Ottoman Greece — From Conquest to Independence
While ancient Greek history is well known to most people, the later history of Greece tends to be ignored. This is especially true for the Ottoman period which lasted almost four centuries. In the fifteenth century, much of Greece had fallen at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Their capture of Constantinople in 1453 put an end to more than 1100 years of Eastern Roman (Byzantine) rule in the region and soon afterwards they subjugated the remaining weak Greek and Latin states in mainland Greece.
During Ottoman times, Greeks identified primarily as Orthodox Christians. Non-Muslims in the Ottomans Empire were assigned to groups (millets). The Greeks were part of the Millet-i-Rum, the Roman millet. Leader of the Orthodox Christians was the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch was responsible for the collection of taxes (by the clergy) from Orthodox Christians and for the legal proceedings of the Orthodox Christians in the Empire. The Patriarch was not just a religious leader but also a political one. Hence he was considered to be the Ethnarch (leader of the nation).
On a local level, Greeks were ruled by the Greek notables (the kodjabashis) who collected taxes, settled disputes and generally run things on the local level. Some were elected but others, especially in the Peloponnese, were hereditary and essentially became an oligarchy of sorts. In order to be protected from Turkish officials and other threats and due to the complexity of the laws, common Greeks would seek the protection of those notables. This created interpesonal bonds of patronage.
Despite the religious freedom Greeks generally enjoyed and the stability and peace that the Ottoman unification of the Balkans initially brought, Greeks did face discrimination. The word of a Christian was not accepted in court against that of Muslim nor could a Christian marry a Muslim. Christians were also not allowed to carry arms and instead of serving in the military they paid a special tax (haradj — this was actually an unintended privilege Greeks had). Certain Greek regions though, such as the mastic-growing prosperous island of Chios, enjoyed privileges.
There were revolts against Ottoman rule in Ottoman Greece. They were usually caused by a combination of patriotism, religious feelings and influence by foreign powers who wanted to cause trouble in Ottoman lands. After the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, there was a short-lived revolt on the mainland and islands of the Aegean but it was crushed. In Epirus, Spanish conspirators and Greek nobles had since the 1570s been conspiring a revolt in the northern region. In 1596, archbishop Athanasius I of Ohrid led the Himara Revolt in the region and attacked the Ottomans with the help of Spaniards and Albanians but the revolt was a failure despite initial success.
In 1600 there was a revolt in Thessaly by the bishop of Larissa Dionysus II Skylosophos. In 1611 a second revolt was launched by Dionysus Skylosophos, this time in Epirus, but it too was short-lived. Those revolts generally failed due to being unorganized, lacking serious leadership and unable to face the Ottoman military.
By far the most dangerous revolt was that of Orlov, named that after the Russian admiral Alexey Orlov. The Russians, wanting to weaken the Ottomans, planned to establish a pro-Russian independent Greek state. As such Russians had been since the 1760s in talks with local Greek political and military leaders in Mani, a southern region of the Peloponnese. This led to a revolt in 1770 in the Peloponnese; the Greeks initially had success and there was a Greek revolt in Crete too. However Russian assistance was insufficient and certainly not comparable to what was promised. The numerically superior Ottomans were able to suppress the revolt by 1771.
Much greater problem were the klefts, bandits who roamed the countryside and stole from Muslims and Christians alike. They were romanticized in public consciousness as freedom-fighters against Ottoman oppression and were attributed with almost superhuman powers in folk songs. In order to face them, the Ottoman government would make deals with some of them and hire them as armatoloi, whose job was to ensure order in an administrative district called armatoliki. The two categories though were not mutually exclusive; a kleft could become an armatolos and an armatolos could go back to being a kleft.
Modern Greek nationalism can be traced to the 18th century. This was primary a result of the Greek Enlightenment. This movement was given impetus by the advances made by Greek merchants, who were predominant in Ottoman trade. Greek merchants financed the studies of young Greeks in Western universities, especially in Italy and Germany. They also endowed schools and libraries and subsidized the publication of large body of secular literature. In the twenty years before 1821, more than 1,300 titles were published.
Young Greeks who studied such literature and came in contact with the West came to know of the hold that ancient Greece and its culture had over the educated Europeans. Thus, this new intelligentsia developed an awareness that they were the heirs of a civilization that was universally revered. In the first decade of the 19th century, some Greeks came to baptize their children with ancient Greek names while in literary circles an Atticized form of Greek, Katharevousa (purified), was created. It was meant to be purged of foreign loan words and be as close as possible to ancient Greek.
One of the most famous Greek intellectuals of the Greek enlightenment was Adamantios Korais. He was born in 1748 in Smyrna but spent most of his life in Paris, where he died in 1833. He prepared editions of ancient Greek authors for a Greek readership and was a firm believer that education would be the key in the emancipation of the Greeks. Other intellectuals were less patient and began to advocate for a revolt that would throw off the ‘Ottoman yoke’. Among them was Rigas Velestinlis, a Hellenised Vlach. He was influenced by the French Revolution and printed in Austria the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He also printed the New Political Constitution of the Inhabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Aegean, and the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which envisioned a pan-Balkan uprising and the revival of the Byzantine Empire as a multi-ethnic republic, with Greeks predominating (even though the project intended to embrace all ethnicities). Rigas was arrested by Austrian authorities and handed over to the Ottomans. He died in 1798, as he along with five friends were strangled. His last words were: “I have sown a rich seed; the hour is coming when my country will reap its glorious fruits”.
All those factors led to the foundation of a secret Greek society by three friends who lived in a diaspora community in Odessa in Russia, Emmanouil Xanthos, Nikolaos Skouphas and Athanasios Tsakaloff. They founded the Society of Friends (Filiki Etairia), which was strongly influenced by Freemasonry and had elaborate initiation rituals. Its membership began to grew rapidly, especially after the Society claimed (falsely) that it had the support of Russia, an Orthodox power that most Greeks looked at as a possible friend and liberator. This rumor was made more plausible as leadership was assumed by Alexandros Ypsilantis, a Phanariot who was aide-de-camp to Tsar Alexander.
In 1821, taking advantage of Ottoman domestic unrest, the Greek War of Independence began. Alexandros participated in a failed campaign against the Ottomans in Moldavia while his brother Demetrios was sent in the Peloponnese where the Greek revolt had broken out. With his brother away, Demetrios tried to assert himself as leader but he was hampered both by the local military chiefs and political notables as well by the liberal Westernized politicians (with most influential being Alexandros Mavrokordatos). His attempts thus failed.
The Greeks were able to liberate much of the Peloponnese and central Greece from the Turks. The leaders of the revolution convened in late December 1821 and drafted the first Greek constitution. Mavrokordatos became president of the Executive branch while Demetrios was elected president of the legislative body, having little actual power. The military leaders felt marginalized by this settlement which mainly benefited the politicians and became more assertive thanks to the charismatic and successful military commander Theodoros Kololotronis.
In March 1823 there was a new assembly in the city of Astros. The central government was strengthened at the expense of regional administrations. In order to placate the military faction, Kololotronis was offered the position of vice-president of the Executive, a position he accepted. He caused a political crisis however when he prevented Mavrokordatos from assuming his position as president of the legislative body. This enraged the legislature. The legislature, controlled by Rumeliots (central Greece), Islanders and some Achaean nobles was able to fire the president of the Executive, Petros Mavromichales, who was supported by Kololotronis and Peloponnesian notables. Mavromichales refused to accept this decision, leading to civil war. With an army of Rumeliots under the command of Ioannes Koletis, the legislature was able to crush the opposition in 1825 and put Kololotronis in jail.
All this internal infighting allowed the Ottomans to inflict a series of defeats on the Greeks, reconquering much of central Greece. The Ottomans also had the assistance of Egypt (nominally subservient to the Sultan) and their Westernized military. Thankfully for the revolutionaries, in the naval Battle of Navarino in 20 October 1827 the fleets of Britain, France and Russia (which were on the region as part of an intervention to put an end to this destabilizing conflict) destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet, thus aiding the Greeks.
That same year Ioannes Kapodistrias was called to Greece to assume its leadership. He had been Foreign Minister of Russia and was a respected statesman. Upon his arrival, he centralized control by suspending the constitution. He ruled as an authoritarian but as the war was still going on, his iron fist rule was initially welcomed. He made a great many of reforms, introducing currency, reorganizing the military, establishing quarantine to combat epidemics and reforming local administration. He is thus considered to be the architect of the Greek state. In 1831 he was assassinated.
Wanting to put an end to the anarchy, the three Great Powers (UK, France and Russia) placed a Bavarian prince, Otto, as monarch of Greece. Under the protocol signed at the London Conference on 7 May 1832, Greece was recognized as an independent Kingdom.
