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Greek War of Independence

I. Introduction

Greek War of Independence, successful insurgency waged by the Greeks between 1821 and 1827 to win independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Although Serbia secured a qualified autonomy in 1815, it was the Greeks who were the first of the subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire to secure recognition as a sovereign power, a status which they achieved in 1832 after a fiercely fought and destructive war. The Greeks’ success marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire.

The reasons why the Greeks were the first people to break away from the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire are several. The fact that the Ottoman Empire was in manifest decline made such a revolt feasible. In a number of ways Greeks enjoyed a privileged position in the Ottoman state. They controlled the affairs of the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch, based in Constantinople (now ¤stanbul), 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. They also became aware of the reverence in which the civilization of ancient Greece was held. It was at this time that Greeks began to adopt the names of ancient heroes such as Pericles and Miltiades. Some Greek nationalists, among them Adamantios Korais placed their hopes for eventual liberation in education. Others, such as 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 Philiki Etairia, 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 conspirators, who falsely claimed to have the support of Russia, the sole Orthodox power, launched their uprising in early 1821. They sought to take advantage of Ottoman efforts at that time to crush the power of Ali Pasha, a Muslim Albanian warlord. A Greek force that invaded Moldavia under the leadership of Alexander Ypsilantis was soon crushed. But the insurgents in the Peloponnese met with greater success. After vicious fighting, with atrocities on both sides, the Turks were forced to withdraw to their coastal fortresses. On the Greek side the burden of fighting was largely borne by the klefts, bandits who had long been a source of trouble to the Ottoman authorities. Seafarers from the islands deployed fire ships to great effect against the Ottoman fleet. The Great Powers, fearful of any threat to the established order, gave no support to the insurgency. But philhellene volunteers (literally lovers of Greece and Greek culture, hence supporters of Greek independence), including the poet Lord Byron, inspired by an idealized vision of ancient Greece, made their way from Europe and the United States to enlist in the cause of Greek freedom.

Constitutional government in those areas under Greek control was established in 1823 but dissension soon arose among the insurgents. This broadly reflected antagonisms between a "civilian" or "aristocratic" party, consisting of Peloponnesian notables, wealthy ship-owners, and those few Phanariots who had sided with the insurgents, and a "military" or "democratic" party in which the kleftic leaders (the most important of whom was Theodore Kolokotronis) were predominant. This internecine conflict can be seen as a struggle between the traditional elites of Greek society and the modernizers. The traditional elites perceived the war more as a religious crusade of Christians against their Muslim overlords than as a struggle for democracy. Indeed, they were concerned to perpetuate their privileges by substituting their own oligarchical rule for that of the Turks. The modernizers were conscious nationalists who, as well as seeking to rid the Greek lands of the Turkish occupiers, sought to create a liberal constitutional state, which would involve curbing the traditional privileges of the Church and the creation of a European type army in place of the bands of irregulars favoured by the kleftic leaders.

Shifting political alignments and alliances among the insurgents degenerated into factionalism and, in 1824, into outright civil war. Necessarily this had serious implications for the conduct of the war. The military fortunes of the insurgents sharply deteriorated when the Ottoman Sultan Mahmut II was able to enlist the support of his nominal vassal Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, and of Muhammad Ali’s son Ibrahim Pasha, in return for the promise of lavish territorial compensation, including the island of Crete. In 1825 Ibrahim waged a fiercely destructive campaign in the Peloponnese.

The cause of the Greek insurgents was to be saved by the, albeit reluctant, intervention of the Great Powers. Their commercial interests in the eastern Mediterranean were being disrupted, while Britain and France were becoming increasingly alarmed that the continuing conflict would favor Russia’s long-term ambitions in the region. Britain and Russia in the Protocol of St Petersburg (1826) proposed joint mediation in the conflict, a move to which France became a party in the Treaty of London of 1827. Thus was initiated the policy characterized by George Canning, the British Foreign Secretary, as one of "peaceful interference". This was to culminate in the destruction in October 1827 of the Turkish-Egyptian fleet by a combined British, French, and Russian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, the last major battle of the age of sail.

The victory at Navarino ensured that some form of independence was to be accorded Greece, although it was some years before the frontiers of the new state were established and its independence recognized in 1832 by the three "Protecting Powers": Britain, France, and Russia. 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. Moreover, the other peoples of the Balkan peninsula were to follow the Greek example in seeking their freedom from Ottoman rule.

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