In 1821 a secret society of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire got together to start a revolution;
they dreamt of rebuilding the Greek state that the Turkish
Ottomans had conquered centuries earlier—a dream which came to be called the Megáli Idéa.
What they would get was a bunch of foreign kings and a country that covered only about
a fourth of the world’s Greeks. But they would strive to expand for the next hundred years.
What then really was the Megáli Idéa in practice? How did modern Greece grow?
Well, the term “Megáli Idéa” was coined in 1844 by Ioannis Kolettis, a prime minister
of the Kingdom of Greece. Greek nationalism, though, had been growing for decades;—spurred
on by (in addition to anti-Turkish or “Ottoman” feelings) nostalgia for the Byzantine Empire.
For a thousand years after the fall of Western Rome,
Greek rulers continued to claim Rome’s authority from their spectacular capital, Constantinople.
(Or Byzantion in ancient times, and modern-day Istanbul).
However, after centuries of territorial retreat, the Byzantine Empire was finally
destroyed in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.
The Sultan would make the city his capital, but it kept a Greek population—for now at least.
Beyond Constantinople (as the Byzantines and then under the Ottomans) Greeks lived
all along the coast of the Aegean Sea and far into Asia Minor. By the Middle Ages,
they lived alongside Turks, as well as Armenians in the east, and Albanians, Slavs,
and Latins in the west, among other peoples. So, when a new Greek state was recognised by
the world in 1832—nearly four centuries after the death of the last Byzantine Emperor—ideas about
exactly what lands needed to be reincorporated to fulfill Greece’s national dream weren’t uniform.
The Greek revolutionaries who fought against the Ottomans had hoped to completely push
the Sultan’s forces out of Europe. That plan fell apart fast, with the rebels
managing to win only mountainous southern Greece, and that took a decade of fighting.
Completely restoring the medieval Byzantine Empire’s borders was never
going to be practical, and it was also never seriously considered. Instead,
the Megáli Idéa’s proponents really focused on places most closely linked to the Hellenic world.
The targets were more or less these regions:
in the Balkans, Greece wanted to expand north into Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace. Then
further afield, they looked to Crete, Cyprus, and islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, as well as
at least the west coast of Anatolia. Greeks having lived in all of those places since ancient times.
Did that mean they all had Greek majorities by the 19th and 20th centuries? Not necessarily,
but they were roughly the lands that the Greeks themselves felt were “Greek”.
The crowning jewel of a restored Greece was of course to be a restored capital in Constantinople.
As it would happen, almost all of the places Greece wanted were at least a
little bit ethnically mixed… which would cause absolutely no problems
whatsoever down the line. Immediately after Greek independence though, that was not the problem;
the problem was that Greece was a small, poor country, that wanted to expand against an empire,
and it was entirely reliant on the goodwill of foreign powers to do that.
Greek independence hadn’t been won by the Greeks alone
(in fact, they spent a lot of the time fighting each other).
Really, they would’ve lost, if not for the interventions of Britain, France, and Russia.
Reluctant interventions too: the Greek rebels were much too liberal for the autocratic Tsars;
For Britain, they were much too Orthodox and potentially Russian-friendly;
and as for France, they were only there to counter the other two.
Without serious outside backing, for about eighty years Greece’s borders hardly changed.
The Greek Kingdom (which actually had a Bavarian,
and then Danish kings) expanded only twice in the 1800s.
First, was Corfu and other Ionian Sea islands (British prizes from the Napoleonic Wars).
They were given to Greece in 1864.
Not because Britain suddenly favoured Greek growth mind you, in fact, they wanted to preserve the
Ottomans, as a counterweight to Russia. Greece had just installed a pro-British King though… and
frankly, Britain was willing to toss them scraps to get the Greeks to shut up about expansion.
That didn’t really work.
For their part the Russians sought the complete demolition of the Ottoman Empire,
but for the benefit more of Balkan Slavs than the Greeks.
Greece’s second expansion was Thessaly and parts of Epirus in 1881. That was a significant
diplomatic triumph, as they were taken after war between the Russians and Ottomans saw much of the
Balkans gain autonomy in 1878. Greece didn’t have to fire a shot, and good thing too because they
were still woefully unprepared to stake any Megáli Idéa claims by force. The proof? 1897,
and the chance to fight the Turks themselves. After trying to support a revolt on Crete,
the Greek army, under Crown Prince Constantine was routed on the mainland. Still, peace actually saw
Crete become semi-independent, and within a few years, it had effectively become a part of Greece.
That was allowed to happen because as the decades went on, the attentions of
the Great Powers changed. With the unifications of Italy and Germany towards the century’s end,
and rapid imperial expansion into Africa, they shifted towards the problems that
eventually led to WW1, and away from preserving the crippled Ottoman Sultan.
Which should’ve been great for Greece, and it was, but a decade of weak governments
failed to take advantage. Then, in 1909, a group of army officers staged a coup,
and the most important consequence of that was the coming to power of the Greek Liberal Party,
which won a landslide in elections held in 1910.
Its leader, the Cretan Eleftherios Venizelos, was a staunch supporter of the Megáli Idéa.
He was also a republican, so was much of the army,
and as Prime Minister, Venizelos reformed the Greek state, and forged
alliances with other Balkan countries eager to see the fall of the Turks.
Venizelos’ Greece, plus Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro attacked the
Ottomans in 1912, starting the Balkan Wars. Together they beat the Turks,
and then Greece (along with the Serbs, Montenegrins, and Romanians) was victorious
against Bulgaria after fighting broke out over the spoils of the first war.
Regarding the Megáli Idéa though, the wars were inconclusive;
Greece had not yet pushed into Anatolia or through Thrace to Constantinople.
Then there were also the matters of Rhodes and Cyprus—both having become colonies,
snapped up by Italy and Britain respectively.
The next question on the Greek agenda was how to press their momentum? Which really meant:
should they, or should they not, not join WW1?
It turned out they would, though only after the so-called national schism between Venizelos and
the now-King Constantine. The king was forced to abdicate, and Greece again went to war with
Bulgaria and the Ottomans as an Entente power. At long last, the Greeks had what they wanted:
the backing of Britain, Russia and France in a war to reclaim their lost lands… sort of.
WW1 exhausted the Western powers and destroyed the Russian Empire. The world had no stomach to
help Greece push deep into Asia Minor. At the end of the war, Constantinople remained out of their
reach, under joint Entente occupation. Unhappy about that, Venizelos and the Liberals continued
the war against Turkey alone in 1919; the Ottoman Sultan had by then effectively been replaced
by the Turkish National Movement of Mustafa Kemal and ultimately the Republic of Turkey.
The second Greco-Turkish War saw a restored King Constantine lead Greek forces far into
Turkish Anatolia, only to overextend themselves and be routed by Kemal. Peace was made in 1922.
Turkey also forced the Entente out of the old Ottoman capital. Constantinople having become,
for the first time, a city with a majority Muslim population around
the turn of the 20th century. With the end of the 2nd Greco-Turkish War,
that process sped up dramatically. The two governments had agreed to a population exchange,
and from all across Turkey, about a million Greeks were displaced and
made refugees in Greece proper, ending the millennia-long Greek presence in Asia Minor.
In Greece, the same would be done to hundreds of thousands of Muslims.
The Megáli Idéa, as a real political force, was, by then, dead, though Greece still expanded once
more: after a brutal occupation during WW2, they received Rhodes and the Dodecanese from Italy.
The only place to retain large Greek and Turkish communities after the 1920s was the island of
Cyprus, a British colony until 1960. To find out more about the Greek and Turkish populations
there, and how they divided quite violently, you should check out the video on Cyprus’ de
facto partition to the left. If you enjoyed this one, it should be right up your alley,
and as always, I’ve been James, and thanks for watching Look Back History.