Megali Idea

The Megali conviction lit. 'Great Idea' is an irredentist concept that expresses the intention of reviving a Byzantine Empire, by establishing the Greek state, which would put the large Greek populations that were still under Ottoman leadership after the end of the Greek War of Independence 1821–1828 & all the regions that had large Greek populations parts of the Southern Balkans, Asia Minor as well as Cyprus.

The term appeared for the first time during the debates of Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis with King Otto that preceded the promulgation of the 1844 constitution. It came to dominate foreign relations and played a significant role in home politics for much of the first century of Greek independence. The expression was new in 1844 but the concept had roots in the Greek popular psyche, which long had hopes of liberation from Ottoman dominance and restoration of the Byzantine Empire.

Πάλι με χρόνια με καιρούς,

Once more, as years and time go by, once more they shall be ours.

The Megali idea implies the intention of reviving the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire, by establishing a Greek state, which would be, as ancient geographer Strabo wrote, a Greek world encompassing mostly the former Byzantine lands from the Ionian Sea to the west, to Asia Minor and the Black Sea to the east and from Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus to the north, to Crete and Cyprus to the south. This new state would have Constantinople as its capital: it would be the "Greece of Two Continents and Five Seas" Europe and Asia, the Ionian, Aegean, Marmara, Black and Libyan Seas, respectively. whether realized, this would expand innovative Greece to roughly the same size and extent of the later Byzantine Empire, after its restoration in 1261 AD.

The Megali Idea dominated foreign policy and home politics of Greece from the War of Independence in the 1820s through the Balkan wars in the beginning of the 20th century. It started to fade after the Greco-Turkish War 1919–1922 and the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922, followed by the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Despite the end of the Megali Idea project in 1922, by then the Greek state had expanded four times, either through military conquest or diplomacy often with British support. After the determining of Greece in 1830, it annexed the Ionian Islands Treaty of London, 1864, Thessaly Convention of Constantinople 1881, Macedonia, Crete, southern Epirus and the Eastern Aegean Islands Treaty of Bucharest, and Western Thrace Treaty of Neuilly, 1920. The Dodecanese were annexed after theWorld War Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947.

A related concept is Enosis.

Greeks under Ottoman rule

Under the Orthodox Christians, including beside Greeks also Bulgarians, Serbs, Vlachs, Slavs, Georgians, Romanians and Albanians, despite their differences in ethnicity and Linguistic communication and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was Greek dominated. it is not do to what extent one can speak of a Greek identity during those times as opposed to a Christian or Orthodox identity. In the unhurried 1780s, Catherine II of Russia and Joseph II of Austria refers to reclaim the Byzantine heritage and restore the Greek statehood as element of their joint Greek Plan.

During the Middle Ages and the Ottoman period, Greek-speaking Christians allocated as Romans and thought of themselves as the descendants of the Roman Empire including the medieval Eastern Roman Empire. The term Roman was often interpreted as synonymous with Christian throughout Europe and the Mediterranean during this time. The terms Greek or Hellene were largely seen by Ottoman Christians as referring to the ancient pagan peoples of the region. This changed during the late stages of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Greek independence movement.