History of modern Greece

[1] The Byzantine Empire had ruled most of the Greek-speaking world since late Antiquity, but experienced a decline as a result of Muslim Arab and Seljuk Turkish invasions and was fatally weakened by the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204.

As a result, most of Greece gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the conquest of the Duchy of Athens in 1458, and of the Despotate of the Morea in 1460.

[10] However, he underestimated the political and military strength of the capetanei (καπεταναίοι – captains) who had led the revolt against Ottoman Empire in 1821, and who had expected a leadership role in the post-revolution Government.

George Finlay's 1861 History of Greek Revolution records that by 1831 Kapodistrias's government had become hated, chiefly by the independent Maniots, but also by the Roumeliotes and the rich and influential merchant families of Hydra, Spetses and Psara.

With less than 200 men, Miaoulis was unable to make much of a fight; Fort Heidek on Bourtzi Island was overrun by the regulars and the brig Spetses (once Laskarina Bouboulina's Agamemnon) sunk by Ricord's force.

[14] This was a mortal offence to the Mavromichalis family, and on 9 October 1831 (27 September in the Julian Calendar) Kapodistrias was assassinated by Petros' brother Konstantis and son Georgios on the steps of the church of Saint Spyridon in Nafplio.

[14] Under the protocol signed at the London Conference of 1832 on 7 May 1832 between Bavaria and the protecting Powers, Greece was defined as an independent kingdom, free of Ottoman control, with the Arta-Volos line as its northern frontier.

During the early years of his reign, a group of Bavarian regents ruled in his name, and they made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them.

Otto was sincere in his desire to give Greece good government, but he suffered from two great handicaps: his Roman Catholic faith and his childless marriage to Queen Amalia.

Trikoupis favoured co-operation with Great Britain in foreign affairs, the creation of infrastructure and an indigenous industry, raising protective tariffs and progressive social legislation, while the more populist Deligiannis depended on the promotion of Greek nationalism and the Megali Idea.

Initially, the royal prerogative in choosing his prime minister remained and contributed to governmental instability, until the introduction of the dedilomeni principle of parliamentary confidence in 1875 by the reformist Charilaos Trikoupis.

[30] Corruption and Trikoupis' increased spending (to create necessary infrastructure such as the Corinth Canal) overtaxed the weak Greek economy,[31] forcing the declaration of public insolvency in 1893 and to accept the imposition of an International Financial Control authority to pay off the country's creditors.

When World War I broke out in 1914, the King and his prime minister Venizelos both preferred to maintain a neutral stance, in spite of Greece's treaty of alliance with Serbia, which had been attacked by Austria-Hungary as the first belligerent action of the conflict.

[46] But when the Allies asked for Greek help in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, offering Cyprus in exchange, their diverging views became apparent: Constantine had been educated in Germany, was married to Sophia of Prussia, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm, and was convinced of the Central Powers' victory.

In August 1916, after several incidents in which both sides in the war had encroached upon the still theoretically neutral Greek territory, Venizelist officers rose up in Allied-controlled Thessaloniki and Venizelos established a separate government there known as the result of a so-called Movement of National Defence.

Venizelos now led a superficially united Greece into the war on the Allied side, but underneath the surface, the division of Greek society into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, the so-called National Schism, became more entrenched.

But the royalist restoration had dire consequences: many veteran Venizelist officers were dismissed or left the army, while Italy and France found the return of the hated Constantine a useful pretext for switching their support to Kemal.

This catastrophe marked the end of the Megali Idea, and left Greece financially exhausted, demoralized, and having to house and feed a proportionately huge number of Greek refugees.

[52] The catastrophe deepened the political crisis, with the returning army rising up under Venizelist officers and forcing King Constantine to abdicate again, in September 1922, in favour of his firstborn son, George II.

Greece was diplomatically isolated and vulnerable, as the Corfu incident of 1923 showed, and the economic foundations of the state were in ruins after a decade of war and the sudden increase of the country's population by a quarter.

[55] In the meantime, Pangalos managed to embroil Greece in a short-lived war with Bulgaria precipitated by the Incident at Petrich and make unacceptable concessions in Thessaloniki and its hinterland to Yugoslavia in an effort to gain its support for his revanchist policies against Turkey.

Alongside domestic reforms, Venizelos restored Greece's frayed international relations, even initiating a Greco-Turkish reconciliation with a visit to Ankara and the signing of a Friendship Agreement in 1930.

Italian troops crossed the border on 28 October 1940, beginning the Greco-Italian War, but were stopped by a determined Greek defence that ultimately drove them back into Albania.

The three quisling prime ministers were Georgios Tsolakoglou, the general who had signed the armistice with the Wehrmacht, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, and Ioannis Rallis, who took office when the German defeat was inevitable and aimed primarily at combating the left-wing Resistance movement.

Part of this was due to the unpopularity of King George II in Greece itself, but despite efforts by Greek politicians, British support ensured his retention at the head of the Cairo government.

As the German defeat drew nearer, the various Greek political factions convened in Lebanon in May 1944 under British auspices and formed a government of national unity under George Papandreou, in which EAM was represented by six ministers.

[69] Communist successes in 1947–1948 enabled them to move freely over much of mainland Greece, but with extensive reorganization, the deportation of rural populations and American material support, the National Army was slowly able to regain control over most of the countryside.

The policy of αντιπαροχή (antiparochi, "property-swap"), a Greek invention which entailed the concession of construction land to developers in return for a share in the resulting multi-storey apartment buildings, favoured the creation of a class of small-medium contractors on the one hand and settled the housing system and property status on the other.

[78] Even the armed forces, the regime's foundation, were not immune: In May 1973, a planned coup by the Hellenic Navy was narrowly suppressed, but led to the mutiny of the Velos, whose officers sought political asylum in Italy.

[97] In October 2011, Eurozone leaders also agreed on a proposal to write off 50% of Greek debt owed to private creditors, increasing the EFSF to about €1 trillion and requiring European banks to achieve 9% capitalisation to reduce the risk of contagion to other countries.