Treaty of Constantinople (1800)
Initially popular, the French quickly alienated the Greeks with their anti-clerical policies, and especially the islands' native nobility, with their republican ideals.
In practice, the islands remained under Russian rather than Ottoman influence, and domestic political developments resulted in the adoption of a new constitution as early as 1801.
The Ionian Islands (Corfu, Paxoi, Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Ithaca, and Kythira) along with a handful of exclaves on the Epirote mainland, namely the coastal towns of Parga, Preveza, Vonitsa, and Butrinto, had been Venetian possessions for centuries, thereby becoming the only part of the Greek world to escape conquest by the Ottoman Empire.
Very soon, the Russian authorities invited assemblies of the nobles to undertake the governance of the Ionian Islands, thereby restoring the previous status quo.
[8] Orio's constitution envisaged a thoroughly aristocratic regime, with each island headed by a Great Council composed of the nobles and the upper bourgeoisie.
[8] On 21 June 1799, the Senate decided to send a twelve-member delegation to Constantinople and Saint Petersburg to express its gratitude to the Sultan and Tsar, but also press for the restoration of the Islands' maritime and land frontier with the withdrawal of Ali Pasha from Butrinto, Preveza, and Vonitsa, and their recognition as an independent state.
Once in Constantinople, however, the delegation quickly realized that the Porte was not interested in recognizing the Islands' independence, but rather in creating a vassal state under Ottoman suzerainty.
[9] The negotiations and mutual rivalries between Russia, the Porte, and the Islanders, led to the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople on 21 March 1800, which created the first autonomous Greek state since the Fall of the Byzantine Empire.
[10] This was a victory for the Sultan, and a disappointment for the Islanders, who had been promised the right to choose their own form of governance in the proclamations of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory V, and the head of the Russian fleet, Admiral Fyodor Ushakov.
[11] In keeping with the reactionary ideas embodied in the constitution was also the new flag, sporting the Venetian Lion of Saint Mark holding a bundle of seven arrows, symbolizing the islands, and a Bible; more radical suggestions, such as the rising phoenix, were rejected.
[11] On 1 November 1800, the delegates were received by the Grand Vizier, who presented them with the new constitution, a diploma recognizing the autonomy of the Republic and regulated its relations to the Porte, and the new flag.
