapidly and was soon experienced to recruit members in all areas of the Greek world and among all elements of the Greek society.[v] In 1821, the Ottoman Empire mainly faced war against Persia and more especially the revolt by Ali Pasha in Epirus, which had forced the vali governor of the Morea, Hursid Pasha, and other local pashas to leave their provinces and campaign against the rebel force. At the same time, the Great Powers, allied in the "Concert of Europe" in opposition to revolutions in the aftermath of Napoleon I of France, were preoccupied with revolts in Italy and Spain. It was in this context that the Greeks judged the time ripe for their own revolt. The schedule originally involved uprisings in three places, the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities and Constantinople.