Greek War of Independence

Greek War of Independence, rebellion of the people of Greece between 1821 and 1829 against the Ottoman Empire, leading to the formation of an independent Greek state.

A previous Greek uprising occurred in 1770, caused chiefly by a desire for land among Greek peasants (Greeks were not allowed to acquire land from Ottoman landowners) and encouraged by Russia, which shared with the Greeks an adherence to the Orthodox church. In the uprising of 1770, Russia landed a small military force on the Pelopónnisos, but the rebels needed more support, and the Ottomans employed Albanians to crush them. During the intervening 50 years, the French and American revolutions had created an atmosphere more sympathetic to the causes of oppressed peoples. In addition, the weakness of the Ottomans had been demonstrated by a successful Serbian revolt in 1804 and by their difficulty in suppressing Ali Pasha, an Albanian provincial governor who had established a semi-independent province with his capital at Ioánnina (also spelled Yannina or Janina), then in southern Albania. Ali Pasha’s open rebellion against the sultan in 1820 gave the Greeks their own opportunity to revolt.

In March 1821 Prince Alexandros Ypsilantis, a Greek who served as foreign minister to the Russian emperor, led an uprising of Greeks in Moldavia. Archbishop Germanos of Pátrai initiated another Greek uprising at the monastery of Aghia Lavra in the Pelopónnisos later that month. By June the Ottomans had crushed Ypsilantis’s rebellion, but Germanos’s was successful. By the following summer, the Greeks had captured Mesolóngion (Missolonghi), Athens, and Thebes. The Ottomans responded by hanging Patriarch Gregorios, the Greek religious leader in Constantinople, and crushing the rebels in Thessaly (Thessalia), Macedonia, and Mount Athos. The Greeks had the advantage of superiority at sea, however, and the rebellion survived. Its most serious difficulties were internal conflicts, and by 1822 there were two Greek governments, one on the mainland and the other on the island of Ídhra. By 1824 the rebels were fighting each other as well as the Ottomans.

In February 1825 all was transformed by the intervention on the Ottoman side of Muhammad Ali, powerful pasha of Egypt, whose son, Ibrahim Pasha, arrived in the Pelopónnisos with a large army. For two years the Egyptian army (largely Sudanese) burned and plundered, threatening the Greek rebels with total defeat. Then on July 6, 1827, British foreign minister George Canning, angered—among other things—by stories that Greek prisoners were being sold as slaves in Cairo, persuaded Russia and France to join Britain in imposing on the various parties the Treaty of London. This proposed the establishment of Greece as an autonomous state under Ottoman sovereignty, protected by a naval blockade that the three allies would mount. The treaty, however, triggered a naval confrontation between the powers on October 20, 1827, resulting in the complete destruction of the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets in the Battle of Navarino.

The French then sent troops to Greece, the Russians marched an army to Adrianople (now Edirne, Turkey), and the British fleet sailed to Alexandria, Egypt. However, hostilities did not end until Russia and the Ottomans signed the Treaty of Adrianople on September 14, 1829, and the Ottomans agreed to give up control of Greece. Britain, France, and Russia proclaimed Greece’s independence in the London Protocol, signed in February 1830. In an 1832 treaty, the powers formalized their protection of Greece and installed a Bavarian prince as king, crowning him Otto I.

The country defined by this treaty included only southern mainland Greece and the Pelopónnisos, excluding vast areas that are now part of Greece, but its creation was of great importance. The Greek War of Independence represented not only the most serious blow that had been inflicted on the Ottoman Empire, but was the first in a succession of nationalist risings in Europe that, during the next hundred years, would lead to the demolition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Italy, Germany, and an independent Ireland.