Greek Independence
| This section requires expansion with: mainly with descriptions of the political situation and how the Megali Idea drove foreign policy and internal politics. |
After the Greek War of Independence in 1821, a new Greek state was established, with belated assistance from the United Kingdom, France and Imperial Russia. However, the new Greek state under John Capodistria after the Greek War of Independence was, with Serbia, one of the only two countries of the era with ethnic population which was smaller than the population of those outside its borders; most of ethnic Greeks still resided within the borders of Ottoman Empire. This version of Greece was designed by the Great Powers, who had no desire to see a larger Greek state supplant the Ottoman Empire.
The Great Idea embodied a desire to bring all ethnic Greeks into the Greek state, and subsequently revive the Byzantine Empire; specifically those Greeks in Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, the Aegean Islands, Crete, Cyprus, parts of Anatolia, and the city of Constantinople, which would replace Athens as capital.
When the young Danish prince Vilhelm Georg was elected king in 1863, the title offered to him by the Greek National Assembly was not "King of Greece", the title of his deposed predecessor, King Otto; but rather "King of the Hellenes". Implicit in the wording was that George I was to be king of all Greeks, regardless of whether they then lived within the borders of his new kingdom.
Read more about this topic: Megali Idea
Famous quotes containing the words greek and/or independence:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair—and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)